The golden bracelet was connected by a delicate hand chain to three lotus flower rings, which curled over the fingers like petals. I held the jewelry up, my lantern flickering off the cool metal, making the intricate gold webbing look like a lace glove.
I thought of my mother in that moment, and all the ways she had led me here. With her journal and all the stories, letters, songs and thoughts contained there, but also when she’d left me to cross the River all those years ago.
Amma, I’m going to finish what you started.
I moved to put the haath phool into my satchel but my fingers froze as a thought occurred to me.
If I was searched by Citadel Patrols, they’d go after my bag first.
Instead, I flicked my knife open and made a small incision in the waistband of my canvas skirt. I tucked the bracelet into the gap I had made, and replaced the statue on the pedestal, hearing an answering click as the trap reset itself.
A sigh of relief flooded through me, but before I could take a single step, a blast shook the ground. My lantern rattled, the gas from the lamp dipping in and out as the walls of the vault seemed to tremble. A crack resounded somewhere overhead, and beams of sunlight poured through the ceiling above.
They had finally managed to blast through the ceiling of the Golden Vault.
The Citadel had made it here, and I was trapped.
Chapter 8
I called out for my beloved from across the River,
But he didn’t come for me.
I planted jasmine in my garden,
But he didn’t come to see.
The River kept him,
The River kept him,
The River kept him from me.
—Songs of Astola,collected and compiled by Mahira Nazir
Yaseema
Voices shouted from a distance, and I knew they were close, likely already in the vault by now.
There was nowhere I could hide.
Still, I ran from the antechamber and into the main hall of the vault. If I was going to get caught, I didn’t want to be standing in the room where I’d found the haath phool. The Citadel was looking for it and I didn’t want to give them any help. I was just in time to see the excavators flooding through the crater they’d made in the ceiling from the dynamite.
But it wasn’t just excavators with them—they had brought Citadel soldiers, armed with rifles and grim faces. The excavators led them through the vault, their identical tanned uniforms making them seem more like pillars of sand than humans.
When they saw me, both excavators and soldiers came to an abrupt halt, with some of the Citadel soldiers even pointing their rifles in my direction.
“Yaseema?”
I winced at hearing the familiar voice, and the surprise in it.
But I pressed my lips together and met her gaze.
“Sophie.”
Sophie Hightower’s mouth was agape, her blue eyes wide, like the chips of sky they’d blasted through the ceiling of the vault to see. Her bright blonde hair complimented the golden fae vault around us, but she still seemed incongruent—a manicured lawn in a row of wild jasmine flower gardens.
I kept my expression carefully blank as I stared back at my former friend. We’d worked closely together on many of the excavations led by the Citadel. She wasn’t Astolan but had seemed sympathetic to us and often donated her food ration to those starving outside the Citadel gates. I had thought I’d found a kinship with her, even though she’d come from the greater Empire of Angrezia to assist the Citadel in digging up fae relics. She had even worked for Empress Lorna preserving Astolan relics in her museum.
