Even if you already did.
I closed my eyes and willed the voice in my head to leave me alone, clutching my reins tighter, my chest heavier with every step.
When we arrived back at the palace, it was a flurry of activity.
I headed back to my room, and Kiyan barely spared me a glance as he trudged to the dungeons, a member of his guard finding him as he hauled the rebel they’d caught up by the shirt collar and dragged him to the palace.
Talal, Kiyan had called him.
I gasped when I saw him.
He was large, almost as tall as Kiyan, but he could barely walk as he made his way into the palace. Blood was oozing from various parts of his body, smeared across his face, and his eyes were blackened. Bits of roots and vines clung to him, as if he’d been restrained with the undergrowth of the forest. He looked broken, but as he was dragged inside the back entrance to the golden palace, he raised his head and looked at me.
His mouth quirked up as if he wasn’t bloody and bruised and battered, and he gave me a smile as if he knew me. Kiyan followed the prisoner’s gaze to me, and we locked eyes. His stare scorched me, and there was so much in that look that I stood, rooted to the spot, unsure of what he was trying to communicate to me. It was molten heat and anger and devastating stillness all at once.
Did he know what I was about to do?
Or was it just the kiss that had made things so visceral between us?
I hadn’t imagined it. Something had irrevocably changed.
And now I had to leave him.
I closed my eyes, not able to bear looking at him any longer. And by the time I opened them again, he was gone.
* * *
I didn’t waste any time. When I headed back to my room, I packed the rest of my clothes, made sure I had my mother’s bangles, and pulled a hood over my hair, thinking of Bair’s warning to me so many weeks ago.
Hide your hair. It’s distinctive.
I didn’t want to risk walking through the palace and cutting through the courtyard in front of the legions of Salt soldiers that had begun gathering to hunt the rebels, so that left using the climbing supplies I had brought to climb down from my bedroom window. I secured the hooks to the edge of my stone window and tied the rope I’d brought to it.
“At least I get to use this forsomething.”
“Yas?”
I froze at the sound of my name, at the voice I knew so well.
Mishah stood in my doorway, her light brown eyes wide as she glanced from me to the rope secured under my window. Then she stepped inside my room and shut the door.
“You’re leaving?” Her voice contained something in it that I couldn’t figure out—not hurt exactly, more like defensiveness.
“I’m sorry. I have to go back. I have to help my family—they’re still out there and may be in trouble.”
“You are going back across the wall? How? Didn’t Kiyan take the Queen’s bracelet from you?”
“I found another way,” I said trying not to draw attention to the crown hidden beneath my skirts. But as I smoothed the fabric over my hips, something in her words stopped me. “How did you know how I crossed?”
We had never talked about that. She didn’t know about the conversation I’d had with Kiyan, she didn’t know he had taken Queen Azari’s bracelet. The only thing she knew was that I was a human from the other side of the wall.
She froze at my question, her face an immovable mask.
Time stood still between us.
“Mishah?”
I took a step toward her. Her eyes fluttered closed and she leaned back against the door behind her.
