Thathadn’t been expected.
As far as I knew, it had been lost to time. Where had she found it?
And could it lead me to the Queen’s crown?
I touched the key that lay against my chest, as if checking it was still there. It sat, undisturbed, beside the ring that was permanently threaded through the chain around my neck.
My fingers wrapped around my sister’s ring and I closed my eyes, letting emotion run through me. My siblings probably looked different after ten years, but I could remember the last time I saw them as if it was permanently burned into my brain.
It was indulgent—letting myself dwell in the memories of them. I only allowed myself small moments to think of them. Amani’s smile when she teased me. My mother ruffling my hair. Even my brother Taym punching me in the arm when I annoyed him.
I knew they were still alive—the beauty of my magic was that I was connected to every living thing in this Court. And even when a thing was cursed, that didn’t stop me from feeling their thread of life.
They were all still alive—and I clung to that.
I looked up, above the trees, above the palace, to where the shadow of the Mountain stood over us, looking the same as it always had, no inkling of the curse on it that had damned us all.
Soon.
Soon I would free them.
The halmasti I killed twitched at my feet, its body spasming. My gaze flickered back to it, as I felt its life sink into the earth and became part of the same threads we were all connected to—even my family, as damned as they were.
But its body wouldn’t go to waste. Not with the plans I had for it.
Already I could feel the gathering rot, the rigor setting in, the other end of the life cycle taking over to return the body to the earth. I was attuned to it now, and I wondered why I hadn’t noticed it much before.
Why hadn’t I been able to understand this power during a time when I could use my own magic to its full capacity, without resorting to this bastardized version I had now? Likely because I hadn’t needed to.
Why learn about death when I had the life thread of every living creature at my command?
My fingers curled inwards, that same latent rage building again, a swirling river held back by a roughly built dam. Now I didn’t even have a kernel of that power.
The halmasti had come dangerously close to tearing my throat out when my magic had guttered out, and it had humbled me. The plants I’d conjured had barely held me aloft from crushing the girl and being ravaged by the beast in return.
Before Salt came and sucked away our power, I could have stopped the heart of the beast in an instant.
I could have commanded the entire Salt army to freeze in their tracks.
I could have held Reza’s life in my hands and squeezed it out of him, feeding the plants and the earth every last drop of his Salt blood.
A rustling sounded in the trees behind me, and I raised my knife in preparation for what was about to come out of the forest. Another halmasti? A Salt soldier?
I had enough anger in me that I might have attacked no matter the consequences.
But it was neither. Instead, a hooded figure emerged, a rebellion member I recognized, even though it was odd for them to be in the middle of the palace woods at night.
“By the River, you look like shit.”
I relaxed as the hooded figure stepped closer to me and examined the halmasti dead on the ground, crouching down to lift its lifeless head.
“Not tired of killing peris, you have to kill wildlife now?”
I snorted. “Is a Salt Court halmasti what you would call ‘wildlife’?”
“You’re right, it might have been domesticated. I could probably have kept it as a pet.”
I laughed aloud at that, imagining this large beast housebound like a hearth peri. “Not likely.”
