Chapter 40
If the Empress comes, she’ll never find out what we’ve done.
I’ll make sure of that.
—Letter from Mahira Nazir to Zimran Nazir
Yaseema
The Viceroy’s anger permeated the camp, and the entire thing was locked down, with soldiers patrolling every hour. A hunting party had gone after the rebels, but Kiyan hadn’t been among them.
There was no way I could escape the camp now without the Viceroy catching up to me and discovering why I was trying to leave in the middle of the night.
A heavy feeling of guilt seeped through me, at the thought of the Viceroy hunting down the rebels for a treasure they didn’t even have.
At him blaming them for what I did, and them not even having the power to stop him.
But what choice did I have? If I didn’t destroy the wall my own kingdom would be at the mercy of an Empress who wanted to starve us all to death.
I was just about to dim my lamp when a crash, followed by a thump, sounded outside the entrance to my tent.
I froze, my breath in my throat as I waited to hear if there was further noise.
But nothing came. My footsteps were soundless as I walked across to the tent flap and lifted it carefully, peeking outside.
Silvery hair and a bloodied shirt was slumped against my tent.
Kiyan.
Pain lanced across his face as he leaned against the outer entrance to my tent. He held a hand to his chest, and blood seeped from between his fingers. A strangled cry caught in my throat as I lunged toward him.
“What happened?”
I grabbed him as he fell against me, his eyes fluttering and refocusing. He was huge, and I buckled under his weight, but managed to drag him inside my room and shut the entrance behind me. I laid him on my bed as gently as I could, but he still fell with a heavy thud.
“Kiyan? Talk to me.” I shook his shoulders.
His eyes drifted open, glazed with pain. His mouth was smeared with blood, and his lips curled into a warped grimace.
“Sorry, I couldn’t make it back to my tent.” He glanced up at me, sweat dripping from his forehead.
He looked worse than when he was purging the poison from Queen Azari’s temple.
“Who did this to you?” I swept the hair out of his eyes and forced him to keep them on me.
As if I had to ask.
“Reza. He’s not happy we lost the crown.” He gave a hoarse laugh that ended in a grimace of pain. “That’s an understatement.”
I exhaled heavily. “He tortured you again.”
Kiyan huffed out a laugh. “No different than what I’ve done to countless prisoners in his name. Even Talal tonight.”
I frowned at his mention of the prisoner he’d tortured this evening. He knew his name.
It sounded like he knew him personally.
“That still doesn’t mean you deserve this.”
“Doesn’t it?” He looked up, the pain in his eyes much more than physical. “What else does it mean, if not that?”
I ignored the question and ran my hands over his shoulders and then down the sides of his body assessing the damage. He smiled. “That feels nice.”
“Shut up. I’m checking for wounds.”
“You might want to go a little lower,” he said, having the gall to give another laugh.
“Ew. I said shut up—oh.”
He took my hands and placed it on the wound at his stomach.
“Salt blade. And I’m fairly sure he carved a cursed mark.” He gave another grunt of pain.
“What is that? A cursed mark?”
“Physical manifestation of a curse, a way to poison with magic.”
I lifted his shirt to reveal a scorpion, but carved into his skin, different from the other scars that crisscrossed his body. This wasn’t a scar, it was a fresh, bleeding wound.
Anger burned in my blood, alongside the sick feeling in my stomach. “What can I do to help?”
He shook his head. “There’s nothing to do. Unless you can heal?” I shook my head sadly and he let out a groan of pain.
I bit my lip. But could I use my magic to heal?
I’d never used my magic on bodies before the fight with the rebels, but now I was beginning to wonder if I could use it in more circumstances than I had thought.
But more than that, my mind fluttered back to the bangles on my wrist and what I’d felt when Kiyan had pulled me out of the burning beast.
They’d come alive on my wrist. Had they protected me from the fire? I stared down at the bangles still on my arm.
Or had they healed me as I’d been burning?
The memory of the cooling sensation skittering across my skin amidst the burning flames came back to me. Of my skin being smooth and unblemished when I’d woken up.
Kiyan’s eyes fluttered closed.
“Kiyan?” I said softly, nudging his shoulder, but he didn’t move. He’d passed out on the bed.
I lifted his shirt again and a gasp shot out of me. The knife wound now had greenish tendrils spreading from it, the poison in the mark starting to take over.
He would die here if I didn’t do something.
