“Sorry, I didn’t think it would work.”
“We thought it was uncurable.” Kiyan stood staring at us, shock and devastation on his face as he looked at Mishah.
“Hey, Kiyan.”
“Hey, Mish. Just when I thought I’d gotten rid of you.”
She laughed and stuck her tongue out at him.
All around us, rebels from River were using their magic against the Salt soldiers, rounding them up, arresting them, and restoring their land to what it once was.
But there was still something left for Kiyan to do.
I held Queen Azari’s crown in my hands, meeting his eyes. “Shall we try to open the door?”
Chapter 50
This will be my last letter. I don’t know why I’ve even written them. I haven’t been able to find the crown and open the door, and it feels as though I’m slowly being buried alive in the bones of our people. Just know that if there was a way to have you back, I would do it.
No matter the cost.
—Letter from Kiyan to the Queen, unsent
Kiyan
My magic flooded my veins once more and I felt as though my body were aflame after sitting in the cold for centuries. I could feel everything—everything—the tap ofa heartbeat from the falcon above, the roots of the plants below our feet, the pulse of the woman whose hand was in mine. I had been able to access it previously if I concentrated, but now we were one and the same.
I was this land.
It felt natural, a part of my blood again. My eyes were wet with the realization that I’d forgotten what this kind of awareness felt like—and the knowledge that I could grow an entire forest in this battlefield if I wished. That life, once again, sparked at the end of my fingertips.
It had been so long since I remembered what that felt like.
Yaseema and I walked to Tirich Mir, her footsteps falling in beside me. After seeing Reza’s hands on her, watching him try to curse her, imagining never being able to get her back to me—draining his life was the only option I had.
It was the only thing I’d wanted to do.
And the way I had taken his life was something akin to the merging of my two powers—the thread of life I controlled and the spark of death I had unearthed beneath it.
And then Yaseema had broken the curse on Mishah.
I didn’t think there was a way to give River back what we’d lost. But when Yaseema put her hands on Mishah and brought her back to who she truly was, my heart thundered in my chest. When Mishah spoke, my lungs filled with fresh air, as if I could breathe for the first time in a hundred years. We had a way to break the curse on the peris of River.
And now, lifting the barrier on the Mountain was within my grasp.
My family coming back was within my grasp.
But first, we had to find the door. We walked unbothered to the foot of Tirich Mir, stepping over bodies of Salt soldiers. Yaseema’s fingers were in mine, and I clasped her hand tight, my breath caught in my chest like a caged falcon, the feeling ofrightnessas she held on to me.
This must be what triumph felt like, what hope, for the first time in ten years, felt like.
Once we reached the foot of the Mountain, Yaseema called her own magic and those golden strings flowed out of her, like a woven chain curling through the air. It threaded up and across, forming an outline in the shape of a giant door on the side of the Mountain.
“It’s there,” she said, looking over at me, giving me a small smile.
I wanted to return that smile, but my hope was still a tentative beast. After everything, it was impossible not to be cautious.
I called my life magic, barely needing to think before the power of the earth answered me and roots grew from the ground like the flow of a river, surrounding us and lifting us up the Mountain.
