Chapter 35
The Empress is coming for us, of that I’m certain. She won’t abide rebellion, and we have committed the worst rebellion of all.
—Letter from Zimran Nazir to Mahira Nazir
Yaseema
The entrance was cold, and the only light we had filtered down from the sky above, revealing the stairs that descended into the mountain.
“It’s only going to get darker,” I said. “I can use my magic, but it might not stay if there’s nothing hidden nearby.”
“Hold on, there are torches here.” Kiyan moved over to the wall, and whispered a few words, placing his palms flat against the stone. Torches in sconces along the edge of the stairwell lit up, creating a path of fire into the center of the mountain.
“I didn’t know you could summon fire as well.”
He looked at me. “It’s life. Anything that has a spark of life in it can be conjured.”
I released an unsteady breath, unexpected fear gripping my chest as we began the descent.
Usually, I felt the opposite when I entered a vault or tomb, or anything where ancient artifacts were housed.
Normally it was a chance to get there before the Citadel, to keep something in our lands and keep the life magic in the earth.
But this was the first time I was descending into a peri vault in their own land.
I didn’t know what traps awaited us here.
“Expecting monsters?” Kiyan’s voice came from behind me, tainted with amusement, and something else, something that felt as wary as I did.
“Hopefully not. But I don’t know what type of traps the ancient fae have. There might be monsters after all.”
“Don’t worry, you already have one beside you to ward them away.”
I glanced back at him, expecting to see his eyes dancing in the flame light, but he appeared quite serious.
“That doesn’t give me confidence.”
He didn’t feel like a monster when he’d repaired my spectacles and placed them carefully on my nose, nor when he’d handed me the book on fae magic.
Or when he’d been tangled together with me this morning.
Are you a monster? Is that how you see yourself?
The stairway ended abruptly, though the torches kept going.
“It looks like a cliff,” I said, peering over the edge. There was only darkness below, with the occasional shimmer of light in the distance, bouncing off the flames.
Kiyan leaned forward and sniffed the air. “There’s water below.”
“Can you use your magic on it?” I turned to him.
“I can call on what’s inside it, but only if I’m touching it. And I can’t conjure plant life here, because we are too far underground. With my old powers, maybe. But not with my limited ones.”
“Can you tell if anything is in it now?”
He closed his eyes, whispering softly under his breath, placing his hand along the cavern wall, connecting to the condensation that spiraled down to the water. The torchlight flickered across the hard planes of his face.
He looked much less harsh when he wasn’t scowling at me or giving me suspicious glares. When his eyes were closed, I was uncomfortably reminded of how beautiful he was—like one of the ancient statues I helped the Citadel unearth, carved from rock, unforgiving.
“There’s something, but it won’t speak to me. Or can’t. But it’s hard to determine when I’m not in the water.”
“That sounds terrifying.”
Kiyan peered over the edge. “We don’t really have any other option. I can’t conjure plant life in here. There might be some I can speak to in the water, but it is too far away. Can you swim?”
“Of course I can swim, if it’s necessary.”
“It’s necessary. We’ll have to jump.”
I gaped at him. “We can’t jump down there!”
“What else do you suggest we do?”
I peered over the edge. Across the dark expanse, torchlight lit up the other side of the cavern, looking like the continuation of the corridor. It seemed as though the path kept going on the other side of the underground lake; we just had to swim to it.
“There’s a reason I never liked swimming,” I muttered, clenching and unclenching my hands. This was no different than me plummeting into a bottomless cavern filled with perilous spikes.
Which was what I was afraid of.
The black surface of the water shimmered, and it looked fathomless. But despite the unknown, there wasn’t a pair of eyes staring back at me from the lake.
I shored myself up, preparing to jump into the darkness.
“Okay, I think I can do it. I’ll jump.” I darted a look at him. “But I might need you to do it with me.”
He rolled his eyes. “We can jump together.” His hand found mine, and my fingers were swallowed by his palm, firm and unyielding. The panic in my chest eased. I took off my spectacles and folded them carefully in my pocket.
“I’m ready.”
“Thanks for letting me know,” he said sarcastically.
“One, two—”
He yanked me off the ledge, my hand still in his, and we both plummeted into the dark water below, my scream echoing through the ancient cavern.
When my legs hit the surface, my body felt as if it had been dipped in ice. It robbed me of breath, and I panicked, kicking out frantically. I had lost Kiyan’s hand, and I couldn’t sense where he was in the water.
It was so dark, coupled with the fact that I wasn’t wearing my spectacles I was disoriented and turned around, unable to see anything.
I wasn’t the strongest swimmer to begin with, but with my lungs bursting I kicked my legs hard, desperate to draw breath and escape the freezing lake.
I finally broke through the surface with a heavy gasp, my lungs clamoring for as much air as they could get.
My breath came out in shallow bursts, and I tried to calm my consuming panic.
Kiyan popped up behind me, surfacing much more gracefully than I had, with hardly a sound. I looked across the lake at the flickering torch I’d seen earlier and began to swim toward it. At least I had a beacon of light to swim toward, even if I couldn’t see.
I was desperate to escape the icy water, though it had grown more bearable the more I swam.
