Chapter 51 #2
“This isn’t right.” She frowned down at the object. “This isn’t how Azari’s crown should feel.”
“What do you mean?”
She blinked up at me. “All peris in the Court of River have the power of life. But some have different affinities within that power—Kiyan’s is growth and creation, mine is sensing and crafting the spark of power in a magical object, just like Queen Azari.
The crown has magic in it, yes, but it is very weak.
No more than any other minor relic imbued with life magic.
” She frowned down at it. “I don’t know what this is, but it isn’t the Queen’s crown. ”
Everything I had gone through, all the work we had done, the battles fought.
Torture, resistance, losing my mother.
All of it, for a fake crown.
Despair flooded me, eating at my gut. Panic burst at my chest, desperate to get out.
No.
No, no, no.
It couldn’t be. Not this.
I never imagined I’d get here and the damned thing wouldn’t work.
“Could its magic have been taken?”
She looked over the crown. “I don’t think so. The magic was forged into it when created. It has a thread of magic, but I doubt this was made by Azari. Because her crown is connected to the entire Court, and the wall should answer to it. I should answer to it. This crown was never hers.”
I shook my head. “This can’t be happening. First Kiyan and now this?” I could feel my control slipping, desperation setting in.
I’d pegged all my hopes on this—I’d lost the man I loved, put my nani and cousin in danger, likely caused the death of my whole village.
All for this.
And it hadn’t even worked.
A noise in the distance caught my attention, and I turned my gaze down the River.
The same cursed woman who had helped pull me from the water stood downriver, looking at the Queen and me.
No, she wasn’t looking at the Queen, she was only looking at me.
“Who is she?” whispered the Queen.
“She’s one of the cursed, the zulmi. She helped me when I first came here,” I answered her, not taking my gaze off the woman.
Something about her had caught my attention, something I hadn’t noticed before.
There was a thick golden bangle on her wrist.
I walked toward her slowly, my heart pounding so loudly it drowned out the rushing river beside us.
The old woman watched me, her eyes homed in on me, as I got closer.
Kiyan’s voice was in my head—there’s part of them still in there, waiting to get out.
The gold bracelet glinted in the moonlight. I would recognize it anywhere.
It was the same as the ones I wore around my own wrist.
Something tore at my heart, fracturing, breaking, tearing out of me. My breath caught in my throat, a sound ringing in my ears so loudly I could barely hear.
No, not a ringing but the rush of water, the River, always there, always stopping me from reaching her.
But not anymore.
“Mother?”
The words felt strange on my lips; it had been so long since I’d said them out loud. I cleared my throat and tried again. “Amma?”
Her skin was weathered, wrinkled as though she were decades older than she was. Her hair was white and long, trailing down to the ground, hiding the backward twist of her feet.
But her eyes. How had I not noticed them before? Her eyes were my mother’s.
I inhaled as those dark eyes roved over me, so similar to my own. I was desperate for her to say something. To embrace me as I remembered her doing. To tell me that she had been looking for me all this time but could never come home.
But she couldn’t do that.
She didn’t have the language, the words, the way to communicate anymore. All that had been stripped from her, melted away as the Court of Salt had taken what it wasn’t owed.
But now, I would give it back.
My wrist was outstretched toward her, the bangles tinkling together, the noise slight underneath the roar of the River, but I could feel the magic in that sound.
“These are yours,” I said, facing my palm out toward her. The moonlight hit the gold at just the right angle, making them glow unnaturally against my dark skin. Her gaze tracked my arm, and then slowly, she raised her own wrist, her hand working on the single bangle that sat there.
She handed it to me and pointed to my chest.
Yours.
I took it from her weathered hands, slipping it on my wrist with the rest of them. The brush of her fingers was feathery, a soft beat of wings.
The Queen gasped behind me, but I didn’t turn to look at her.
I was shaking as I reached out toward my mother, placing a hand on her forehead, feeling the glow of the bangles fuse with my own magic.
Just like with Mishah, the color returned to her hair, her skin, her eyes. Slowly she melted back into the woman I had memories of, her tongue untangled, and she worked her mouth, jaw moving. She arched her feet, and I saw that they weren’t twisted anymore.
“Yaseema?” she whispered, and I closed my eyes at the sound of her voice echoing inside me. It was the voice I’d heard in my head every single day since she’d left.
I’m going across the River, Yaseema. And I’m going to save us all.
“Yes, Amma, it’s me.” I gasped out a sob, losing and gaining everything in the same day. It was so bittersweet, my heart still ripped out of me by losing Kiyan but remade with my mother.
She was here this entire time, watching the wall, trying to get back to me.
We held each other tight, my head against her chest, feeling the beat of her heart as I did when I was young.
The Queen cleared her throat from behind us, and I looked back at her. I thought she’d be confused, but what I didn’t expect was to see her staring at my arm with such intense awe.
“I hate to interrupt,” she said, walking closer to the two of us, not leaving us to our reunion. She pointed at the bangles sitting on my wrist, the three together forming a jasmine flower, just like the peri at the bazaar pointed out.
“But you’re wearing Queen Azari’s crown on your arm.”