Page 78 of Black Salt Queen

He ignored her and wrenched her up by the collar with one hand. With the other, he conjured an arc of flame. Its shadows danced across his dark cheeks, and his lips curled into a sneer. He raised his hand, ready to cast the flame down toward his sister.

“Stop!”

The second his fingers flexed, Imeria shot to her feet. She launched herself at the prince’s back. He hit the ground with a groan. She pressed her hands to his forehead. The power she had long struggled to hide burst through her fingertips, hungry to be unleashed.Take him,it screamed in her head, and Imeria complied. She clawed deep into the rageful threads of Pangil’s mind and pulled tight.

“You won’t touch her,” Imeria said between ragged breaths. “You won’t touch her ever again.”

Beneath her, Pangil stilled. His head lolled back. He stared up at the smoke-filled sky, unseeing. Inky pools seeped out from his irises, blotting out the whites of his eyes. Only then did Imeria release him. She fell back on her hindquarters as the power that roared in her ears quieted to a dull whisper.

“Imeria?—by the gods.” Duja’s terrified gasp jolted Imeria back to her senses. She looked up in a daze. Her nose stung with the caustic scent of ash. The facade of the eastern wing crackled as Pangil’s flames leaped to the upper floors. Thick clouds of smoke rose from the broken windows, smothering the sunlight. Agonized screams reverberated across the courtyard.

Imeria barely heard them. Her eyes darted between her hands and the black-eyed prince, still trapped under her curse. Her entire body quaked when she realized what she had done.

“Duja”?—she croaked out a response?—“I can explain.” She reached for her, but Duja scuttled back.

The princess shook her head in disbelief. Beneath the streaks of soot, her cheeks had gone gray. “No,” she said in a strangled voice. “It can’t be.” When she stared back at Imeria, her face twisted into a look of horror.

A hundred half-formed apologies fought their way to Imeria’s mouth. No time to utter a single one. More shrieks for help rang out from the eastern wing. Her heart plummeted in her chest. She recognized that voice. The queen was still trapped somewhere between the mounting flames.

“Mother,”Duja whispered. She charged toward the burning building, leaving Imeria in her wake. An armored guard stepped into the princess’s path.

“Don’t come any closer, Dayang. It’s too dangerous,” the guard yelled, his voice carrying over the sound of snapping timber.

Imeria turned to find the courtyard flooding with servants. Water sloshed across the tiles as they thrust buckets from one hand to another, transporting them all the way from the palace kitchens. As quickly as they could, they tried to douse the fire leading up to the staircase. Anything to clear a path up to the queen.

Guards barked orders from all directions. More water, they cried. But the fire was moving too fast.

General Ojas emerged from the eastern wing, ash smeared across his face. “The staircase is collapsing,” he choked out between coughs. “There must be another way.”

Imeria’s eyes stung as she gazed up at the blackened sky. She knew the eastern wing and all the corners where she and Duja used to play. If another path to the queen existed, it had already been lost to the inferno.

The palace staff worked tirelessly for what felt like an eternity to put out the fire. By the time the flames started to die down, much of the eastern wing’s facade had been reduced to smoking rubble, and the screams coming from inside had long quieted.

At last, Imeria crept toward Duja. “Dayang,” she called tentatively, breaking the deathly silence.

But Duja didn’t budge. She studied the embers that remained of the eastern wing. Tears carved a trail through her soot-stained cheeks.

“Mother is gone.” A rare, wild spark flashed in the princess’s eyes. She turned around, her gaze falling on Pangil, still lying unconscious several feet behind them. The black pools in his eyes had just begun to fade. Moments after, his eyelids drifted shut. He looked like he was sleeping. “Mother is gone,” Duja said again, this time with fatal certainty. “Andhekilled her.”

Ojas approached Duja with red-rimmed eyes. For a long, painful moment, the general struggled to find the words. “I... I’m sorry, Dayang,” he finally said. “We did everything we could.”

“I know you did. Thank you.” Duja’s words came out steady, even as her bottom lip trembled.

Ojas gave a stiff nod, then hesitated. Imeria realized that he was awaiting orders.

Duja also came to this realization at the same moment. She glanced once again at her brother, sprawled out in the middle of the courtyard. Her next command caught Imeria by surprise.

“Take the prince down to the prison hold. We struck him down with a blow to the head. You must shackle him before he awakens. He’s too dangerous to leave to his own devices,” Duja said in a brutal, guttural voice Imeria didn’t recognize.

The general’s expression hardened into one of grim acceptance. “Right away, Your Majesty,” he answered without question.

Imeria’s eyes widened as she witnessed the exchange. The queen was dead. Pangil was a murderer. Which meant?—

“Duja,” she called as she reached for her once again. She wanted to hold her. To comfort her. To promise her that everything would be all right. In the blink of an eye, their destinies had changed. The world they once knew had crumbled beneath Pangil’s fire. The queen was dead, and only one could take her place.

Duja Gatdula was to be the next queen of Maynara.

But the second Imeria’s fingers brushed against her wrist, Duja recoiled.“Don’t.”

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