“I took it. I took the crown. Reza would have never found it if I hadn’t tried to run with it.”
He stared at me, his gaze heavy, his jaw tight.
“I know it doesn’t count for much, but I tried to come back.” My voice was small and sounded so pitiful in comparison to what I’d almost done. But his eyes widened. It did mean something to him.
“Why did you come back?” His words were low, and I knew the answer to this question was important to him.
It was important to me too.
“My father was a rebel, did I ever tell you?”
He jerked at my words, shaking his head.
I nodded, continuing, “He defied the Citadel—the ruling body that works for the Empress, the power that took over our Kingdom. He organized attacks, protests, violent resistance. And he was killed for it.”
I’d never really said these words out loud, had never really properly told anyone.
“My mother left to come here. I don’t know how she crossed the River, but I think she did it in order to take down the wall. To give our people a fighting chance again against the Citadel and the Empress. But she never came back. I tried to do what the Citadel wanted so the rest of my family could stay alive, so I wouldn’t be completely alone. But I couldn’t. Every time they dug up a new fae relic and shipped it away to the Empress, the life magic drained from our land. My people were starving. Dying.” I swallowed, twisting my hands in the bedsheet in front of me. But if I didn’t say it all now, I would lose the nerve. “And one day I couldn’t be their good little scholar. Not anymore. So I started researching on my own, tracing stories and songs and rumors of relics and vaults all around Astola. I started stealing them out from under the Citadel’s nose. And food began to grow again. But it wasn’t enough. It was never enough.”
My eyes burned with unshed tears, until I finally let them go, and they streaked hotly down my face. I couldn’t look at him, couldn’t bear to face that what I had gone through, I was willing to put someone else through.
“So, I knew I needed something bigger to cause a revolution, something my mother had tried to do. I made a plan to cross the River and retrieve the crown. I didn’t realize that others would be looking for it too and that I’d land in the middle of this, but it was difficult to see past my own pain, to see that we were the same.”
I finally met his gaze then, and it was searing hot. “We’ve lived through the same tearing apart of our families, our language, magic, and identity. Our land taken, destroyed, and pillaged. And I was about to keep doing that to you, for the sake of my own people. And that’s why I came back. Because if your Court isn’t free, my Kingdom isn’t either. And my father was right.” I lifted my chin, thinking of his final words to me, before they took him away. “That we have to continue to resist, in whatever way we can. And if they punish us for it, then we punish them right back.”
I gave a deep exhale, glad I had finally gotten the words out, even though the pressure in my chest hadn’t eased.
Kiyan had saved me, given up his position for me, and he still knew I had condemned him to continue this existence.
Finally, he cleared his throat. “You needed to do what you felt was right, as did I. I can’t very well blame you when I don’t know what I would have done in that situation. And it isn’t yourself you have to blame for the circumstances, nor the choices. These aren’t choices either of us wanted to make, but were forced to, by those that control us. If you are feeling guilt, don’t. Channel it. Channel it into anger against those who forced you to make the choice in the first place. That is who I choose to be angry at.”
I let out a sob and wiped my eyes with the heel of my hand, not realizing how much I needed to hear that.
“Rest,” he said with finality. “Heal. Recover. Then we’ll figure out a way to get you back across the wall and perhaps accomplish what those before us could not.”
I shook my head. “I can’t go back, not now. Not without a way to help and not if it means removing your Court’s only means of freeing yourself.”
“Like I said—rest. Everything else can be figured out.”
He seemed entirely too calm for someone who had just given up his entire secret identity for a girl he’d kissed in a tent while half drugged with healing magic. I narrowed my eyes, realizing he had not given up hope of having the crown, not yet.
“You are planning to steal it back.”
He shrugged. “We lost the advantage of my position, but we’ve been planning for years, and have other pieces in play. But you don’t have to worry about that right now.”
“You mean, you want me to rest,” I repeated, not feeling like resting at all, certainly not when I was in the middle of the rebel camp, ready to take on the Court of Salt and retrieve the crown I’d stolen in the first place.
He came toward me, abandoning his position of standing awkwardly by the doorway and instead stopped a foot away from my bed. This close, I could see the dark circles rimming his eyes, the rumples in his clothes, the tightness in the corner of his mouth. My restlessness disappeared, and instead my heart leapt in my throat at his nearness. The smell of fresh rain and new spring nearly consumed me.
“Yes, I want you to rest. It would be a terrible waste if you died of your injuries after all, and I could have stayed a spy.”
“I don’t think I’m in any danger of dying,” I said a little breathlessly, flexing my toes.
He glanced down at my legs, but a fierce look passed over his face, and I wondered what he was thinking of.
“When he was...” His voice was a whisper, and he broke off, as if he couldn’t bear to finish his sentence. I waited, holding my breath, not sure what he was about to say.
He cleared his throat. “When he was torturing you, all I could think was, I’ll never get to see you smile again, watch you read a book, or answer one of your annoying questions.”
