Page 39 of The Gilded Survivor

Canciller Duarte thrust his fist into the hair and shouted. “La Chica Dorada!”

He chantedthe golden girlthree more times, and the entire room chanted with him. Even the kitchen erupted in a joyous chant.

I stumbled out of the room, feeling like I was ready to lose everything in my stomach. I didn’t want to be here.

I wanted to die.

My legs stopped working and stumbled against the wall. Someone spoke my name, but I couldn’t tell if it was Magda, Maestra Cecelia, Fernando, or all three.

It didn’t matter anymore.

Years of protecting my secret had resulted in only one thing: Whether by hands of Maestra Cecelia or the conditions of the wilderness, I was going to die.

Chapter15

I Lost My Home

Maestra Cecelia had dragged me into her office and thrown me onto a creaky wooden chair. She stared at me over the table, still wearing her black sleeping robe. Her expression was one she would give to an intruder. When she leaned over the desk, her robe brushed against the table, skimming across books and papers that lay scattered over the scuffed wooden surface.

“You have a lot of explaining to do,” she said. Her eyes were narrowed.

I took a shaky breath. I had been in this room dozens upon dozens of times before, but the peeling blue wallpaper was a sad display, and the pictures pasted on the back wall of Cecelia and I no longer felt like fond memories. The wooden chair cut into my back and arms.

Something had broken between us.

Maestra Cecelia crossed her arms, and tapped her fingers on her bicep. She was closed off, evaluating a threat. Her lips were tight and her gaze was as cold as ice. When she dragged me into her office, she hadn’t allowed Fernando or Magda to follow.

That was bad.

I swallowed thickly. “What do you want to hear first?” I asked.

Her stare shifted, her normally chestnut brown eyes deepening to the color of stale, black coffee. “You have Blood Magic.”

It wasn’t really a question, but I still felt compelled to weakly say, “Yes.”

Her eyes trailed up and down my body. “Are you a spy?” she demanded. “Here to check in on how I run my theater?

I shook my head. “No-no, Maestra. If I were, wouldn’t you have been brought in for questioning by now?” I hoped that my admission would’ve brought her reason. That she would see she could still trust me.

She sneered. “Then why are you here?” Suddenly, as if the answer was written on the air between us, her skin turned ashen. “You ran away from home… shit.” Her eyes were widened. “Anyone on the street, any Élite with an investigator, could find out that I took you in.” Her hands reached up and pulled on her shiny curls. “Good hell. They’ll say I stole an Élite baby. They are going to lock me up forever.” Her breathing changed, and she started pacing around the room. “You planned this somehow, I can feel it in my bones.” Her fingers curled, creating claws as she beat her forehead with the heel of her palm.

I stood up, my chest heaving. The world swam. God, it was getting hard to keep enough breath inside of my body. “No, absolutely not,” I choked out.

Cecelia stopped right in front of a wall where there were pictures of the dancers. She had been running Las Patrias for over fourteen years. Slowly, she leaned forward and plucked something off the wall. When she turned around, her features had gone slack, the hard ice melted off her brow. For a second she looked sad, but that quickly changed to indifference.

She took a step toward the desk, and then held up the picture. It was a black and white photo of the two of us, one that I had seen before. Maestra Cecelia was holding my arms in position while I practiced Flamenco. We were smiling at each other.

She sure as hell wasn’t smiling now.

I was going to be ill. This woman had been family to me. She would never look at me with such care again.

Her eyes flicked at the photo one more time. “I took you in because Fernando found you dancing on the street. He said… that you moved like the autumn leaves swirling in the air, and that I would be nothing but glad to take you in.” The tall woman opened up one of the wooden drawers on her old desk and pulled out a lighter. “And I was. You were like a dream come true. So passionate. So strong.” Her mouth pressed in a hard line, and she clicked the lighter on. A small yellow flame came to life before she held the picture of us over the fire. “I trusted you.”

The thick paper curled and smoked, and my throat tightened. My lip quivered. “Please, Maestra Cecelia, believe me. I was practically a Dreg, Magda and I came to you as—”

“Orphans. Yes. I remember. But orphans of who?” she hissed. The picture caught flame, and she put it in a ceramic bowl on the corner of her desk.

My whole body shook as the smell of burnt paper filled the room. “I don’t remember much of my parents. But I never saw them use magic. They were workers, living in Puerto Dolores. The—”

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