Chapter 49
Dear Amma,
I thought about leaving so many times, trying to find a way to get to you. I ignored your warnings, ignored the whispered songs about the horror of it all.
It couldn’t be worse than the horrors we faced every day.
—Letter from Yaseema to her mother, recorded in Mahira Nazir’s journal
Yaseema
The bodies were falling, and I knew we had very little time to get the crown that sat on Reza’s head, in addition to the one in his chest.
Kiyan had lost control of his creature built of death, and I looked up, my heart in my throat, trying to see if he was okay.
If he lost control, that could only mean he was either dead or fighting.
But the rain of Salt soldiers from the body of the creature made it impossible to see anything on the battlefield above us.
Instead, Mishah and I darted through the bodies, the living Salt soldiers not paying much attention to us as they ran from the bodies of their fellow soldiers falling from the sky.
The few that did notice us charged, attempting to stop us from getting to the Viceroy. They were quickly cut down by Mishah’s blades, her fighting skills something I was still surprised at.
“If you could fight, why didn’t you defend yourself with the general,” I hissed. “Why did you wait until I killed him?”
“I didn’t want to give my cover away, did I?” she said as she slashed down another soldier. “And besides, your reveal was much more dramatic.”
Reza was fighting rebels in the storm of bodies falling, having paused from his path toward the Mountain. With every touch of his hands another resistance fighter fell to the ground, their life drained, body cursed.
“We’ll never get to the Mountain. This is impossible,” I said as I ducked the swing of a sword from the silver-clad arm of a Salt soldier.
“Nothing is impossible, only very, very difficult,” Mishah replied as she speared the male who attacked me.
“Okay,” I nodded. “Well, this is very, very difficult.”
“We’re almost there. All you need to do is take his crown while I distract him.”
“And if he comes after me?”
“I’ll be right behind you. You aren’t alone, Yas.”
I remembered her words to Kiyan earlier.
She won’t be alone. Ever.
Reza was fighting the dead creature, but the creature moved erratically, still falling apart.
At last Mishah and I reached him, ready to take the crown.
Mishah didn’t wait a single second. She raised her sword up and rushed at him without even uttering a word to me.
He turned to the side, eyes flashing as he recognized the former kitchen girl he tortured in the forest, now a rebel, coming for him.
Reza met her blade easily, and reached out a hand to touch her, but she spun away.
“I would have killed you in the woods, had I known you were such an infiltrating little rat,” he spat, charging for her.
I knew I should have been attempting to take the crown, but my mother’s bangles called to me, as if I couldn’t turn away from them.
I unclipped the bag from his horse, lifting the flap, searching through it but couldn’t find the bangles at all.
Instead, there was only the dagger I had pulled from Queen Azari’s vault.
I had forgotten we’d ever taken it. I unsheathed the Queen’s golden dagger, advancing on the Viceroy and Mishah.
Meanwhile, Mishah had managed to unseat the Viceroy from his horse, and he appeared singularly focused on making her regret that decision.
He strode toward her, his sword raised, black vines bursting up from the earth and surrounding her. She fell backward and swore, bringing her sword up to meet his in a violent crash before he could slice her in two.
Armed with a weapon now, I knocked into him, surprisingly throwing him off his balance. I was hoping to dislodge the crown from his head, but from this angle, I saw why that wouldn’t have worked.
It wasn’t just gracing his head; the very gold of Queen Azari’s crown was fused to his skull, like thorns sinking into his skin. Just like the ancient fae King’s crown melted into Reza’s chest, he’d joined his flesh with one too.
He flipped over, getting to his feet with a too-wide smile on his face.
“I was waiting to see if you’d come find me, little cat. Now I get to break you all over again.”
I flushed hot with anger, with the knowledge that what he did to me still burned within my bones. Still made sweat bead across my forehead and my stomach twist in knots.
“You didn’t break me,” I said, my voice ringing out across the battlefield, so much stronger and self-assured than I felt.
“No? I can still remember the delicious feeling of your bones snapping under my hand. Do you know my magic feeds off that? The Court of Salt feeds off not just power, but fear. It contaminates and corrupts everything. It’s a heady magic all in itself.”
“I’m more than just a body,” I spat at him. “More than magic you can use. You’d need to break so much more than my bones to destroy me.”
