Chapter 42 #2
But if I didn’t leave now, if I didn’t destroy the wall, I’d never get this chance.
I’d never be able to finish what my mother had started, to feel like somehow, some way, I had followed in her footsteps, in my father’s footsteps.
To feel like I had defied the path the Empire had laid out for me in blood and instead burned it to the ground.
I turned and ran into the woods, before I lost the ability to do so. It bothered me that I had left things so unfinished with Kiyan, and now I would likely never see him again. I never got to tell him who I really was and what I truly wanted.
What did I want? After all this?
To bring down the wall. To free my kingdom. To make my mother proud.
Once Mishah told him, he would hate me. He would know I had lied to him, deceived him, stolen the crown and got him tortured without saying anything. I was the reason for his pain, it was only right that I had healed him.
My footsteps pressed into the earth, tearing through the woods as fast as I could go. But with every step, my heart felt heavier. Until I finally stopped, right near the boulder where the halmasti attacked me and Kiyan had saved my life.
The first time I’d seen the scorpions marked on his body.
You take it and you condemn us to hundreds of years of his reign. More torture, death, control.
We will never be free.
They would be just like the Astolans on the other side of the wall. And it would be because of me. I had taken their hope from them.
What was I doing?
I was condemning Kiyan to this path, this life, taking from him what had been stolen from me.
I was doing to Kiyan what the Citadel did to Astola, with every single artifact they removed, person that starved in the street, funeral rite that they punished us for enacting. Every time the Empress demanded, we gave her more, until we were bled dry, just like what was happening to River.
I couldn’t save my own people by destroying someone else’s home.
My head warred with my heart as I stood alone in the forest—the need to destroy the wall clashing with the unquestionable wrongness of what I was doing. My hands shook, the decision already made, and in making it I felt as if I were diving off a cliff into the river below.
I turned around, my steps determined, my mind made up the moment I thought of those scars crisscrossing Kiyan’s stomach.
I ran back through the forest and entered a clearing before the final copse of trees on the way to the palace. It wouldn’t take me long to head back to my room and climb back up the rope.
I’d find some other way to use the crown, without sacrificing Kiyan or the rest of the peris of this Court for my gain.
I took a single step forward into the clearing before my legs seized from under me.
A searing pain burned through my limbs, and I cried out, falling to the ground. Black roots burst from the forest floor, tangling around my limbs like rotted wisteria.
“You know, a thought occurred to me.”
The Viceroy’s voice pierced the night.
I stopped struggling with the vines and lifted my head, meeting his glowing eyes in the forest. One by one, thorns from his black vines bit into my flesh and I screamed. It was as if he had Kiyan’s magic, but warped.
“Stop!” I gasped and writhed as more thorns pierced my skin.
“When we arrived at the palace,” he continued, ignoring my screams, “I wondered why you didn’t simply use your magic to trace the crown to the rebels right after they ran from us.
We could have done it immediately, but I hadn’t thought of it.
I went to your room, to see if you could use your power now.
I wondered how close you had to be. You see, I would have easily had one of my guards stick you in a cage and marched you up and down every single fucking part of this forsaken Court to get what I want.
But imagine my surprise to find you gone, your curtains on fire, and a kitchen girl tied up blithering about how you had Queen Azari’s crown. ” He smiled, his teeth glinting.
“And imagine my further surprise to discover you running right back into my arms.”
Then he crouched low, his face inches from mine, mania glazing his eyes.
His was the expression of consuming power, of someone who had no regard for the pain he caused because he didn’t see me as like him, just like the Citadel didn’t see me as human.
Then he lifted my right arm, sliding my mother’s bangles off them, one by one.
“No,” I protested weakly.
“Now, now. Didn’t you think I wasn’t curious, when Kiyan seemed perfectly fine after my last torture? He wouldn’t have if he hadn’t gone to you. I should have noticed these bracelets were peri as soon as I saw them. Now they are mine, and you shan’t be healing with them anymore.”
My arm felt bereft as soon as he took them off, the weight and surety leaving. He slid them into a pouch at his waist.
He stroked my cheek with a cold finger. I was just a tool. I was someone he could own and use as he willed. And now he would punish me.
“Use your magic now, little cat. Find the crown for me.”
More pain flooded my limbs when he touched my cheek. Tears leaked from the corner of my eyes, and I couldn’t contain my cries of agony. He stroked my hair, petting me like an animal, and I flinched at his touch.
“Shhh, are you finding it hard to use, when I’ve got you like this? Let me help.”