I placed my palms over his wound, the bangles falling gently against my wrist. I had no idea how to use them, but I concentrated my power there.
My magic sparked to life, golden threads pouring from my fingers and spooling out across the room.
But they didn’t have anywhere to go, and for the first time I faltered. What was I searching for? Usually, I would ask it to help me find what I needed, to give me what was lost, what I was searching for. But this was much more abstract.
A way to heal.
Just as I thought it, the threads gathered and began rushing back to me, weaving themselves around the bangles on my wrist.
Confirmation.
I exhaled and tried to remember what I had done in the death beast when I had felt the bangles.
Taking one of them off, I examined it in the candlelight, cognizant of the web of green poison slowly seeping through Kiyan’s skin like ripples in a pond.
Something small snagged my attention as the gold caught the light.
An inscription.
One I’d never noticed before. How was that possible? I’d looked over every inch of these bangles a thousand times growing up. Unless it had appeared afterward somehow? After I’d swum across the River?
I squinted my eyes, bringing the bangle close to my face and trying to read the words aloud. It was in ancient peri and I had to read it several times to understand the words.
To make whole begins with the self.
I frowned, turning the phrase over and over in my mind. Did I translate it properly? My fingers traced the small curls of the inscription stamped in the gold.
To make whole begins with the self.
I thought back to my research, the tomes I’d read in ancient texts in the human world, coupled with the compendium Kiyan bought me at the bazaar.
This was a magical object, and it couldn’t create magic by itself, it could only be channeled.
And it had to be channeled through me first.
I put the bangle back over my wrist and instead of trying to push magic outward I concentrated on pulling it inward. Bringing the magic from the object to meld with my own. My eyes fluttered closed and I focused on the sensation of my magic wrapping around the bangles and pulling.
A cool, light sensation flooded my veins, spreading down my wrist and tingling over my skin.
A small breath escaped me, and it felt as though I were bobbing in a pleasant stream, a cool relief on a hot day, a gentle breeze in stagnant summer.
The magic of the bangles wrapped around mine and fused to the core of my own.
To make whole begins with the self.
I turned to Kiyan and placed my palms gently on his stomach. He shuddered, and a wave of relief washed over me—he wasn’t dead yet.
Just as I did with my normal magic, I used it as an extension of me. It was a new sense—but instead of touch, or smell, I now knew restoration, the act of making whole again, of healing.
That feeling flowed from me, pushing against the poison inside Kiyan, and instead of finding something that was lost, I was isolating what wasn’t meant to be there.
The injury, the poison, bruises, cuts, harm, I could feel it receding with a cool wash of power.
This is what my mother had left me—this was her legacy.
It was something more than jewelry and something less than her being here with me. And the magic inside me reveled at such a new feeling, at such a strange and unique power.
As quickly as I had absorbed it, it left again, pouring out of me and into Kiyan, leaving my senses and entering his to restore his health.
The green spidery veins were gone, and curls of poison poured out of his side like spilled wine, the scorpion carved into his flesh receding. The wound wove together, and I brushed over it, marveling at his skin becoming unbroken once more.
I did it.
I’d healed him.
I pressed my hand flat to the unmarred skin, stroking my thumb along his chest in wonder. After a moment I noticed his stomach muscles had tensed.
My eyes flew to his, which were now open.
“You’re awake,” I said, a little stunned. I removed my hand from his torso immediately, feeling my face go hot. Why was I stroking his stomach for so long?
“I am.” He sat up, rubbing the back of his neck. His eyes were bleary, and he blinked a few times as if to focus on me. “What did you do?”
“I . . . discovered I may have some ability to heal with my magic after all.” I didn’t want to talk to him about the bangles, not when I was planning to leave with the crown very soon. My eyes flitted to my dusty traveling skirt, which was draped over a chair in the corner of my tent.
He frowned as if he didn’t exactly believe me. He was so close I could make out the threads of brighter brown in his dark eyes, like the threads of my magic had made their way there as well.
“You know, every time I see you, you seem to be shirtless.”
He barked out a laugh, his eyes clearing slightly, though his face was still flushed. “I am around you, it seems.” Then he looked up, his face turning serious. “Why did you help me?”
“Because you didn’t deserve to die. Not from him.”
His mouth thinned. “Perhaps I did. You don’t know the extent of what I’ve done. How many I’ve killed. Many would say this is retribution.”