My chest felt tight, pride, shame and guilt all warring with one another.
I am a Nazir, I wanted to shout.I’ve always been a Nazir.
“I couldn’t just let them take it,” I whispered instead, looking at the gleaming gold haath phool in my hand. “Not when it could change everything for us. Not when they won’t use it how it should be used.”
“And you wanted to use it for yourself,” she said bluntly.
My eyes widened, shock stabbing at my gut. “What—”
Safiyya held her hands up in placation. “I don’t mean it as an insult. Weshouldbe able to use it for ourselves. And if there’s anyone that can find a way to fight back against the Citadel and fix what’s happening to Astola, it’s you. There’s got to besomeuse to all that book reading you’re doing.”
I frowned at her and pushed my spectacles higher on my face. “I didn’t want to steal it to use it for myself.”
She watched me for a moment, her eyes flickering. “But maybe you should.”
With that she packed up her final items, a thin sheen of sweat coating her forehead. She nodded to my grandmother who had also packed her bags.
Together, my cousin and grandmother left our small house on the edge of Ginshal village, putting as much as they could onto their backs and packing as many provisions as they were able to. My cousin was still sick, but steady on her feet, as if fueled by rage and adrenaline.
Maybe we all were.
I prayed the Citadel wouldn’t be able to catch up.
Our abandoned cottage felt hollow without them, like the husks of the mangoes hanging from the weakened trees outside that my mother told me used to be teeming with succulent fruit. Our mulberry trees, once plentiful, were now filled with little inedible pellets of black. Every time the Citadel came for one of our relics, it got worse.
And that’s why I was going to stop it.
I packed up my few belongings—two tanned skirts and white blouses, wishing I had one of Nani’s kurtas instead of the buttoned-up Citadel clothes. Then, I gathered dried mulberry for tea, a piece of flatbread sprinkled with mustard seeds that Nani had made that morning, and a waterskin. I rolled the last good mango carefully in an old cloth and put it at the bottom of my satchel.
The final thing I packed was hidden under the floorboards of my room. After prying the loose board up, I unearthed the flour tin I’d had out just that evening. Inside was my mother’s soft green dupatta, and I unrolled it to reveal two thick gold bangles. The bangles were as big as cuffs, but still felt weightless as I slid them carefully onto my wrist. They took up almost a third of my forearm, coating my dark skin like gold armor, especially next to the Queen’s delicate bracelet and chain that lay over my hand like a thin net.
I remember when my mother had given the bangles to me, telling me never to wear them in public and never to tell anyone about them.
“They’ll take them from you,”she had whispered in the moonlight as I held them with awe.“Your father gave me the gold, and I made these bangles for you. Never sell them. Never part with them. They are part of who you are.”
At night I would slip them on my wrists and think of her singing to me, rotating the gold around my arm.
But now, I wouldn’t wear them only at night, or in hiding.
They were going to grace my skin in the sunlight, the way Astolan gold was meant to be worn.
They are part of who you are.
I walked out the door with gold on my arm, leaving the husks of the mulberries and the shriveled mangoes behind.
If they came for me, they wouldn’t be able to follow where I was going. No one would, not unless they possessed the shimmering gold hath phool belonging to a long-dead fae queen that would allow me to cross into the peri lands.
Chapter 10
I wonder if you look different, though I doubt it. I know I do. I’ve aged, and more than I should have. More than any peri should, considering. I know if you were here, you would find a way to restore our magic, but that’s not what I want most of all.
It’s really just to see your face.
—Letter from Kiyan to his mother, unsent
Kiyan
Silver-clad soldiers ran in the opposite direction to me, shouting and clambering to fight a new enemy that was nothing like the beaten-down, power drained peris of the Court of River they were used to.
