Chapter 42 #3
At once the thorns receded from my skin and he lifted his hand; the pain was so shocking that I released a soundless scream, a hoarse cry scraping the back of my throat.
But my body shuddered with relief.
My eyes swept the soldiers that surrounded me, but Kiyan wasn’t among them. They stood, faceless, silver masks, not moving a muscle as I lay in the dirt in front of them.
“Use. Your. Magic,” he uttered, his voice like iron, like death. “Find the crown.”
I looked up at him, with all the fierceness I could muster, and spat at his feet.
He laughed, delighted. Then a thorn shot directly into the center of my hand, going straight through the center to the other side.
“You don’t know me very well, human, so let me explain.
I can do this all night. Pain is my joy.
I see you only as an object to be used. Do you feel sympathy for the hammer that strikes the anvil?
For the smelt that purifies the gold? I do not need you to be unharmed to use you, and I can make your life very difficult.
You can make your path easier, or harder. So choose.”
The thorn withdrew from the palm of my hand with a sickening wet pop. I curled into a ball, cradling it against my chest, my face wet with tears.
“Find me the crown,” he whispered.
“Fuck you. Find it yourself.”
I would not be his. Not now and not ever. I was done being an instrument for those in power who didn’t see me as a person, first the Citadel and then him. He still needed my agreement, he still needed my will, and that was the thing he would never get.
“The hammer can’t say no,” I croaked out, between the waves of pain. “But I can.”
“Bring her.” His words were soft in the twilight of the forest, but the soldiers around me didn’t move.
And then I realized he wasn’t referring to me.
Another soldier dragged Ramishah into the clearing. Her eyes darted between me and the Viceroy, the fear and uncertainty clear.
If he knew she was a rebel, he would have cursed her already. She must be wondering if I would tell him.
“If you won’t use it for me, you will do it for others.” He walked over to her, laying a hand on her shoulder. She jerked and screamed, pulling away from him, but he held her fast.
“Stop,” I cried weakly, his thorns still holding me.
“Do not make the mistake of thinking you have a choice,” he said quietly.
“I will torture this entire Court in front of you until you submit. Children. Mothers. Friends. You will be mine.” He lifted his hand from Mishah and came back to me, cupping my face and trailing his hand down my body.
My stomach roiled from revulsion. He stopped at my hip, pressing down on the crown tucked into skirt.
“Use your magic,” he said with a dark smile.
I closed my eyes. There was no point fighting, not when he would subject Mishah to even worse than I had gotten. Not when he already knew where it was.
My eyes fluttered closed and I called on that spark of magic in my blood, despite the agony littered throughout my body like burning stars.
The golden threads wove through the air, then intertwined around me, clustering over my secret pocket by my hip.
The Viceroy didn’t even bother to look down.
Instead, he smiled, a wide grin, the evidence that he could control me written on his face.
I looked away from him as he slid his hands into my skirt, finding the inner lining and drawing out the crown.
My eyes found the bag tied to his waist that held my mother’s bangles, wishing I still had them.
Not only for their healing properties, but because they were the only thing I had left of her, the one piece of my mother I wanted to hold to my chest and remember.
I was going to die here.
If not today, then at some point when the Viceroy had had enough of me. And in that moment, all I wanted to do was remember the people I’d loved.
Then he lifted up the crown, exhaling with awe as the gold sparkled in the moonlight.
“Oh yes. Good girl. You tried to run with this, but it’s now back where it belongs.
With its brother.” He tapped the crown embedded in his chest. “I’m not going to kill you yet, Yaseema.
Not with a gift like yours. But it wouldn’t be fitting to let you go unpunished either.
” Before I even had a chance to process his words, his ice-cold hands pressed to my shoulder.
A blinding pain split across my leg as I felt a bone inside it snap, the sound cracking through the night.
A bright burning trickled across my skin following it, but I was already drowning from the first attack.
A sound wrenched through me, a scream, a cry, a gasp.
It was more than a break, it felt as though he’d ripped my leg in half.
“After all, you don’t need to be able to walk for what I need from you.”
He twisted his wrist on my shoulder and before I could scream again, snapped the bones in my other leg. This time no sound came out, I opened my mouth but my body was too shocked, overwhelmed by too much pain to properly process everything. Darkness seeped into my vision, pulling me under.
The last thing I saw was his face, looking down at me, without any expression at all.