Chapter 4
It was hard to be without you today. The river ran red with peri blood, and still he keeps me on this leash. I never know when I will be plunging a thorn into the heart of someone I used to break bread with, laugh with, love.
But these days, it’s more likely I know them than not.
—Letter from Kiyan to his family, unsent
Kiyan
I studied the gold ring the boy had given me in the firelight. It had been a long time since I’d read the ancient language of the River Court on something other than a scroll about to be burned.
Return me to the River.
What did it mean? Did it have anything to do with the ancient Queen’s crown?
After years of searching for anything that could help me, I couldn’t help but think this was all a convenient trick.
If I returned the ring to the River, if I listened to the Churail, would it get me ever closer to freeing my family?
Especially when the crown had been lost for over a thousand years—ever since the border preventing access to the human lands was erected.
I frowned, holding the ring up to the light. The dead Queen’s crown might be enough to break the powers that Salt Court had, but if it ended up in the Viceroy’s hands, it would also solidify their rule over us completely.
Leaning back in my chair, I massaged my temples, puzzling out my options.
I still didn’t know who the churail was who had given the boy the ring, and how the witch knew so much about me.
Your highness.
That honorific had felt like a dagger to the heart when he’d said it. Or a thorn.
I was anything but a prince right now. Instead, I was killing members of my own Court, feigning loyalty to a madman all in an effort to bring back something I wasn’t sure could be saved.
My fingers curled into the wood of the desk in front of me, my rage so acute it was as though I could tear the entire palace down.
I felt the urge to conjure my magic, to bring forth as much of it as I could to create a jungle of vines and thorns and wild things filling the River Palace.
But when I reached for it, only the curl of a thorn grew from the desk, the pathetic symbol of my anger.
They had taken a forest from me and left a single leaf.
If I could just get to crown, I might be able to turn the tide of this war.
I snorted to myself. It wasn’t a war if one side was completely decimating the other.
It was annihilation.
But at least with the ancient Queen’s power in my hands, we might be able to fight back.
A knock sounded at the door and a rebel guard who looked barely old enough to wear his uniform entered my office.
“Yes?”
“You asked to be informed when the Viceroy returned, Captain.” He looked as though he was about to pass out; sweat beaded across his brow and a flush crept from his neck.
The general probably thought it was a lark, assigning such a soldier to me.
But he was from the Court of River at least—not a Salt soldier.
The jasmine stamp on his neck signified him as such.
I rubbed the shadow of my own mark on the back of my neck, remembering the shape of it before Reza had burned it off.
This boy would feel that pain soon—Salt didn’t like their soldiers wearing River marks for all to see.
“And? Has he?”
That seemed to shake him from his nervousness, and he stood upright. “He sends word from the battlefield he’ll be returning by the next moon.”
“In time for the Salt festival,” I muttered.
Not enough time for me to do what I needed.
I nodded at the boy and slipped the churail’s ring onto my smallest finger.
“You look familiar,” I said, eyeing him. He was avoiding meeting my gaze. He had pale hair, like many peris in River, and quite a slender frame for a member of the guard, but his features were strong, and his eyes bright and wide.
“Where are you from?”
“I . . .” he choked the word out, as if his mouth were stuffed with cloth. “From the other side of Tirich Mir, sir. A village at the other end of the Khangar Pass. But there’s no Red Jasmine presence there. No sign of the insurgence that far, sir.” He nodded emphatically, his voice shaking.
I doubted that, since I knew members of the insurgence had gone to every single village in the Khangar Pass to drum up support.
But I wasn’t about to argue about the footprint of a rebel group I was a part of myself.
Instead, I held up my hands to silence him.
“Be at ease. I’m not going to investigate you for rebel activity.
” I took in his features again—behind the scared look on his face he reminded me of someone.
A flash of similar blue eyes filled my memory.
“Did your family serve in the Queen’s army? ” I asked suddenly.
He shook visibly, as if his end had come.
