Chapter 26
The birthday of our Empress has been commemorated in Astola since the very first Empress, Lorna I, claimed the Kingdom for the Empire.
It remains the most joyous and celebrated day in Astola.
The Astolan natives are particularly enthusiastic in their celebrations, with only a handful of counterprotests every year, which are swiftly squashed.
—The History of Astola by Henry Wiltshire
Yaseema
I found Mishah standing at the back, surveying the festival with a strangely angry expression.
“Aren’t you going to dance?”
Her face wiped clean of her previous emotion, and she turned and gave me a wide smile.
“The kitchen staff have their own celebration, I was just here dropping off the food.” Her hands twisted together, and she seemed nervous. I wondered if she was uncomfortable being back near the Viceroy after what the general had tried to do.
“You are safe here, Mishah,” I reassured her gently. “The Viceroy gave me his word that no harm would come to you as long as I helped him.”
For a moment her eyes were dark. “We aren’t safe anywhere, Yaseema. Remember that. Not when the Salt Court are in charge.”
She turned and walked away before I could call after her.
Instead, I stood awkwardly in the middle of the festival, watching the dancers whirl around me. If we were leaving in a few days I needed to pack and prepare. And I still needed to think of a plan to steal the crown when we found it.
After my conversation with the Viceroy, I knew he wouldn’t let go of Azari’s power easily.
I was so absorbed in that thought that when a dancing couple knocked into me, I was thrown completely off-balance, landing against something hard. Solid arms steadied me.
“Thank you—”
Dark eyes, the color of fresh earth looked down at me.
Kiyan’s silver hair formed a curtain around his face, his hands gripping my elbow.
His long fae ears peeked out from underneath his hair, enhancing his otherworldliness.
He studied me for a long moment, as if we were suspended in time, with everyone else spinning around us, intoxicated by the festival.
My heart thundered in my chest, his brown eyes pinning me to the spot. It felt as though he had stopped my lungs too, constricting my chest with his stare. I wanted to know what he was seeing, to understand the reason he seemed so absorbed.
A scream pierced the merriment before I could speak, and the intoxicated joy around us turned to panic. I whirled around, but Kiyan caught me by the forearm and dragged me to him.
The screams grew, and festivalgoers began running in every direction, pushing each other out of the way, clawing over each other to escape.
But escape what?
A howl erupted in the hall, a sound like I’d never heard before—a thousand screams and guttural moaning drowning out the shouts and fear.
I no longer fought the hold Kiyan had on me, and tried to see what they all ran from.
“Stay here,” he said, his soft words in my ear, honing my focus to only him. He pulled me to the side, away from the stampede of fae screaming and pushing each other.
Another roar sounded, and this one much louder than the halmasti from the woods.
Fae, guards, courtiers, and panicked palace staff fell over each other to get away.
And when I saw what they ran from, my heart nearly leapt out of my chest.
The creature before me wasn’t an halmasti, though part if it seemed like it was, once.
This was a horrifying thing made of fur and blood, rotting branches, dead pixies and sprites, and bits and pieces of the natural world.
Twigs, mulched leaves, decayed mulberries all formed parts of its body that was both the halmasti and several other dead creatures at once.
People scrambled in every direction away from the thing, until it was only Kiyan and I standing in the center of the room.
The monster lurched toward us and I screamed, but Kiyan gripped my arm.
“Don’t move,” he repeated, low.
Instead of attacking us, the creature made of dead animals and leaves and rotted forest floor whirled around to face a figure standing at the other end of the dining hall.
The Viceroy.
He was flanked by his guards, their swords drawn as they advanced on the creature. The monster emitted another great roar and its enormous arm made of uprooted trees and thick swaths of rotting plants swiped at him.
The Viceroy moved in front of his soldiers and raised his arms wide in the air, no weapon in hand.
The map I’d found still dangled around his neck, folded and stored in the golden locket there, above the pieces of gold embedded in his skin.
Kiyan stiffened beside me as the Viceroy walked up to the creature.
He was too confident as he stood, poised to fight the massive creature before him without a sword at his side.
The Viceroy brought his arms together and clapped.
A buzz of something zipped through the hall, like the aftermath of a rifle shot or lightning bolt.
Something that cracked across the air and made room for itself, stopping everyone lesser than to take notice.
The crown in the Viceroy’s chest seemed to glow like a beating heart of sunlight embedded in his skin.
The creature screamed, and fell to its knees, or whatever twigs and leaves and mulch held it in place, stopped by whatever magic the Viceroy wielded. Its form began to shrink—no, rot, the leaves shriveling.
Kiyan gripped me hard, his hands bruising, but I didn’t care. I was too riveted by the creature as it bowed—and then resisted. It rose up, if possible bigger than before, a deep growl coming from the dead halmasti’s throat, its jaw torn and rotting off.
Abruptly Kiyan released me, his body jerking in shock.
“What . . .”
But whatever he was about to say was swallowed by the creature’s howl as it lunged for the Viceroy—who hadn’t been expecting the attack.
From our angle behind the beast it looked as though the beast consumed him, the Viceroy’s body had been enveloped by the dark swirling cloud of death.
“No!” I screamed, my only chance of going after the crown now inside the belly of a rotten beast.
Without thinking I wrenched Kiyan’s dagger from its sheath at his waist, despite only ever studying knives like it in archaeological dig sites and Citadel museums.
“Yaseema!” Kiyan shouted, and I didn’t pause to wonder at the panic there. Though my brain did register that it was the only time I’d ever heard him say my name.
It didn’t matter, because I didn’t look back. My only focus was on the map around the Viceroy’s neck. I wasn’t about to let this thing made of darkness, death and rotting forest debris destroy my only chance of saving my family, of finishing the job my mother had set out to do.
I dove toward the creature, the knife in my hand steady.
I didn’t know what it would do, but at least I could try.
My knife dug into a rotting log that made up the monster’s middle, Kiyan’s blade breaking the weak wood in two and delving deeper, into the soft underbelly of rotten flesh. It moved around me, letting me in, consuming me as it had the Viceroy.
My skin burned, going black with every inch of it that had been touched. I was folded into the darkness, the small tendrils of decay curling around my shoulders, my hair, and neck, wrapping around my skin until I was sucked in, pulled into the heady dark to become a rotted thing just like it was.