Chapter 36
It’s my birthday today. I stood in your room and closed my eyes, but when I opened them, you still weren’t here.
—Letter from Kiyan to his family, unsent
Kiyan
I could have told her anything, I could have said that the words I’d told the jaipari meant nothing at all, that I had threatened her and she’d relented.
But as soon as the jaipari had called me a Prince, Yaseema would have questions—I knew her well enough that she wouldn’t let that go.
But also, something in that moment, in the buildup of whatever this was between us, had led me to confess, to say out loud what I had longed to tell her.
It felt so good to admit to it, to have her understand even a small part of what I was, even if I wasn’t him anymore.
Even if now, I was no one.
I watched the shock ripple over her face, the questions on her lips that always seemed to accompany her when she was fascinated by something. She sat up and pulled her spectacles from her pocket, sliding them on her face as if she were going to study me.
Was I her new subject? The thought didn’t make me as wary as I thought it would.
“Does the Viceroy know?”
“No. If he did, my skin would’ve been flayed from my bones long ago. He doesn’t want the royal family to live, he wants to break the curse on the Mountain so he can kill them and take the weapon hidden there. He doesn’t want any threats left alive.”
“And your family has been trapped in Tirich Mir the entire time, while you’ve been out here?”
I swallowed thickly. “Yes.”
That word stood in the silence like a separate person, a ghoul haunting me.
Yes, I’ve been alone. Yes, they’re all gone.
Yes, it felt like I was trapped in that Mountain too.
Yes, I wish I had been.
Yes, yes, yes.
I knew she had a thousand more questions, that she likely wanted to write a book on it all, record it in one of her journals, document every word I said.
But I didn’t want to rehash a past I was trying to forget, especially when I was working so hard to correct it.
Even still, she opened her mouth, and I steeled myself, preparing for the onslaught. But all she said was, “I won’t tell him.”
Her brown eyes were solemn behind her gold spectacles, which were askew again. I eyed her warily. “Why?”
She snorted. “Not everything has to be about cost or blackmail. Maybe I don’t actually want your skin to be flayed from your bones.”
“That’s quite possibly the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
Yaseema rolled her eyes and then pushed to her feet, walking around the outcropping of stone we’d climbed onto.
I stayed there, staring at the dark water, thinking of the words I’d hurled at the jaipari.
The ones that had gotten her to release us and allow Yaseema and me to go and get the crown.
“There’s a hallway down this way,” she called over to me.
She walked over to the entrance of the corridor and knelt down, studying pieces of tile with ancient peri scrawled into them.
“What are you looking at?” I followed her toward the torchlit corridor, which was lined with paintings and images I didn’t understand. Jasmine carvings were everywhere, as well as garbled pieces of songs and passages—some I’d known as a child, some completely foreign to me.
A large tablet at the entrance of the corridor had a poem engraved on it that took up nearly a third of the wall. Yaseema squatted down underneath it, fiddling with something.
I frowned, reading the words. “I don’t think my proficiency in ancient peri is what it once was.”
I moved closer trying to make out the faded inscription.
It may not be claimed,
by blood, or birth
It may not be claimed
by greed or power,
this gift is given on a measure of worth
Are you worthy?
If so, become us.
It is for those cunning,
for those wise,
for those willing
to accept their demise.
“Quite a cheery lot, the ancient peris, weren’t they? Also, I’m not sure they understand how rhyming works.”
“Shut up, I’m trying to work out the riddle below.”
“What?” I glanced down to see Yaseema moving the tiles, realizing that she was sliding them like a puzzle.
“The ancient peris loved trickery, more even than magic. Everything they did was about bargains and riddles and mystery. I once had to feed a statue a memory in order to release a relic.”
I paused in dusting off a carving of a curled lotus flower. “What memory did you give it?”
She lay on the ground on her side now, sliding the tiles back and forth into different slots.
Her tongue was pressed between her lips and her forehead was creased in concentration.
Her spectacles still had errant water droplets speckled on the front of them.
A rush of warmth flooded my chest at seeing her so engrossed in this.
“Probably a terrible one of me having monthly cramps. It worked though.”
I smothered a laugh and wandered away from her, toward the corridor. Torches lined the narrow hall, the flames bouncing off the arch of the cavern.
At one end of it, a large painting of Queen Azari was on the stone, her great wings spread wide behind her, eyes smiling. I took a step toward her, as though she summoned me.
And then paused as something whistled past me.
“Shit,” Yaseema shouted, as she leapt to her feet. “Kiyan! Do not move!”
That was all the warning I had before she tackled me to the ground.
The air collapsed from my chest as a small human bundle of curves and hair and spectacles landed on top of me.
“If you wanted me underneath you, you should have said.”
“Be quiet.” She pressed a hand to my mouth. The scent of ink and mangoes filled my head.
“If we don’t have a feral mermaid, we have steel-tipped neem tree arrows to contend with,” she muttered.
We stayed on the ground for a full minute before she moved her hand from my mouth.
“I’m not sure the arrows were activated by noise.” I gestured to her hand.
“They aren’t, I just didn’t want to listen to any more of your idiotic jokes.”
“I have to provide some use here, besides throwing you into a lake and fighting off jaiparis on your behalf.”
“Stay here. And don’t move.”
“I await your command.”
She crawled backward down my body, which was an interesting experience to say the least and went back to sliding her puzzle along the bottom of the warning at the start of the corridor.
“Almost got it—yes!” As soon as she’d said the words, the sounds of more neem arrows whistled along the corridor, triggered by her solving the puzzle. “I knew it would have a fail-safe trigger.”
She stood over me and offered me a hand-up, a satisfied smile on her face.
“Thanks for saving me from becoming a pincushion.”
“I had to repay the favor at some point. Just have to save you a few more times to make it even.”
“Get me that crown, and we’ll call it even.”
“I’m working on it,” she said, but her eyes slid away from mine, as if she didn’t want to meet them.
We walked side by side to the end of the corridor, to see what other torments awaited us.