He did. Three nights later, Mateo woke to find El Duende sitting at the foot of his bed, wearing the tattered, faded diamond suit. The goblin’s face was pale, and his lips were stitched together with the same silver thread he used on his victims—but the thread was fraying. A small smile was breaking through.

The ground shook. The walls of the monastery cracked. From the basement, the captive harlequins began to hum. Their stitched mouths vibrated. Their diamond suits—faded, torn—began to glow.

She arrived at midnight. The moon was the color of bone. The gates were made of rusted iron, and beyond them, she heard a sound that turned her blood cold: the muffled, rhythmic breathing of dozens of mouths sewn shut.

For seven years, Mateo stitched. And for seven years, he did not laugh. Not once. He hoarded his laughter in a clay pot under the lemon tree, waiting. Now Lola Montero sat before him, shivering in the candlelight.

The door creaked open. A young woman stepped inside, shaking rain from her curly black hair. Her name was Lola Montero, and she was the fastest cantaora (flamenco singer) in Triana, though tonight she looked like a ghost.

Cristóbal smiled. “Then you must laugh with me.”

The goblin agreed. He put on the suit—green, red, yellow, black—and for one night, he walked the streets of Madrid as a harlequin. He danced. He mimed. He juggled. But he did not laugh. And in the morning, he found that the suit had sewn itself to his skin. He tore at the fabric. He screamed. The diamonds burned.

El Duende tilted his head. “Why?”