Chapter 34
Dear Amma,
I stepped over a dead body today, on the way to the Citadel. I was still shaking by the time I made it to the archives and was caned for dropping a collection of scrolls on the floor. I can’t carry on like this.
I can’t not do anything. I have to stop our people from dying, otherwise there will be no one left.
—Letter from Yaseema Nazir to Mahira Nazir, recorded in Mahira Nazir’s journal
Yaseema
I woke to thick arms wrapped around my torso, and my head buried in Kiyan’s chest. For a second I tried to adjust to my surroundings, attempting to piece together where I was.
I was in the middle of the bed in the Tashuna caravanserai, Kiyan’s leg swung over my hip and my own under it.
My arm was around his waist and my cheek flush against his chest, directly atop his heart.
The slow, steady beat of it thrummed in my ears, and despite the intimate position, I didn’t feel uncomfortable.
That was the part that scared me.
The smell of spring was all around me, and I was conscious of every place our bodies touched.
He shifted, his hand dropped from my hip to my bottom, and I inhaled sharply as he drew me closer.
He mumbled something incoherently and pulled me against him, so that my head was tucked underneath his chin and our hips snapped together. I didn’t even want to breathe or extricate myself from his arms and risk waking him up.
Or risk losing this feeling.
It felt . . . good. Being in his arms, being held as if I mattered to someone. As if I were a person of worthy dreams and thoughts.
It could be like this. You could stay here with him.
I dismissed my inner voice which sounded suspiciously like Ramishah and concentrated on trying to slide out of his arms as quietly as I could.
But I could sense the moment he woke up.
He tensed, and his palm that was previously splayed over my behind was suddenly lifted. His heart hammered faster.
I had the courage to tilt my head up, and found dark eyes rimmed in silver staring back at me.
“I’m sorry,” I said, my voice husky from sleep, and I cringed inwardly at the throaty tone. It sounded like I was trying to seduce him. “It appears I mauled you in my sleep.” I looked down at my arm locked around his waist.
“It’s my fault for not sleeping on the floor.”
I let out a little laugh, the idea that he should’ve slept on the floor to avoid me throwing myself all over him, but my humor caused unexpected movement and we both froze at the additional contact.
“I’ll just . . .”
“Yes, that’s fine.”
We extricated our limbs, our hands, our bodies until we were both stood on opposite sides of the bed, not facing each other.
He cleared his throat. “I’m going to check on Reza and make sure everything is still to plan.”
I turned abruptly. “Are you going to tell him about yesterday?”
He met my gaze as he put his boots back on. “No. And I would hope you don’t either, for all our sakes, including the lives of the peris in this village,” he warned.
“I would never do that.”
He nodded, and slipped from the room, leaving me to my thoughts and my burning face.
I had slept with him.
The man who was the Viceroy’s rebel hunter, the one who seemed to be playing both sides and who had secrets he wasn’t telling me.
Yes, we had only shared a bed, but waking up entangled with him felt like it had woken my body up too.
And now it was very, very aware of him—and in more than just the physical sense.
Near him, I felt as though I wasn’t alone anymore, as though I had someone who understood the act of violence that was growing up being told you couldn’t be who you were meant to be, because someone else had taken that from you.
It was in the way he understood that the very soil and connection to the earth had meaning. The importance of home and being free in our home.
I sat down on the bed, my head in my hands, wishing fervently that I had never known what it felt like to have his arms around me, nor to listen to the steady beat of his heart.
* * *
We traveled the rest of the day, the terrain growing rockier, more mountainous. Occasionally I would call on my magic to see if there was anything nearby.
Find what I need.
But it was silent, despite the increased in power thrumming through my veins.
As we grew closer to the low mountains, I felt my magic rising in my belly, spreading to my fingertips, my skin, all over.
My body was alive with it, the same way it had been when I’d found Ghassan’s key.
It was the same feeling I’d always had when I came close to unearthing what had been lost for centuries.
But this time, you’ll be taking it for yourself. You’ll be the one stealing it from where it belongs.
I knew logically that was right, I was doing something very similar to what the Citadel was doing—digging up long-buried relics and taking them from the people they belonged to.
But my mother had left for this, perhaps died for it.
