I knew logically that was right, I was doing something very similar to what the Citadel was doing—digging up long-buried relics and taking them from the people they belonged to.
But my mother had left for this, perhaps died for it.
I touched my fingertips to the bangles on my wrist. She had believed this would save us. And if that meant I would steal the crown from the peris to save my family, that is what I would have to do.
And still, despite that conflict, elation thrummed through my veins at the possibility of entering Queen Azari’s ancient vault, of seeing first-hand everything I had studied and researched my entire life.
After a few days more of travel, we finally arrived at the place indicated on the map.
It was a nondescript low mountain, with a flat top, but not much else. Even the trees had thinned out, the forest giving way to rockier terrain.
Nothing but sheer rock face greeted us.
I cast my magic out, calling it from my veins, and watched the golden web spiral out of me, zigzagging across the forest and up the low mountain.
There were no carvings or stone markers, and nothing to indicate Azari’s vault was here. We fanned out and began to search, the soldiers combing through the mountainous forest to find any sign of it.
I sat down hard on the ground, the rock face pressed against my back in cold mockery. I thought through everything I had known about Azari and the fae vaults scattered throughout Astola—some large like the Golden Vault, and some small—a shrine to a particular fae relic hidden in a small cave. The fae in Astola sometimes put entrances in trees, empty caverns or dried up riverbeds. But always my magic could find it.
Now, I didn’t feel anything.
Either this was the wrong location and I wasn’t close enough, or there was something blocking my power.
“Could it be underneath our feet?”
My fingertips felt hot, my magic eager to leap from my skin, but it didn’t have anywhere to go, it still spiraled in every direction, leading me to everything and nothing.
Kiyan frowned and shook his head, placing his hands on the ground as if it could tell him the answers.
“No. There doesn’t seem to be anything under us.”
I reached into my own magic and felt nothing.
“And there are no caves, no entrances into this mountain?” My hands felt the hard wall as I remembered the Citadel blowing open half the earth with their dynamite to get into the Golden Vault.
The Viceroy and Kiyan walked around the perimeter of the mountain and the guards began setting up the tents.
It appeared we were making camp here in any event.
A tree in the distance caught my eye, and I walked over to it. It reminded me of the husks of life in my grandmother’s mango orchard. The other trees in the area were all healthy, rich with magic and bursting with green, fruit, leaves. This one looked hollowed out.
I touched it and my fingers prickled.
At last.
There was something here, I could feel it. My skin buzzed with it.
I focused my magic once more, and gold threads spooled out from my fingers like drops of ink in the air.
Finally, it had somewhere to go.
Once it had gathered and grown, the threads spilled into the tree, pouring through the hollow dead thing like they were giving it new life. I felt rather than heard Kiyan beside me, his solid form silently observing what I was doing. The Viceroy walked over from the other side of the clearing; his eyes gleaming in the forest.
It made me feel vaguely unnerved, his watching me like he was waiting for me to do this very thing. I’d forgotten he’d seen me use my magic in the library, that this is why he wanted me.
My threads filled the tree, and looked inside it, expecting to find something within the dead stump. But before I could reach it, my magic burst out from underneath, lighting the ground up like golden roots beneath our feet. The roots crisscrossed the ground and then threaded up the side of the mountain.
My heart sank. If the vault was hidden beneath the lower mountain, then I had no idea how we were going to break into it. It wasn’t as if we had dynamite like the Citadel, and I didn’t know the extent of Reza’s magic, but I doubted he could blow apart an entire mountain. If he could I doubt Tirich Mir would still be standing. I bit my lip hard, willing tears of frustration not to fall.