“It looks like the vault is over there,” I said to Kiyan, my voice coming out like a weak croak. I kicked harder toward the light, but a hand gripped my shoulder, holding me back.
“Kiyan, we need to go before we—” I turned.
Black hair, wet to her skull, sunken eyes illuminated by the torches, a mouth too wide for her face, and tiny white teeth sharpened to razors.
Her hand was on my shoulder, the fingers filed down to stubs, the bones of her knuckles protruding like nails.
My scream tore through me, the sound caught in my throat. I tried to push away from her, but my legs refused to cooperate, terror overriding my body.
A shrill shriek erupted from her mouth and her bone nails dug into the meat of my arms, dragging me back down to the depths of the underground lake.
I kicked against her side but couldn’t gain purchase; instead, her nails scraped down my body, the pain like a trail of fire in the cold water.
She latched onto my ankles, pulling me down farther, and no amount of kicking was going to break the vise she had on me. The scant light above started to dim, and at the same time the edges of my vision grew black.
I was fading, my ability to resist disappearing with every inch I was dragged under.
Until a small spark of relief came in the form of warm, calloused fingers wrapping around my wrist, and tugging me back up.
Kiyan.
I grabbed onto the hand with both of mine, feeling the muscle of his solid forearm under my skin.
A scream wrenched through the water, and I saw flashes of the creature out of the shadows as she tried to yank me back down.
The whites of her eyes, little sharp teeth, and snatches of a snarling demonic face chased me as I was pulled toward the surface.
My chest felt as if it were about to combust, and I was finding it difficult to focus on anything but the warm hands wrapped around mine.
They were the only thing I could focus on.
I kicked my legs furiously, despite my waning consciousness, and I was rewarded when my heel connected with cold flesh.
The monster released my ankles just for a second. In that moment, I lurched up, breaking the surface, gasping air.
Kiyan was in front of me, breathing heavily, watching me with a grim expression.
“What was that?” I gasped out, but a shriek filled the air before he could answer me.
The creature was back, her awful eyes large and wild.
Kiyan shoved me out of the way with a hard push.
“Was that necessary?” I splashed water at his face. “You could have just said ‘move.’”
“It is when you just sit there gawping at a jaipari about to drown you,” he shot back, diving at the creature.
A flash of steel glinted in the torchlight and he plunged a dagger toward the chest of the monstrous sea woman—the jaipari. She laughed, a shrill sound that took my breath just as fiercely as the cold water. She shoved the dagger away, swimming around us in a swirl of black water.
The jaipari lunged at me again and this time Kiyan grabbed her by the throat and slammed her up against the cavern wall.
She bared her teeth at him, her bone nails digging into his forearms, drawing blood. Her teeth were ready to tear out Kiyan’s throat.
I thought Kiyan was going to strangle her, even though she didn’t seem to need air, but instead he shouted something in a language I’d never heard, jagged and guttural. My ears perked up at hearing this new sound come from his lips.
The grin was gone from the jaipari’s face, replaced with a slack jaw and unbridled shock.
She responded, and I could hear the questioning lilt of her raspy response. He growled the same foreign word he said earlier, and something else.
Then, inexplicably, he pointed at me.
Finally, the creature softened in his hold.
She nodded and he released her, her eyes darting to me, this time with a sly look instead of hungry. She gave me a smile that I don’t think she meant to be terrifying and then bowed her head.
Then she looked back at Kiyan.
“Good luck, princeling,” she said in the common tongue, her voice raw and ravaged, the sound of rushing water bursting through rock.
She gave him the same small bow of her head and slipped under the surface without a word.
Kiyan and I swam hard toward the other side, and he helped lift me up out of the water onto the edge of the rock.
I collapsed on my side, and Kiyan lay on his back, panting and looking up at the ceiling.
My mouth tasted of blood and salt and heavy minerals from the cave water, and I curled my hands open and closed to get the feeling back into them.
I turned to Kiyan, watching him catch his breath for a few minutes.
“Care to explain what that was? And what just happened?”
“She was a jaipari.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “The damned things can lie dormant for centuries waiting for those who disturb their waters.”
“What did you say to her? It didn’t sound like ancient fae to me, but some sort of dialect I’ve never heard before. And her final words were in the common tongue. Why did she call you princeling?”
He was silent for a minute, not looking at me. When I thought he wouldn’t answer, he finally spoke, his words rough.
“There’s an old agreement with their kind and the royal family. I invoked it. She was charged with protecting the crown, to stop it from falling into the wrong hands.”
I stared at him. “How could you invoke an agreement between jaiparis and the royal family?”
He finally turned to look at me, his eyelashes sticking together and dark drops of water trickling to the stone floor.
An inane urge to reach up, cup his face, and brush the droplets of water from his lips came over me.
But the surprise of his words still hung in the air, and I waited for his response.
Good luck, princeling.
“Because I’m a member of the royal family.”
Shock traveled up my spine, my heart pounding wildly in my chest.
“You mean, the family trapped in the Mountain? In Tirich Mir?”
“The very same.”
I stared at him, my eyes roving over his face, staring so long at his immovable face after such a shocking pronouncement that I almost thought he’d turned to stone.
“Who are you?” I finally asked, my throat thick with emotion.
He gave me a bitter smile. “No one. I don’t exist.”