Kiyan
I could have told her anything, I could have said that the words I’d told the jaipari meant nothing at all, that I had threatened her and she’d relented.
But as soon as the jaipari had called me a Prince, Yaseema would have questions—I knew her well enough that she wouldn’t let that go.
But also, something in that moment, in the buildup of whatever this was between us, had led me to confess, to say out loud what I had longed to tell her.
It felt so good to admit to it, to have her understand even a small part of what I was, even if I wasn’t him anymore.
Even if now, I was no one.
I watched the shock ripple over her face, the questions on her lips that always seemed to accompany her when she was fascinated by something. She sat up and pulled her spectacles from her pocket, sliding them on her face as if she were going to study me.
Was I her new subject? The thought didn’t make me as wary as I thought it would.
“Does the Viceroy know?”
“No. If he did, my skin would’ve been flayed from my bones long ago. He doesn’t want the royal family to live, he wants to break the curse on the Mountain so he can kill them and take the weapon hidden there. He doesn’t want any threats left alive.”
“And your family has been trapped in Tirich Mir the entire time, while you’ve been out here?”
I swallowed thickly. “Yes.”
That word stood in the silence like a separate person, a ghoul haunting me.
Yes,I’ve been alone. Yes, they’re all gone.
Yes, it felt like I was trapped in that Mountain too.
Yes, I wish I had been.
Yes, yes, yes.
I knew she had a thousand more questions, that she likely wanted to write a book on it all, record it in one of her journals, document every word I said.
But I didn’t want to rehash a past I was trying to forget, especially when I was working so hard to correct it.
Even still, she opened her mouth, and I steeled myself, preparing for the onslaught. But all she said was, “I won’t tell him.”
Her brown eyes were solemn behind her gold spectacles, which were askew again. I eyed her warily. “Why?”
She snorted. “Not everything has to be about cost or blackmail. Maybe I don’t actually want your skin to be flayed from your bones.”
“That’s quite possibly the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
Yaseema rolled her eyes and then pushed to her feet, walking around the outcropping of stone we’d climbed onto.
I stayed there, staring at the dark water, thinking of the words I’d hurled at the jaipari.
The ones that had gotten her to release us and allow Yaseema and me to go and get the crown.
“There’s a hallway down this way,” she called over to me.
She walked over to the entrance of the corridor and knelt down, studying pieces of tile with ancient peri scrawled into them.
“What are you looking at?” I followed her toward the torchlit corridor, which was lined with paintings and images I didn’t understand. Jasmine carvings were everywhere, as well as garbled pieces of songs and passages—some I’d known as a child, some completely foreign to me.
A large tablet at the entrance of the corridor had a poem engraved on it that took up nearly a third of the wall. Yaseema squatted down underneath it, fiddling with something.
