We Set the Dark on Fire (We Set the Dark on Fire, #1)(14)



Looking at Carmen, her haughty expression unchanged by the mountain of work awaiting her when they arrived home, Dani couldn’t imagine she’d make the same choice.

Item four, she read. Se?or Mateo requires a glass of room-temperature sangria be placed on the end table nearest his favorite chair up to, but no more than, twelve minutes before his arrival home.

Was this going to be her marriage? Catering to the whims of a spoiled boy? Dani had pictured something slightly . . . grander. Then again, she reminded herself, this was only section three of the manual. Maybe the rest would be more satisfying.

Item seven: All of Mateo’s personal correspondence must be placed on the northeast corner of the hall table. This task should not be entrusted to staff members but performed by the Primera of the house herself.

The tasks grew only more tedious and minute as the list wore on. In school, they had learned that a Primera would be her husband’s equal, standing beside him, learning what he knew and sharing his power, but this handbook had her relegated to little more than an assistant. Scheduling social events, responding to invitations, placing Mateo’s mail on the hallway table? This wasn’t what she’d been trained for.

To dampen her rising irritation, Dani let her gaze drift out the window, where Medio’s capital city was just coming into view.

She had spent so long in the quiet, sterile environment of the Medio School for Girls that she’d almost forgotten what the bustle of a city was like. Of course, the small city nearest Polvo was nothing compared to the capital, but Dani found herself nostalgic all the same.

The noise. The narrow alleyways between red-and-white stucco buildings. The overcrowded marketplaces, with their bulging baskets of produce and spices and fabrics in every color under the sun.

Street musicians gathered on every other corner, little girls in bright skirts spinning in front of them until they were breathless.

As the tightly sealed car maneuvered the hairpin turns, Dani inhaled deeply, like she could smell the grilling meat and open casks of sun-wine over the pervasive salt sea air. Everything in Medio moved upward, from the sea at the island’s outer perimeter to the mountain in the center where the capital stood sentry, fed by the freshwater spring that made the lowlands’ salt seem vulgar by comparison.

But even though the upper class might try to deny it, claim it was a curse by a vengeful god, this was an island. No matter how far up or in you went, you could always feel the beating heart of the sea.

The streets opened up again, less markets and food stands and more residential buildings. Between them, laundry hung like the flags of warring nations, and old ladies with wrinkled brown faces and flyaway white curls bickered through open windows over their imagined borders. A drumbeat started, audible even through the thick glass of the car’s tinted windows. This was a place where you could trade limes for gold bracelets and old names for new ones. A place where you could disappear like smoke.

A place where you could stay and be anyone.

Dani looked between Carmen and Mama Garcia, then next to her at Mateo’s stern-faced se?ora. Surely they weren’t immune to the magic of this city?

“I assume you’ve already familiarized yourself with your list of duties?” Se?ora Garcia asked. “Given that you’ve taken to gaping out the window like an oversized fish.”

Dani’s face was as smooth and impassive as ever, her Primera mask in place. But maybe it would take more than a mask to impress one of the country’s top Primeras.

“Yes, Se?ora,” Dani said. “Of course.”

“Then you won’t mind telling me the protocol for the preparation of Mateo’s bedchamber when he’s been away from home overnight.”

It was a trick question. Preparing the bedchamber was a Segunda’s job. But it was on the list, and Dani was nothing if not thorough. She met the se?ora’s eyes as she said:

“The bedding is to be washed and changed by the housekeepers under the supervision of the Segunda, who will then check it over thoroughly to ensure that the sheets are wrinkle free, his awards from the Medio School for Boys are polished, and his mirror is free of spots and dust.”

Se?ora Garcia unpursed her lips for what seemed like the first time. “Well, it seems your reading comprehension and memory are up to snuff, at least.”

Dani nodded deferentially, but inside she glowed. This might not be her dream, but she had learned the satisfaction of being exemplary. Because of the nature of their roles, Dani and the elder se?ora would spend little time alone together after this first week, but she would be the last of Dani’s official teachers, and she found herself still eager to make a good impression.

Maybe it was the whisper of her own mama still stirring in her heart, Dani thought, that made her want to make this woman proud. But when she glanced up again, it was only to notice that Se?ora Agosta Garcia, with her stern face and her fastidious appearance, was as unlike Dani’s mama as one woman could be from another.

As they left the city behind, Carmen studied her nails in that bored way of hers. Mama Garcia dozed beside her like a cat in a patch of sun. As for the se?ora, her eyes were a million miles away; she was probably thinking hard about the exact way Mateo liked his book spines dusted.

Item fourteen: Under no circumstances should the Primera, the Segunda, or house staff be permitted inside Se?or Mateo’s private office.

This one caught Dani’s attention. Maybe she wouldn’t be the only one with a secret in the new Garcia household. But item fifteen was about the type of dessert Mateo liked if he was arriving home on a weeknight, and Dani sighed, a small and quiet thing, puncturing her breathless awe until it shrank in her chest.

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