But he had no idea who I really was, and his fear was misplaced. I was not the one to be afraid of, at least not by him.
“Yes, sir. My father was a soldier.”
I nodded, the realization of who his father was hitting at the same time that sorrow swept over me. Hadi.
His father was a River Palace guard who’d served my mother faithfully, until he’d been killed by a golden soldier from the Court of Salt. They’d slaughtered most of the peris at the River Palace when they’d taken over.
I could almost still remember Hadi’s voice from when he would spar with me at the palace, hitting me gently with the butt of his sword when I was barely old enough to fight him and laughing as he taught me how to fight back.
“And now you are faithful to the Viceroy. To Salt.” I smiled blandly at him, letting my words sit in the air.
“Of course, sir,” he rushed to say.
His hands shook, as if he were trying to call on the magic that should have been at his fingertips.
But it never was. Not to its full capacity. The single thorn that protruded from the desk mocked me, reminding me of how little power I truly had. I smiled at the young soldier without humor.
“It’s difficult, isn’t it, to say no when they have all the power?” I leaned back in my chair, my disinterested smile never changing. “But loyalty isn’t in words, is it?” My hand pressed to my chest. “It’s in the heart. Remember that, when you think about who it is you are faithful to.”
He swallowed, his eyes darting around my office, uncertain how to respond.
But it wasn’t a question for him, so much as a reminder to me.
They had all the power. They had all the magic. They had taken it from us.
And every day it killed me.
But every single day I reminded myself of who I was loyal to.
Of how I was going to free the peris of River from this nightmare.
I didn’t need an answer from him. Instead, I waved him away and freed him from my presence before he soiled himself from fear.
The soldier left, slipping out of the room so fast I had barely taken a sip of my coffee before he was gone.
I made a mental note to approach him as a recruit for Red Jasmine later—anyone who had a father who fought like Hadi shouldn’t be fighting for Salt, no matter how frightened he was.
I rubbed at my eyes with the heel of my hands.
If Reza was returning soon, I needed to figure out where Queen Azari’s crown was a lot faster if I didn’t want more members of my Court to die.
As long as Reza already had the King crown, we had no ability to fight against him.
And the only thing that would combat King Rusul’s crown was the power of Queen Azari.
With the general here and soldiers tracking my every move, I didn’t have the opportunity to search as freely as I would like, and I certainly wouldn’t be able to go to the River to verify if an ancient ring given by an old churail would be something more than just jewelry.
What I needed was a distraction.
I tapped at the ring on my smallest finger with the pad of my thumb, measuring the right of what I needed to do. Remembering two frightened boys and the weight of their bodies against my shoulder after I’d killed them.
Usually, I could smuggle out any members of the Court of River if they’d been caught or arrested. And if I couldn’t do that, I could assign them to work camps to escape torture at the hands of the Viceroy and get them out later.
But with General Faisal watching me, I had to be careful of any missteps.
I couldn’t lose my position here, or everything would fall apart.
If I was found out, what little hope our Court had would be gone—hope of bringing down the curse around the Mountain and releasing my family, and hope of ending the enslavement of the Court of River.
I glanced in the direction of the River, beyond the thick forest that clung to the edge of the water.
The magic caged inside me rose up, like vines crawling up my throat, eager to burst free.
I could feel the pressure of it inside me, raging like a storm that was never unleashed.
But with Reza still in charge I could never access all of it, nor could I directly attack him.
Not when he still had the power of King Rusul’s crown.
So instead, I pushed past that spark of life my power accessed, the glowing ember of vitality and growth that my body wanted to command.
This time, I sunk deeper into whatever life magic the peris from the Court of River had been granted all those centuries ago. I slipped so deep that my magic became a perversion of itself, conjuring a different part of the life cycle, something both ancient and new.
It was a way I could finally get around the Viceroy’s limits on our power, a way we could finally begin to fight back.
I had been leashed for far too long—perhaps it was time to show the general what the Court of River could do.