Chapter 30
They’ll hold your life in the palm of their hands,
Your thralldom is what they want.
They’ll grow your flowers, make fertile your lands,
And your heart, they’ll haunt.
—Songs of Astola, collected and compiled by Mahira Nazir
Yaseema
I wrenched away at his words, but he grabbed my upper arms tight, his fingers digging into the meat of them. I pushed against him until he walked forward, pressing me to the thick wooden pole holding up the tent.
“Stop struggling,” he bit off, his body pressed against mine. “And don’t you dare scream. We are going to have a conversation.”
“Fuck you.” I tried to jerk again but it was impossible, given how tightly he was holding me.
“You don’t want to be fighting me, not yet,” he said ominously. “I am the reason you are alive right now.”
My mouth dropped open, thinking of how he’d rescued me from the flames. A smooth, curved smile that reminded me of the sound of his voice spread across his face.
“Not because of what you did at the festival. I’ve known for a long time you aren’t a servant girl at the palace, Yaseema. And I know you aren’t from Salt either.”
“And what do you imagine I am, then?”
“When we first met you were attempting to run from a halmasti like a clueless fawn. Then you stab the fucking general in the neck. You have magic no one has ever seen before, and the Viceroy meets you and immediately has more information on an ancient peri relic he’s been searching for than he has in years. ”
He pressed up against me, every inch of him hard and unyielding. “Who are you?”
I stayed silent, bullish, determined to not give him a thing.
“You want me to tell Reza my suspicions and have him order me to torture it out of you?” He leaned forward, and my heart raced so fast I wouldn’t have been surprised if he could hear it. “Do you know how many people I’ve tortured for him?”
His eyes were shadowed, haunted, deep wells of anger. I shook my head, unable to speak, not sure what I would even say.
“So many I’ve lost count,” he whispered, voice ragged with pain. “So many I can still hear all their screams. And if that’s what you want from me, so be it.”
He released me abruptly, striding away toward the entrance.
“Wait,” I called out for the second time, grabbing his arm. It was unmovable steel, like his eyes, and even I was surprised at my audacity. He stilled, and turned to face me, an eyebrow raised in expectation. I kept my hand on his arm but took a step forward.
I may not be intimidating, but I could hold my own against someone who threatened me.
Safiyya’s voice sounded in my mind. Finally, you’re acting like a Nazir.
“Why haven’t you told the Viceroy already?” I cocked my head.
He exhaled but didn’t try to remove my hand from his arm. “Is that what you want? For me to tell him I think you’re a spy from another Court?”
So that’s what he thought I was—a human sent from another peri court.
His hand found my chin, and he lifted my eyes up to the lantern hanging from the top of the tent. I shook my face from his grasp.
“No.”
As much as I wanted to lie, it was impossible now. From what I’d seen in the Viceroy’s eyes, he wouldn’t hesitate to get to the truth.
“You don’t look enthralled.” Kiyan’s eyes narrowed on my face. “But there are ways to hide it.”
“I’m not enthralled,” I snapped. “You don’t understand what you’re talking about.”
He pressed forward, until we stood toe to toe. “So, make me understand.”
I sighed and released Kiyan’s arm. He crossed his arms over his chest, waiting.
I took a deep breath, steadying myself for the conversation I was about to have. The only other person I had told was Mishah, but she was like me, someone who was just struggling to survive—not a fae warrior whose job it was to catch and kill rebels.
“I’m not from here.”
He snorted as if he knew as much already and opened his mouth to retort, but I cut him off.
“I’m from across the River,” I clarified.
His mouth dropped open and he uncrossed his arms, looking as if I’d just hit him over the head with a copy of the Citadel’s History of Astola.
“Impossible,” he finally muttered, more to himself than me. He shook his head, looking me up and down as if there were some way to tell whether I was a human from across the River.
“Not impossible,” I answered anyway. “I had a fae relic that allowed me to cross.”
His eyes glittered, mouth curving as he realized. “The haath phool. You used Queen Azari’s bracelet. The one that was lost.”
I nodded. “Yes, the one you took from me,” I said, still bitter. “It was in the human world when I found it.”
When I took it.
“But if you are a human from the other side of the wall, how do you have magic?”
“I don’t know. Humans used to have access to magic, but the wall cut us off.
So I thought maybe that had something to do with it.
But we only have songs and stories about what life was like before the wall.
