Chapter 10
I wonder if you look different, though I doubt it. I know I do. I’ve aged, and more than I should have. More than any peri should, considering. I know if you were here, you would find a way to restore our magic, but that’s not what I want most of all.
It’s really just to see your face.
—Letter from Kiyan to his mother, unsent
Kiyan
Silver-clad soldiers ran in the opposite direction to me, shouting and clambering to fight a new enemy that was nothing like the beaten-down, power drained peris of the Court of River they were used to.
They probably felt like real warriors for the first time, fighting something that could actually fight back.
But they wouldn’t be battling my creature for long.
Already I could feel my hold on it loosening, a combination of tapping into an unknown type of magic and the distance I’d begun to have from it.
But as long as they were distracted, that meant the usual level of guards along the River and in the forest would be less.
I wouldn’t have to worry about anyone seeing what I was about to do.
After a few minutes I made it to the edge of the River and pulled out the ring the boy had given me.
Return me to the River.
I could feel anticipation rising up inside my chest. After years of searching without a single clue, this might be the one thing I needed to find Queen Azari’s crown.
It might be the one thing I needed to free my family, so I wouldn’t have to compose letters to them in my head anymore.
I pulled my dark tunic off, swapped from the usual blue coat with the silver emblem I donned as captain of the Salt Guard. It landed in the grass along the riverbank, and I stepped toward the edge of the River.
I hadn’t been in this water of my own free will since I was a boy. The last time I’d swum it, the Viceroy had us execute a slew of rebels by beheading them against the invisible wall of magic in the center of the River that cut the human world off from us.
I closed my eyes, trying to block out the image of the heads of my friends bobbing along the current, the streak of blood swirling in the center of the water like paint.
Reza’s smile had been a sharp slash of white, and from then on I knew that dark, uneasy feeling I’d gotten whenever he wore it. “Take the rebels to the River, we’ll see if they can lift Azari’s wall,” he’d said with a glee that had turned my stomach.
We’d executed twenty that day—high peri and lesser alike. I’d managed to smuggle some out, but couldn’t prevent the execution that had been ordered. Afterward, I’d vomited over the side of the bank, clutching my hands in the grass trying to mask my sobs.
Then Reza had returned to the Court of Salt, leaving me in charge of hunting any remaining rebels in his absence.
I hadn’t returned to the River since.
I threaded the delicate golden band along the tops of my fingers like a coin.
Return me to the River.
I’ll go to the River like the ancestors.
Take the rebels to the River.
I inhaled a breath and dove, sliding into the water with a slight splash. I could feel the thread of other life in the water but could not fully access it. Not anymore.
The limits on my life magic felt like drowning, like being smothered with only a sliver of air left to drink.
I held the ring between my thumb and forefinger, but before I could look at it, it grew so hot that it was like molten metal in a forge.
It fell from my grasp out of reflex, my hands desperate to get away from the burning pain.
I cursed, shooting my hand out to grab it back before the current swept it away.
But I needn’t have worried. It floated up, ignoring the pull of the River entirely.
The ring moved in front of my face like a spinning top, just below the surface of the water. The metal became jammy, pulling apart and liquefying, turning into something new.
My breath trapped in my chest.
Of course.
Queen Azari’s magic was nothing if not things made new.
The ring twisted itself, until the gold was no longer a ring, no longer jewelry at all, but a long key with an ornate head, curling golden vines along the top.
It stayed there, suspended in front of me in the water until I snatched it up, and kicked up to the surface with a rough gasp. I dragged myself up the riverbank, coming to my feet along the grass and holding the newly formed key up to the moonlight.
I was torn between elation and disappointment.
The key had to be a step toward finding the crown, but I had no idea what to do with it.
What use was a key when I hadn’t any idea where the locked door was?
”Fuck,” I muttered, looking up at the sky as if it would respond.
Instead, a low growl from the forest was what answered.
I pivoted on my feet, facing the trees.
That was not the sound of the death beast I had created, nor of any creature I knew to be living in the River Palace woods.
But the forest stayed silent, as if the beast knew I was now listening for it.
I narrowed my eyes in the darkness but saw no movement.
So instead, I closed them, calling on my magic to focus on the threads of life of everything near me.
Water pixies, khapisis, jaiparis all flitted through my mind.
None of those had been what I heard. A river crocodile at the south end of the water pulled my attention, but it was too far away.
Suddenly a tugging of something sharp and fierce pulled at my magic.
Not vibrantly alive, but old, ancient, and waiting.
There.
Something stepped softly in the woods, but it was too large to mask its sound completely. All I knew was a sense of wrongness about it.
Not the same unnatural feeling of me tapping into the death magic, but instead an awareness of it not belonging.
Another soft pad of footsteps.
It crept quietly.
It was tracking something.
I didn’t bother putting my shirt back on, but I did thread the key onto the golden chain at my neck, alongside my sister’s ring.
Then I slipped into the woods, hunting something I hoped wasn’t hunting me.