“I look forward to that challenge.” He surged forward, a scimitar in his hand arcing toward me. But before he could reach me, Mishah slammed into him, knocking him once more to the ground and stabbing him in the shoulder, staking him to the dirt.
“Mishah!” I screamed her name, but it was too late. She’d put herself within arm’s reach of him, and he laughed, a deep throaty sound, even as her sword had pinned his body to the earth. He reached his hands up and gripped her face, a wide smile sliding across his.
She screamed, her hair shooting through with white, her skin creping like paper.
I shoved her off him, severing the connection of touch between them. But she was still rolling on the ground, gripping her face in agony.
Bile rose in my throat at seeing her drained, feet twisted, face in her weathered hands. And then my blood was filled with consuming rage.
I never had magic that could fight, that could do battle, that could protect. My magic was for finding things, and there was one thing yet that was not found. I remembered what I had done with the rebels after we’d taken the crown, how I had found their weaknesses, ways to fight them.
Show me how to kill him.
My golden threads burst free, as if I had unleashed them with my rage.
He won’t take from us again.
They clustered around the dagger in my hand, and then the golden points of King Rusul’s crown in the Viceroy’s chest.
The blade nearly slipped from my fingers as I realized what I needed to do.
I charged forward, doing the same as Mishah, and thanking the River she’d managed to stake Reza to the ground when she’d had the chance. I straddled his chest, a leg on either side, ignoring his amused stare.
“Going to kill me, then?” His white teeth glinted in the sun. “I don’t think you have it in you to draw blood, cat.”
“Going to drain my magic? You know you’ll never find the door in the Mountain without me. You’ll never find anything without me.”
His face darkened as I pressed the blade into his neck.
“I don’t need to drain you. I’ll suck the life out of every single one of your rebel friends until you find that door.
Or I’ll make you mindless, and keep your powers intact, so you’ll be an empty vessel for me, an empty tool.
I should have done that in the first place. ”
I glanced up at Mishah still writhing on the ground.
The battle raged around us, rebels falling, silver-clad soldiers striking them down.
“You’ve already lost,” he whispered. “The might of an empire can’t stop me.”
The words were eerie, so similar to what the soldiers at the Citadel had said that I blinked at him.
This was more than just a fight between the fae, this was what happened when a people were ground to the earth, until they had nothing left to resist, because resistance cost them less than submitting.
If they carried on this way, if the Citadel in Astola carried on, we’d be fractured into nothing.
The gold from King Rusul’s crown glinted through the opening in his shirt. I didn’t have much time, because his hands shot up to my neck, his intention to drain my life clear. I plunged the dagger down at the same moment, jamming it into his sternum.
The smile slid from Reza’s face the moment I brought the blade down.
The dagger pierced the king’s crown, and Reza let out an unholy scream, echoing across the battlefield.
The crown in his sternum crumbled, leaving an empty cavity behind. The remainder of the gold from the crown in his chest melted from him as if he were bleeding.
The Viceroy wrenched Mishah’s knife out of his shoulder and pushed upward, reversing our positions as he threw me to the ground and pinned me underneath him.
He pressed his forearm into my throat, cutting off my air, crushing my windpipe.
I struggled against him, clawing and bucking to escape, but he was fae and I was human, and my strength was no match.
“You little bitch,” he spat at me. “You’re going to pay for that.”
“I don’t think she is.”
Even though the Viceroy was choking me, and my vision grew dark at the edges, I could hear the confident timbre of Kiyan’s voice.
The pressure on my neck lessened and I gasped, taking a gulping breath.
Kiyan stood there, a vicious smile on his face, his eyes a crackling fire as he watched the Viceroy on top of me.
“Stay out of this, dog.”
“That’s the thing, Reza. I’m not your dog anymore.”
“Just because you—” he stopped, the color draining from his face as he looked around the battlefield. Abruptly he stood, the pressure of his body on mine easing as he got to his feet. I took another deep breath, the dizzying sensation alleviating.
I hadn’t realized that it had grown eerily silent until the Viceroy stood, his face coated in horror.
I sat up, the Viceroy far too distracted to notice.
All around us the battle had stopped.
Every living person in the pass was frozen, like a macabre tableau.
“What . . .” The word whispered out of me, and I adjusted my spectacles, wondering if I had broken them in the struggle. I looked back and forth between Reza and Kiyan.