I would assume you would know about that better than me—don’t you remember what it was like before the wall? ”
“The wall was built a thousand years ago.”
“And?”
He gaped at me, a look of pure astonishment on his face. “You think I’m a thousand years old?”
I blinked. “Aren’t all peris immortal?”
His eyebrows were up to his hairline and he looked like he was about to laugh. “We live much longer lifespans than humans, yes. But we do age, and we do die.” He looked me up and down, tilting his head. “How old are you, human?”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Stop mocking me.”
He raised his hands. “I promise I’m not. Just . . . I would assume you are around your twentieth year, is that correct?”
“I’m nineteen.”
“I am in my twentieth year. Only a year older than you. We may age differently, but we all have to start somewhere.”
“Oh.” I rubbed my arms, suddenly feeling better that I wasn’t speaking to some ageless immortal fae. “Are you going to tell him?” I whispered in the din of the tent.
He finally shifted his gaze to mine, his dark eyes searing me. “Should I?”
“What purpose would it serve?”
“You tell me. Do you think I keep secrets from him?”
I thought back to the halmasti, to Kiyan being shirtless and alone in the forest as he fought the beast. To the fact that he didn’t even tell the Viceroy we had already met.
There was a reason he was hiding things from the Viceroy, something bigger he was trying to keep from him. “When it suits you, yes.”
He looked at me with an assessing gaze, as if surprised I’d called him out on it. “Why did you come here? Why cross the River?”
“To find my mother,” I repeated, the same story I’d told Ramishah. That desire was never truly gone from my heart, even if I knew it to be futile. If my mother was still alive, she would have found a way to get back to me. But Kiyan didn’t need to know anything more than that.
He didn’t need to know that I was here to finish what she started.
“And the crown? Why were you searching for it?”
“I told you I had an interest in it.”
“And you just so happened to take an interest in it at the same time you are looking for your mother?”
I glared at him and lifted my chin. “Yes.”
He moved an inch forward. “You just expect me to believe what you are telling me?”
“I don’t expect anything. I am being honest.”
“And if Queen Azari’s crown is found, do you know what Reza will do with it?”
“Don’t you want him to find it?”
He sneered. “That’s none of your concern. I work for the Court of Salt. I kill and hunt and torture and destroy for them. But I still have some power. Me. I have control. If Reza finds the crown, then there won’t be anything in his way. He will raze this entire Court.”
“That sounds treasonous,” I shot back. “Aren’t you supposed to be loyal to him?”
He leaned in closer, with a catlike smile once more. A thrill ran through me, the same kind of feeling as when I called on my magic and felt its heat igniting my veins with power.
When Kiyan was close to me, my entire body felt alive.
“Are you going to tell him?” he asked, an echo of my own question.
There was so much more intertwined in this than I realized.
Kiyan was hunting and torturing his own people at the bidding of the Viceroy.
But was it because he wanted to? Or was he like I was—working for the Citadel and at night staging my own rebellion?
He was so wrapped up in different layers that every time I thought I understood him I got caught on another facet of who he was under the cold mask.
“No,” I responded, tucking a freshly cut curl of hair behind my ear. His gaze followed my hand, then traced down my neck and back to my face. “I’m not going to tell him. Neither of us are. Because in the end, it doesn’t serve us for the Viceroy to know our secrets. We’ll just continue as we are.”
I swallowed, taking in his blazing eyes, his nose, slightly crooked from a bad break, and the scar that sliced across his cheek. He had an incredibly hard exterior, but underneath he seemed as desperate and passionate about his land as I was about mine.
That had to count for something.
“So do we have a truce between us then?” I held out a hand as if to shake it.
He looked down at my extended palm and then back up to my face, rubbing his hand across his chin. Something then crossed his face that I couldn’t read—surprise maybe, or perhaps relief.
Instead of taking my hand to shake it, he took it in his calloused fingers and brought it to his lips.
“A truce,” he repeated against my skin, his lips soft on my hand. He looked down at me, the momentary exhaustion and weariness gone from his gaze. “I’ve never had one of those before.”
* * *
After Kiyan left, I still felt his presence like a storm cloud in my periphery, foreboding, and perhaps just the slightest bit of excitement in the air.
I slept fitfully, after combing through my mother’s journal for any other details that might help us with what lay ahead. But amongst the riddles and songs and letters, I couldn’t find anything that might speak to what she had uncovered about Queen Azari’s crown.