The Brilliant Death

Father looked at me as if I were speaking a language from halfway around the world. Then I remembered that I’d been spending my time as a boy. I had grown accustomed to trading words without question or apology, and expecting to be taken seriously.

“So this is the Capo’s ball,” Cielo muttered. “He strikes me more as the tea and beheadings type.”

It felt like I had two shadow lives, and the sum of two shadows wasn’t one girl. It was twice as much darkness.

“It’s not an easy thing, being weather. Very . . . moist.” He twitched from head to toe, as if casting droplets from his body. “But it does get a person across mountains in a hurry.”

“What’s your name?” I asked, hoping for a straightforward response.
“Cielo,” he said—a single word, made soft and lovely by his accent, which seemed to flutter from one end of Vinalia to the other.
“You’re making that up.” I had never heard of anyone named after the sky. It sounded like the strega’s own invention. And he had skipped the family part entirely.
“It’s true I picked Cielo for myself, but every name is made up by someone,” he said softly. “They are all lies, or none of them are.”

“An owl?” I asked the magic. “You’ve given him claws, a beak, and an excuse to be heartless.”
When I turned around, I found Luca pointing one hand at the place where Beniamo had changed. Blood dripped from his fingers, but he barely seemed to notice. My little brother stared at me as if I had picked up the entire world and moved it an inch to the left.

“In some situations, there is no right thing,” I said. “Only the least of many wrongs.”

I had finally met someone else with magic—not in a story, but right in front of me, flapping and cawing. It felt like I had spent my entire life speaking a secret language and then stumbled on someone else who was perfectly fluent.