“They want ourastra! Our water!”
“Death to Novaria!”
Nev escorted Kamari inside as dozens of stones flew onto the balcony, some crashing through the window, others making it all the way into the foyer. With wide eyes Kamari stared and listened as the people of Vargah—herpeople—turned on her.
“Let’s get you out of here.” Raffe slid his hand around her waist and led her through the Citadel. Kamari’s mind was blank, her body numb.
Voices echoed through the Citadel. Voices of Desmond’s people, her people. Now they wanted her dead.
Did they not see how she missed Desmond, how she longed for his homecoming? Raffe’s hand tightened around her as they descended the stairs and the weight of him, the pressure of his hand burned through her gauzy dress. She wriggled free from his grip. “I thought I told you to leave.”
Raffe opened his mouth, but Rahashi and Nev stepped forward and escorted Kamari the rest of the way to her room.
Of course they see me as a traitor,she thought. She’d been walking with Raffe. Dancing with him. Dining with him. She thought she was doing good for the treaty, making it appear things were running smoothly by keeping a Vargahian heir close.
She was doing her best not to raise panic and all the while, she was undermining her own standing.
The people saw her unaffected by Desmond’s disappearance because she thought that was better than to see a queen panicked.
She was wrong.
Hanna was waiting outside her door, waving her inside.
She slid out of her dress and into her pants and long tunic. The open curtains gave her a view of the heated crowd and the mass of knights and sentries that were making arrests and ushering the rest away. She could hear them still, all the things they claimed her to be.
An enemy queen.
A murderer.
Atraitor.
The bell in the square chimed again, signaling a storm approaching and Kamari wanted to claw at her ears. Bury her face under a pillow and hold her breath. Anything to make that damnnoise and the sounds of the people below chanting their hatred for her, stop.
She slammed her window shut and when she spun back around, the journal she was reading earlier was opened to where she’d left off. She swallowed her tears and flipped to the last passage.
“Finding it will eliminate the need for the sacrifice. Will give power back to the people. All of these years, I believed the voices in my head to be a burden but now I see them for what they are. A gift, perhaps from Celestria herself, guiding me to the truth of astra. The truth that was meant to burn in the great fire of Vargah. The truth that was eliminated in the Great War. The truth, that Ravki is real.”
The words became rushed together, messily scratched onto the parchment.
“I don’t have much time to get my thoughts out. I have been advised to not seek that which has been buried. I don’t know what I will do, but I know that I have to do something. Kamari, know that I love you. Know that I am doing this”
The rest of the page and journal were blank.
Kamari’s head swam with a million thoughts. Desmond truly believedastrawas something that grew from the earth? And he believed it to be in Ravki, which explained the maps she found and hundreds of notes. Why wouldn’t he tell her where he was going? Why wouldn’t he tell the council–
Her eyes darted to the top of the page, where he always wrote the date of his entries.
This one was marked the day before he disappeared. The night she'd found him yelling in his study. The night he had kissed her then left her.
I have been advised to not seek that which has been buried.
Advised bywho?
“Nev,” she yelled and her knight came bounding through the door.
“Are you alright?”
“What if I told youastrawas something that…” She threw the journal across the room where Nev caught it. “What if it grew from the earth? That it wasn’t a gift from Celestria.” Kamari clutched her chest, the rapid rising and falling bringing her a constant to focus on. “Would you believe me?”
