I REACH OUT, seizing both her wrists just in time.
She stiffens as I drag her onto her feet.
The moment our skin touches, my magic thrums, threatening to engulf me in Zélie’s memories once more. I clench my teeth and force the beast back down. Skies only know what’ll happen if I lose myself in her head again.
“Let go,” she seethes. Her voice. It still carries all the rage and ferocity of before. Completely ignorant of the fact that now I’ve seen her memories.
Now I see her.
Unable to stop myself, I drink Zélie in, every curve, every line. The crescent-shaped birthmark along the slope of her neck. The specks of white swimming in the silver pools of her eyes.
“Let go,” Zélie repeats, more violently than before. She drives her knee toward my groin; I jump back just in time.
“Wait.” I try to reason with her, but without the masked man, her rage has found a new outlet. Her fingers tighten around her crude dagger. She rears back to attack.
“Hey—” Zél. The word pops into my mind. A rough voice. Her brother’s voice.
Tzain calls her Zél.
“Zél, stop!”
It feels foreign on my lips, but Zélie halts, stunned at the sound of her nickname. Her brows knit with pain. Just like the way they knit when the guards dragged her mother away.
“Calm down.” I loosen my grip. A small show of faith. “You have to stop. You’ll kill our only lead.”
She stares at me. The tears hanging off her dark lashes fall onto her cheek. Another surge of painful memories simmers to the surface. I have to brace myself to keep them at bay.
“‘Our’?” Zélie asks.
The word sounds even stranger coming out of her mouth. We are not supposed to have anything. We are not even supposed to be a “we.”
Kill her. Kill magic.
It was all so simple before. It’s what Father would have wanted.
It’s what he’s already done.
But the maji hanging from the tree still scar my mind.
Just one of Orïsha’s endless crimes.
Looking at Zélie, I finally have the answer to the question I was too afraid to ask. I cannot be like Father.
I will not be that type of king.
I let go of her wrists, but inside I let go of so much more. Father’s tactics. His Orïsha. Everything I now realize I don’t want to be.
My duty has always been to my kingdom, but it must be for a better Orïsha. A new Orïsha.
A land in which a prince and a maji could coexist. A land where even Zélie and I could be a “we.”
If I am to truly fulfill my duty to my kingdom, that is the Orïsha I must lead.
“Our,” I repeat, forcing confidence into my voice. “We need each other. They took Amari, too.”
Her eyes search me. Hoping. Fighting that hope at the same time. “You held Amari at sword point ten minutes ago. You’re just after the scroll.”
“Do you see the scroll?”
Zélie looks around for where she tossed her pack before our fight, but even when she spots it her face falls. They took her brother. Her ryder, her ally. And the scroll we both need is gone.
“Whether I’m after my sister or that scroll, those men have both. For now our interests are aligned.”
“I don’t need you.” Zélie narrows her eyes. “I’ll find them by myself.” But fear drips from her skin like sweat.
Her fear of being alone.
“Without me, you’d be knocked out in a net. Your only clue to their camp would be dead. You really think you can take these fighters on without my help?”
I wait for her to concede. She only glares.
“I’ll take your rare bout of silence as a no.”
She stares at the dagger in her hand. “If you give me a reason to kill you—”
“It’s amusing that you think you could.”
We face off as if we’re still fighting, an invisible staff pressing against an unseen sword. But when she can oppose me no longer, Zélie walks back to the boy bleeding in the dirt.
“Okay, little prince. What do we do now?”
My blood simmers at her pet name, but I force myself to brush it aside. A new Orïsha has to begin somewhere.
“Hold him up.”
“Why?”
“For skies’ sake, just do it.”
She cocks an eyebrow in defiance but drags the poor bastard up. His eyelids flutter slightly and he moans. An uncomfortable heat prickles the air between us as I step closer.
I take inventory of the masked figure. Both hands broken. More wounds than I can count. He hangs like a rag doll in her hands. We’ll be lucky if he doesn’t bleed out.
“Listen here.” I grab his chin, forcing him to look into my eyes. “If you want to live, I suggest you start talking. Where’s our family?”