Take care and watch the River.
—Songs of Astola,collected and compiled by Mahira Nazir
Yaseema
Bair and I dug for hours. The grave was deep enough that wild animals couldn’t disturb him, but as shallow as possible in consideration of how little time we had. And when we were finished, we said a soft goodbye to Ghassan, sprinkled a few black cumin seeds on his grave to ward off any churails or ghouls wanting to raise the dead.
After that, we trudged back to our homes in the deep hours of the night.
But as soon as Bair left me at my door, I slipped back out again, stealing Safiyya’s shovel to undo all our hard work. I rubbed black cumin seed oil on my wrists for protection and muttered one of my mother’s songs under my breath to stave off any other evil that would come for the unburied dead.
Everything in me recoiled at what I was doing. To dig someone up I’d just buried felt so wrong it was like I was peeling my own skin off.
But if my magic had revealed the key on his wrist, that meant it was important. That meant it was something I’d been looking for.
And given the state of Ghassan’s home and the fact that the key was hidden under his sleeve, I wondered if Ghassan had really killed himself. It was highly possible he had stolen it from his work at the Citadel and they had come looking for it, killing him in the process.
At last, I dug far enough to reveal Ghassan’s bony hand, dark fingers curled in the soil, like fresh roots. I let out a scream under my breath and pressed my forehead to the earth. My stomach turned, but if my magic had led me here, I had to follow it.
And if doing this could save more from his fate, I had to try.
Slowly I dusted around the fingers, revealing the thin gold chain slipped around his wrist, and the ornate key dangling from it.
I snapped the chain, the metal cool in my hand and the feeling of death still clinging to it.
Then I reburied him, refilling the grave with dirt and respeaking the funeral rites.
In the moonlight I lifted the key up, turning it over until the light caught an inscription on one side.
My breath caught in my throat. I studied the words in the quiet of the wood.
It was in a language from one of the fae courts, but an ancient one. But beside it was a tiny jasmine flower—the insignia of Queen Azari from the River Court.
I studied its shape, the jagged top like leaves or thorns. It was the perfect size for the key I’d been searching for all these months.
And if it was the key I’d been looking for, then I only had a few hours to use it before the Citadel’s excavation of the Golden fae vault in the morning.
* * *
Daylight began filtering through the darkness, and I didn’t bother to return home, cutting through the forest instead before reaching the edge of the mountains.
There I reached the door hidden behind a tangled swath of vines and thorns, a door with a lock that my magic couldn’t open, with a jasmine insignia carved directly into the stone.
And the keyhole the perfect shape for the ornate golden key in my hand, with a matching insignia, the stamp of an ancient fae queen.
I pressed the key into the opening, the cool metal meeting the untouched stone. Then I turned it, the teeth of the key clicking into place in the lock, the sound so exhilarating I closed my eyes for a brief moment.
At first, nothing happened. Then a soft glow grew from the opening, similar to the golden haze of my magic, but instead of tendrils of power, it was similar to a fog, pouring from the keyhole like the flow of water.
Then the entire frame of the door lit up, the key doing its work, the lock unclicking inside the door, like various magical mechanisms had been undone.
My breath collected in my chest, and I remembered that Ghassan had been the one to find this key, and he’d kept it hidden all this time.
Had he been looking for the door to the Golden Vault?
Had he wanted a way across River and into the fae lands too?
I pressed my hands on the stone door—and it was no longer cold but warm. At my pressure, it swayed open, as if it hadn’t been sealed for hundreds of years, as if I wasn’t the only person to touch this door in centuries.