I touched my fingertips to the bangles on my wrist. She had believed this would save us. And if that meant I would steal the crown from the peris to save my family, that is what I would have to do.
And still, despite that conflict, elation thrummed through my veins at the possibility of entering Queen Azari’s ancient vault, of seeing first-hand everything I had studied and researched my entire life.
After a few days more of travel, we finally arrived at the place indicated on the map.
It was a nondescript low mountain, with a flat top, but not much else. Even the trees had thinned out, the forest giving way to rockier terrain.
Nothing but sheer rock face greeted us.
I cast my magic out, calling it from my veins, and watched the golden web spiral out of me, zigzagging across the forest and up the low mountain.
There were no carvings or stone markers, and nothing to indicate Azari’s vault was here. We fanned out and began to search, the soldiers combing through the mountainous forest to find any sign of it.
I sat down hard on the ground, the rock face pressed against my back in cold mockery.
I thought through everything I had known about Azari and the fae vaults scattered throughout Astola—some large like the Golden Vault, and some small—a shrine to a particular fae relic hidden in a small cave.
The fae in Astola sometimes put entrances in trees, empty caverns or dried up riverbeds. But always my magic could find it.
Now, I didn’t feel anything.
Either this was the wrong location and I wasn’t close enough, or there was something blocking my power.
“Could it be underneath our feet?”
My fingertips felt hot, my magic eager to leap from my skin, but it didn’t have anywhere to go, it still spiraled in every direction, leading me to everything and nothing.
Kiyan frowned and shook his head, placing his hands on the ground as if it could tell him the answers.
“No. There doesn’t seem to be anything under us.”
I reached into my own magic and felt nothing.
“And there are no caves, no entrances into this mountain?” My hands felt the hard wall as I remembered the Citadel blowing open half the earth with their dynamite to get into the Golden Vault.
The Viceroy and Kiyan walked around the perimeter of the mountain and the guards began setting up the tents.
It appeared we were making camp here in any event.
A tree in the distance caught my eye, and I walked over to it. It reminded me of the husks of life in my grandmother’s mango orchard. The other trees in the area were all healthy, rich with magic and bursting with green, fruit, leaves. This one looked hollowed out.
I touched it and my fingers prickled.
At last.
There was something here, I could feel it. My skin buzzed with it.
I focused my magic once more, and gold threads spooled out from my fingers like drops of ink in the air.
Finally, it had somewhere to go.
Once it had gathered and grown, the threads spilled into the tree, pouring through the hollow dead thing like they were giving it new life.
I felt rather than heard Kiyan beside me, his solid form silently observing what I was doing.
The Viceroy walked over from the other side of the clearing; his eyes gleaming in the forest.
It made me feel vaguely unnerved, his watching me like he was waiting for me to do this very thing. I’d forgotten he’d seen me use my magic in the library, that this is why he wanted me.
My threads filled the tree, and looked inside it, expecting to find something within the dead stump.
But before I could reach it, my magic burst out from underneath, lighting the ground up like golden roots beneath our feet.
The roots crisscrossed the ground and then threaded up the side of the mountain.
My heart sank. If the vault was hidden beneath the lower mountain, then I had no idea how we were going to break into it.
It wasn’t as if we had dynamite like the Citadel, and I didn’t know the extent of Reza’s magic, but I doubted he could blow apart an entire mountain.
If he could I doubt Tirich Mir would still be standing.
I bit my lip hard, willing tears of frustration not to fall.
I wouldn’t be locked out of yet another place by a damned wall.
The roots crawled up the side of the lower mountain, pulsing like a vein. They reached the top of an outcropping, a space in the sheer rockface that stuck out like a ledge, and stopped.
I looked up, squinting into the midafternoon sun. “Can we access that?”
Kiyan and the Viceroy followed my gaze. Above us, the mountain stood like a shroud over the valley.
Kiyan walked over to the foot of the mountain and place his hands on the fading golden threads of my magic still winding up the rock.
It felt strangely personal watching him rest his hand against it, nearly as intimate as his hands on my body this morning.
I bit my lip, my face heating as I looked away.
“It looks like we’ll have to climb up there.”
“Climb?” The Viceroy asked, frowning up at the mountain.