“So, you saved me so I could ask you more incessant questions?” I gave a little laugh, an effort to dispel some of the seriousness between us, to give him an out. But he didn’t need one.
His lips lifted in a small smile. “I saved you, because I think if I left you, I would have left myself. I would have lost any aspect of who I was, and I was clinging to the last shred of it. And that’s all they’ve done to us, torn us from our own identities, from our own sense of self, made us into these creatures in service to them. If we don’t have each other, if we don’t have ourselves, if we don’t have love, what are we fighting for at all?”
I released a soft breath.
If we don’t have love, what are we fighting for at all?
We watched each other for a moment, as if magic was threaded between us, as if I’d used my power to find him and he was here, and I couldn’t possibly let him go. He reached his hand down and I thought he was going to caress me, but instead he tucked a lock of my hair behind my ear.
“That, and I’m unnaturally obsessed with your hair.”
I gave him a huff of laughter and he left the tent, but not before he gave me another searing glance accompanied by the word “rest.”
I was still disoriented, still processing what had happened with the Viceroy, but I knew one thing—Kiyan had given away everything to protect me, and heat bloomed in my chest at the thought. It was as though I’d dug up an ancient relic I’d been seeking for years to find it perfectly intact and all mine.
Was he mine? Was I his? There were so many other things at play, not least among them the fact that I’d been betraying him when I’d gotten caught by the Viceroy.
But he had saved me. And that meant something.
If you think I had any choice in the matter, you have little comprehension of who you chose to get involved with.
He was right, I didn’t know who I had gotten involved with. But I was certainly starting to.
* * *
“It’s time to remove your splints.”
Zaye, the rebel healer, had been coming every day to reapply the turmeric poultice on my leg, fix the splints she’d built herself, and use her healing magic on me. She had explained that whatever healing magic she had left after the Viceroy had drained the peris of River was weak. Though she could heal, it took a lot longer.
“It’s the equivalent of growing a plant,” she said, as she’d been checking me one day. “I can use magic to hurry it along, but I still need nonmagical healing to finish the job. But before...” She had looked off, a gentle smile on her face. “Before, I could have healed your legs in two heartbeats. I could purge poison, knit together bone, make the life of a peri or animal respond to me completely.” She gave a satisfied sigh. “What I wouldn’t give to have that power again. To give the gift of healing once more.”
I didn’t have my mother’s bangles anymore, but what she’d described sounded like what using them felt like. I wondered if a peri had imbued them with a healing power so that they could be used that way.
“How does your healing magic work exactly?”
Zaye smiled as she slathered another thick layer of paste on my legs after removing the splints. “In the Court of River we already have an affinity with the natural world, which means our magic can enhance what is already there. Life, death, energy, decay, earth. What the Court of Salt couldn’t take from us was our connection to that world. In that sense, I enhance the healing of things already in existence.” She looked down at my leg, methodical about her work. “They couldn’t takethatfrom me. No matter what they leached from us.”
“And Kiyan’s power?”
“His is more complicated. That branch of peris are creators. They can grow and nurture and create. They can control life and nurture new things, as well as being connected to the old.”
“Hence the death creature,” I murmured.
She scrunched up her nose in confusion. “Oh, the creature he created to steal the map from the Viceroy? Yes, that was something new I hadn’t realized he could make. We’ve had to tap into new uses for our magic, turn to the sides of ourselves that might be against our nature in order to fight Salt.”
She pressed a poultice to my legs and I felt a warm trickle of power flooding through my bones, like honey salving the pain. I flexed my toes and bent my right leg, gasping in surprise.
“It feels completely healed.”
She laughed. “Well, you might need a few more treatments to ensure there are no lasting effects from the Viceroy’s magic—it can be a bit like poison, as it lingers and rots the bone and blood. But we’ve figured out ways to purge it.”
“And the zulmi? Have you figured out how to heal them?” I thought of the woman at the River, who had helped me climb out of the water. Sometimes, in the dark before I went to sleep, her gold eyes were all I saw.
Zaye’s expression fell flat. “No, we haven’t figured out how to heal them yet. It’s tied to the Viceroy’s magic somehow. Or perhaps, the limits on ours. If I had full access to my ability to heal, then I might be able to tease out the root of the issue.” She sat back on her heels. “But right now, I can only heal physical wounds from magic, not emotional or mental ones.”
“I’m sorry, it must feel so frustrating having such limited access to your abilities.”
“We’ve learned to get by—there are always ways to resist, even if we don’t have access to the might of others.”
