Finally, I heard her soft whispers on the wind as I closed the door.
“I tried.”
Chapter 18
I can’t imagine that my life is anything like you’d envisioned it would be. Instead of palace meals, I’m eating eggplant grown in the darkness and hastily consumed under moonlight. Instead of romances, dances, and courtly intrigue, I’m fighting Salt soldiers in the pit for money. Instead of you, I have other children without families, the ones that thieve from hags and ghouls before their hands are cursed off.
Instead of family, I’m alone.
—Letter from Kiyan to his family, unsent
Kiyan
I didn’t go back to the bazaar after speaking to Baghisha, returning instead to the palace.
If I could find the Queen’s vault, then there might be a chance we could overthrow the Salt Court—maybe without loss of life from River. I was still frustrated that my visit to Baghisha had come to nothing, and she hadn’t seemed to care that she had sent two boys from River to their deaths.
But at least I knew this key was for the Queen’s vault.
Now, I just had to find it.
I saw the human girl again the next day, following Ramishah around the palace. This time she wore palace servant clothes consisting of dark blue linen trousers and a tunic with the Salt crystal emblem on the sleeve. I watched her from afar, and just like at the bazaar, she no longer wore Queen Azari’s bracelet.
Which meant she’d hidden it somewhere.
I slipped into the bedroom she shared with Mishah and saw the satchel she had carried with her.
I rifled through it but didn’t find the haath phool.
Instead, I pulled out a small journal wrapped in wax-coated parchment. It was a brown leatherbound journal, and I flipped it open to the first page.
For Yaseema, I hope this helps you find who you are.
—Amma
I frowned, seeing the peri language of the River Court scrawled at the bottom of the page, a separate message.
Don’t try to find me.
It was odd to see my language in a human’s journal, especially when the rest of the book seemed to be song lyrics and folk rhymes repeated by humans to warn each other of the dangers of the peris.
I raised my eyebrows at reading the intricate tortures we apparently subjected humans to. I hadn’t thought about a human in a very long time, and this book made it sound like we had once hunted them.
What an easy thing to hunt.
There was a large section of letters between different people that I skimmed through, but much of it related to human affairs that I didn’t understand.
I closed it, wrapped it back up, and slid it into the satchel, placing everything back the way I found it.
I didn’t know yet how this girl—Yaseema, if the dedication on the notebook was to her—fit into everything yet or how she had one of the ancient Queen’s pieces of jewelry, but I was going to find out.
* * *
“You’re needed, dog.”
I bared my teeth at Faisal, acting like the name he’d given me.
“Another rebel for me to put down for you? I told you; I am the one tasked with finding them—you should go back to your job at the front, leave the fighting in River to me.”
