Chapter 42
Dear Amma,
I wish I could talk to you about him, I feel like I don’t understand what’s happening between us. There is so much to worry about, so much to be afraid of and yet my heart refuses to listen and only wants to love.
—Letter from Yaseema Nazir to Mahira Nazir
Yaseema
The journey back to the palace was uneventful, but things between Kiyan and I were tenuous since we’d kissed, and since I’d healed him in my tent. Since he’d slept beside me again, and I’d felt his breathing like it was the pulse in my veins.
Occasionally I would reach up and touch my lips, reminding myself he’d been there. It was strange, I could still feel the imprint of his hands on my hips, still hear his whispered words about the colors in my hair, and yet I felt more distant from him than ever before.
It was a mistake. I knew that.
I should never have kissed him back, never touched him. I should never have closed my eyes beside him and felt safe.
The first thing I’d done when I woke up and saw him gone was check my skirt to make sure the crown was still there.
I’d cursed myself for not waking up before him, but he must have slipped out early, because the first rays of morning were still filtering through the tent and everything remained undisturbed.
I breathed a sigh of relief and sat back on the edge of the bed that had been conjured with sticks and leaves.
I just had to make it through the next few days, get close enough to the River so that I could use the crown to destroy the magical barrier.
Then I could go home.
And leave all this behind.
My rib cage felt tight when I thought about it.
Every step toward the palace was a step toward freedom, toward bringing the wall down.
But for some reason my heart felt heavier when I imagined doing it.
My fingers curled into the palm of my hand, remembering Kiyan’s heartbeat underneath my skin when I’d pulled the poison out of him and felt the steady thrum.
Healing him, experiencing that for the first time, had connected us more somehow. It had made me hyper aware of him—as if we were tethered together by the bangles, by my mother’s magic, by the fact that I’d saved his life with my power.
And then that kiss.
There was something between us that was more than attraction or circumstance, but a well inside me that he filled with his presence—safety, longing, hope. Why did it have to be him, and why now?
But my mother’s words filtered back to me, the ones I’d read over and over in the journal I no longer had.
I’m going across the River, Yaseema. And I’m going to save us all.
She hadn’t done it, and now it was up to me. It was my job to protect my family, to save Safiyya and my grandmother from the Empress.
It was my job to start the revolution in Astola.
I rode on my iron-legged steed at the back of the company, with Kiyan ahead staring determinedly forward. His coldness toward me this morning was confusing and something churned in my gut at not being able to speak to him.
But I reminded myself that it was for the best. I was leaving, and I couldn’t afford to give my heart to him before I went.
Even if you already did.
I closed my eyes and willed the voice in my head to leave me alone, clutching my reins tighter, my chest heavier with every step.
When we arrived back at the palace, it was a flurry of activity.
I headed back to my room, and Kiyan barely spared me a glance as he trudged to the dungeons, a member of his guard finding him as he hauled the rebel they’d caught up by the shirt collar and dragged him to the palace.
Talal, Kiyan had called him.
I gasped when I saw him.
He was large, almost as tall as Kiyan, but he could barely walk as he made his way into the palace.
Blood was oozing from various parts of his body, smeared across his face, and his eyes were blackened.
Bits of roots and vines clung to him, as if he’d been restrained with the undergrowth of the forest. He looked broken, but as he was dragged inside the back entrance to the golden palace, he raised his head and looked at me.
His mouth quirked up as if he wasn’t bloody and bruised and battered, and he gave me a smile as if he knew me.
Kiyan followed the prisoner’s gaze to me, and we locked eyes.
His stare scorched me, and there was so much in that look that I stood, rooted to the spot, unsure of what he was trying to communicate to me.
It was molten heat and anger and devastating stillness all at once.
Did he know what I was about to do?
Or was it just the kiss that had made things so visceral between us?
I hadn’t imagined it. Something had irrevocably changed.
And now I had to leave him.
I closed my eyes, not able to bear looking at him any longer. And by the time I opened them again, he was gone.
* * *
I didn’t waste any time. When I headed back to my room, I packed the rest of my clothes, made sure I had my mother’s bangles, and pulled a hood over my hair, thinking of Bair’s warning to me so many weeks ago.
Hide your hair. It’s distinctive.
