Finally, I slid down to the ground, my feet landing softly in the spongy forest moss.
An enormous roar seemed to shake the entire forest and I pressed my hands to my mouth, to stifle a scream.
My legs shook, but I began to slowly walk backward, not wanting to turn my back on the wolf if it came around the other side of the rock.
With each step a feeling of hopelessness grew in my gut.
Every myth and story I had heard about the land of the fae was true—every beast and monster from my nightmares had come from here.
This was not a nice place.
It wasn’t a place where I survive by myself, let alone search for a relic to help Astola.
I was hunted from the moment I stepped foot on the ground here. I didn’t know how to fight and my magic wasn’t for self-defense.
Panic rose in my chest as I continued to spiral—I was going to die here.
Still, I continued to back away, my footsteps soft as I watched the gap in the trees to make sure the beast didn’t follow.
If I was going to die, I would at least run as fast as I could away from that death.
I was so focused on the wolf that when my back hit a warm, solid body behind me, I opened my mouth to scream the shock flooding through me, until a firm hand reached up and clapped itself over my mouth.
Chapter 13
I’ve started to collect them, the cursed ones, the zulmi. Though I don’t know what to do with them. Reza laughs and refers to the zulmi as my charity work. But they can no longer speak, can no longer interact with their loved ones or work. They are like ghouls, haunting villages and riverbanks and roads with their white hair, nonsense tongue and backward feet. They need to be fed, and clothed and housed. Even though they can’t remember their names or history. They need us. But soon we will be outnumbered—and when I can’t tell my story, who will be left to remember me?
—Letter from Kiyan to his family, unsent
Kiyan
I tracked the halmasti as it made its way along the river edge, the huge wolf trampling down every shrub and tree in its path. At times I thought it had scented me; it even turned its head in my direction. But it kept moving doggedly forward like a snow leopard tracking a kill.What could it be hunting to venture so far from the Salt Court.
I’d never known a halmasti this far outside Salt.
The wolf crouched down, looking like it was preparing to spring forward and attack. I looked beyond the beast, to an outcropping of trees along the riverbank.
A dark-haired girl wearing odd clothes and an old woman stood together. The older woman was clearly a victim of Reza’s curse—one of the zulmi. Her feet were twisted, her hair white and skin shriveled from what Reza had done. But when the beast reared back and growled, the younger girl whirled around. I expected her to scream, or run away when she saw the halmasti. But instead, she tried to pull the older woman into the woods, egging the beast on to follow her when the woman refused.
Surprise flickered in me at her attempt to save the zulmi woman, and I followed the girl, keeping low, weaving through the woods, not letting her out of my sight as she got closer to the River Palace.
Not only did I not want a halmasti heading to the palace and massacring the River Court peris there, but I certainly didn’t want my absence after today’s attack noticed.
When the girl foolishly climbed one of the taller trees, I wanted to laugh.
Halmasti were known to wait for their prey for days. This one wouldn’t eat or sleep or move. The girl would never be able to climb down, and she would die before being able to escape.
As I sidled behind the tree she had climbed, I saw she was trying to jump to the large boulder next to it. She was brave, I would give her that. The jump to the rock wasn’t easy, and she’d made the climb up the tall mango tree without trepidation. She even had something over her eyes she appeared to look through, but I couldn’t see how they didn’t hinder her. Once she reached the top of the tree, she made a rather impressive leap over to the rock and began to climb down. I’d never seen someone climb so fast before, and certainly not in such odd clothes—a brown skirt flowing around her ankles and a dark buttoned vest with the white voluminous sleeves of a blouse underneath. Finally, the girl reached the bottom of the boulder and pressed her back to it.
She’d escaped for now, but the halmasti would find her soon enough. Their sense of smell was legendary, which was why Salt used them to hunt and kill their enemies as well as any assassin.
The scene played out in front of me, and I knew how it would end if I left her. The girl was out of breath, panting against the rock, and didn’t look like she could fight a river pixie, let alone a beast five times her size.
She wouldn’t live for much longer.
I studied her before deciding what to do—she didn’t look like she was from River—not with her strange clothes and wild hair. As far as I could tell she wasn’t a hag—the khapisis generally wandering the River looking for peris and wayward souls to test their bargains on. Her scent was unfamiliar and difficult to place, but I didn’t think she was from the River Court.
Go back to the palace,said a voice in my head.You got what you came for.
