Fury painted his features, and he advanced on us.
“Give memycrown.”
His words were a sneer, and he moved closer. The woman tried to take off running, to head for the trees, but her feet tripped her up, and the Viceroy was on her in a second. He hauled her up by her hair and uttered a low incantation, a language I’d never heard before.
The woman sagged in his hold and he threw her to the dirt.
She began clawing at her skin, her hair, her face. She must have known what was happening, because she loosed my satchel from across her chest and threw it as far as she could. Then she fell to her knees and clutched at her chest. Her hair began turning white, her skin shriveling. She screamed as her feet began to twist backward, and scratched at her skin as if she could stop the curse the Viceroy had put on her.
She began shouting nonsense words, trying to form sentences, but her own tongue wouldn’t let her.
The Viceroy had taken that from her.
She looked exactly like the woman who pulled me from the River.
Zulmi, Kiyan had called it.
She had no language or personhood, she was a husk, her very body representative of the violence of the Salt Court.
Another rebel picked my satchel up from the ground and the Viceroy advanced on him, his intent clear. But the tall rebel I had run from tackled the Viceroy at the knees, knocking him to the ground. Then the stocky fighter who had restrained me earlier took his chance, scooping up my satchel and running into the forest.
The Viceroy swore, leaping to his feet, but the trees had already closed up behind him, what little life magic the rebels had left used on the trees so that they grew thick and wild, an impenetrable wall.
The Viceroy roared and whirled on the rebel who was still with us, his eyes black and fierce. Fear burst inside my chest at his expression, at the promise of violent retribution there. He wasn’t even looking at me and I still withered under his cruel gaze.
Reza jerked forward, reaching down to touch the rebel and bestow upon him the same curse, ready to take this male’s language, youth, ability to move.
“Reza, no.”
Kiyan was there then, looking much stronger and more lucid. He strode forward, catching the Viceroy’s wrist and pulling it back.
My heart leapt to my throat, especially when Reza turned his incredulous gaze on Kiyan.
“No!” I shouted, leaping to my feet, but Kiyan met my gaze and shook his head. Terror gripped me at what the Viceroy would do to him.
The Viceroy’s eyes bugged out of his head. “You dare, dog?”
“I need to question him,” Kiyan said calmly, not flinching in the slightest. He released the Viceroy’s wrist but moved to stand in front of the rebel and me.
His brow was still coated with sweat, and it looked like he’d used up everything he had to get here. “I won’t be able to get any information from anyone else. They’re all dead or cursed. You’ve made it impossible to find out where they’ve gone.”
“Do not stop me again, or I will have you join them,” Reza said viciously, spitting on the ground and hitting Kiyan’s boots.
He then moved toward Kiyan, his face just inches away, and gripped his chin hard. He was shorter than Kiyan and had to look up slightly, which took away some of his ability to intimidate.
Where the Viceroy was almost gaunt, Kiyan had a lithe athleticism that made the Viceroy holding his face in anger look ridiculous. Kiyan looked as if he could have killed him in a heartbeat.
But the crown in his chest gleamed, a visible reminder of the power Reza had.
Kiyan watched him so calmly it was as if he were a frozen lake, completely still. Only because I was close to them did I see the way Kiyan’s eyes flickered down to the King’s golden crown fused to his chest, the Viceroy’s skin like drippings of wax around a brass candelabra set in his sternum.
“Find me that crown.” He shoved Kiyan’s face away from him and then shot me a disgusted look. “If you don’t, you will be the next one I curse. And perhaps her.”
My breath stuttered in my chest at his attention on me. Then he walked away, leaving me and Kiyan in the forest with the remaining rebels.
Kiyan tied the hands of the uncursed rebel and dragged him to his feet, even though he looked like he was going to collapse at any moment.
“All that work for nothing,” he commented, looking more exhausted than angry. “Come, we need to head back.”