I didn’t want to risk walking through the palace and cutting through the courtyard in front of the legions of Salt soldiers that had begun gathering to hunt the rebels, so that left using the climbing supplies I had brought to climb down from my bedroom window.
I secured the hooks to the edge of my stone window and tied the rope I’d brought to it.
“At least I get to use this for something.”
“Yas?”
I froze at the sound of my name, at the voice I knew so well.
Mishah stood in my doorway, her light brown eyes wide as she glanced from me to the rope secured under my window. Then she stepped inside my room and shut the door.
“You’re leaving?” Her voice contained something in it that I couldn’t figure out—not hurt exactly, more like defensiveness.
“I’m sorry. I have to go back. I have to help my family—they’re still out there and may be in trouble.”
“You are going back across the wall? How? Didn’t Kiyan take the Queen’s bracelet from you?”
“I found another way,” I said trying not to draw attention to the crown hidden beneath my skirts. But as I smoothed the fabric over my hips, something in her words stopped me. “How did you know how I crossed?”
We had never talked about that. She didn’t know about the conversation I’d had with Kiyan, she didn’t know he had taken Queen Azari’s bracelet. The only thing she knew was that I was a human from the other side of the wall.
She froze at my question, her face an immovable mask.
Time stood still between us.
“Mishah?”
I took a step toward her. Her eyes fluttered closed and she leaned back against the door behind her.
“I followed you from the beginning. Bumped into you at the gate and befriended you. Kiyan had me watching you since you first arrived.”
Air was trapped in my lungs, and my fists curled tight against my sides. “This whole time, you weren’t my friend?”
“I can’t afford to have friends, not right now. Not when the people I love are dying. Surely you understand that?” She tilted her head, suddenly looking quite different.
Instead of looking guileless and gentle, she now had a cunning air, her eyes narrowed, her mouth a flat line. “And that’s why I can’t let you leave the palace. Not when you have the crown.”
I ran for the window, but fire from the candle leapt toward me, igniting the curtain. The same fire I’d seen her whisper to in the kitchens, conjure with her limited magic.
I pushed the curtain aside, but she tackled my legs, throwing me to the floor. She was strong, had the innate strength of the fae, and her long black hair curtained around us.
“Give me the crown, and I’ll let you go.”
“I can’t. I need it.”
“Not more than we do. It belongs to us.”
I blinked at her, realizing I had thought she was working for the Salt Guard, for Kiyan. But she wasn’t.
“You’re a rebel.”
She smiled then, a sad smile. “I’m a rebel to Reza. A traitor to Salt. But I am loyal to my own Court. To River, I’m a freedom fighter.”
The curtain was ablaze above us, catching the other one alight, and spreading fast. The inferno was a roar in the room as we struggled on the floor.
Mishah may have had her fae magic to fight with, but I had my mother’s bangles. And I wasn’t going down without a fight.
I pulled them to me, inward like I had done with Kiyan when I’d healed him, using them as a conduit for my magic.
This time, my magic threads were more than just light in the air. They curled around her body, binding her hands and ankles, ensuring that she couldn’t stop me.
Mishah struggled on the ground, shouting. “You take it, and you condemn us to hundreds of years of his reign. More torture, death, control. We will never be free.”
“I can’t give up the only chance my family has at freedom, at life. I have to finish what my mother started.”
I dragged her away from the flames toward the door of my room.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, her black eyes finding me through the smoke.
I had to hurry.
My skirts flowed behind me as I swung over the edge of my window and planted my boot into the side of the wall. I slowly lowered myself down the stone tower one foot at a time, until I had made it to the bottom and jumped down into solid ground.
Soon they would know I escaped. The Viceroy wanted to keep me as his tool, to keep ferreting out powerful magical objects, and the minute he knew I was running, he would be after me.
I didn’t even want to think about what Kiyan would think when he discovered I was gone. About what Mishah would likely tell him.
Kiyan had me watching you since you first arrived.
Which meant he’d known about me since the beginning, if Mishah had been communicating with him.
But Mishah was a rebel. Was she double-crossing Kiyan? Or working alongside him?
As much as anger fueled my blood, I still couldn’t bring myself to not care about him.
I placed my shaking hands to the stone of the palace. It felt as though my heart was ripping out of me.