Chapter 44 #3
Zaye smiled as she slathered another thick layer of paste on my legs after removing the splints.
“In the Court of River we already have an affinity with the natural world, which means our magic can enhance what is already there. Life, death, energy, decay, earth. What the Court of Salt couldn’t take from us was our connection to that world.
In that sense, I enhance the healing of things already in existence.
” She looked down at my leg, methodical about her work.
“They couldn’t take that from me. No matter what they leached from us. ”
“And Kiyan’s power?”
“His is more complicated. That branch of peris are creators. They can grow and nurture and create. They can control life and nurture new things, as well as being connected to the old.”
“Hence the death creature,” I murmured.
She scrunched up her nose in confusion. “Oh, the creature he created to steal the map from the Viceroy? Yes, that was something new I hadn’t realized he could make. We’ve had to tap into new uses for our magic, turn to the sides of ourselves that might be against our nature in order to fight Salt.”
She pressed a poultice to my legs and I felt a warm trickle of power flooding through my bones, like honey salving the pain. I flexed my toes and bent my right leg, gasping in surprise.
“It feels completely healed.”
She laughed. “Well, you might need a few more treatments to ensure there are no lasting effects from the Viceroy’s magic—it can be a bit like poison, as it lingers and rots the bone and blood. But we’ve figured out ways to purge it.”
“And the zulmi? Have you figured out how to heal them?” I thought of the woman at the River, who had helped me climb out of the water. Sometimes, in the dark before I went to sleep, her gold eyes were all I saw.
Zaye’s expression fell flat. “No, we haven’t figured out how to heal them yet.
It’s tied to the Viceroy’s magic somehow.
Or perhaps, the limits on ours. If I had full access to my ability to heal, then I might be able to tease out the root of the issue.
” She sat back on her heels. “But right now, I can only heal physical wounds from magic, not emotional or mental ones.”
“I’m sorry, it must feel so frustrating having such limited access to your abilities.”
“We’ve learned to get by—there are always ways to resist, even if we don’t have access to the might of others.”
I sat up and gripped the side of the bed, testing my feet on the plush rug. I could stand without issue, only the slight twinge in my calves betraying what had happened to me.
Physically anyway.
My head still played the encounter with the Viceroy over and over and over again. How had I ever thought I could go up against him? How had I thought I could walk out of the palace with the crown? Thinking about his cold face as he tortured me made my stomach sink and my palms sweat.
But bits and pieces of the aftermath had come back to me.
Kiyan’s face in the dungeon, stark and wild. Vines wrapping themselves around me, so gently. The pain being smothered by softness and whispered words. You’re safe. You’re safe.
And I was.
“You should be able to do everything you can normally do—run, climb, dance.”
“I’ll save the dancing for another time. But I’m ready to leave this tent without assistance.”
Shouts sounded from outside and I gripped the bedpost hard. The panic that swarmed my chest every time an odd noise sounded needed to be controlled. I pressed my hand to my heart, slowing my breath.
“What is it?”
Zaye frowned and lifted my tent flap. “I don’t know.
Someone new has joined us in camp. It looks like .
. .” She paused and gave a little squeak, not sparing me another glance as she ran out of the tent in a flurry.
I followed in her wake, stepping out into the sunshine, squinting my eyes at the bright light.
I hadn’t really been outside in days, and I didn’t know what sort of welcome I’d receive in the rebel camp.
Not only was I responsible for their prince blowing his secret identity, but I’d lost them Queen Azari’s crown as well.
But no one was paying me any attention as I walked into the middle of the rebel camp. A girl stood in the center, beside a giant roaring fire.
Her head was thrown back in a laugh as Zaye threw her arms around her. Cold shock poured over me as I realized who it was.
And suddenly a memory surfaced, flooding back to me, placing the voice I couldn’t quite pinpoint before.
You gave away your position for her?
The voice had belonged to Mishah.
I remembered her wild eyes in the forest, practically begging me not to reveal her.
Mishah wrapped her arms around Zaye with a grin on her face, looking absolutely nothing like the scared kitchen girl I’d known from the palace, and more like the girl from my room who tackled me to the ground to take back the crown.
She laughed at something, clapping another rebel on the back, her other hand intertwined with Zaye’s.
She must have sensed me watching her, must have known I was there, for at once she raised her chin, meeting my eyes from across the camp.
The smile on her face stilled and faded, and she looked uncertain for a moment.
But in a flash it was replaced with a challenge in her expression.
I leaned against the entrance of my tent, my eyes burning, a knot in the pit of my stomach as I stared at the girl who I thought was my friend, a girl who betrayed me to the Viceroy and left me for dead.