Page 86 of Black Salt Queen

And Laya could only watch. Her vision warped and seared at the edges. The Black Salt Cliffs folded in around her. The battle waging around them faded. She could only hear her father gasping for breath. She saw nothing but the light fading from his eyes.

“Maiza,” Bulan yelled, a sob caught in her throat. “Maiza, he needs a healer.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Vikal was backing away. His sword hung limply at his side, drenched with the king’s blood. He looked stunned, ashen-faced.

“We must leave,” Datu Gulod hissed. “Now.”

No.Laya tore her gaze from her father. Her eyes closed in on Vikal as waves of anger wracked her core. They weren’t going anywhere. She raised her palm, feeling the threads of energy tauten around her fingers, when a body tackled her from the side.

“Run!” Luntok screamed to his mother. He struggled to hold her down, but Laya elbowed him hard in the ribs. He groaned and she shoved him off, scrambling to her feet.

“I’ll kill you for this,” she said, her chest heaving. “I’ll kill you all.”

His expression hardened as he rose, retrieving the horned, ceremonial dagger from his belt. He held it in his fist. “You would kill your lover? The man you’ve just wed?” Luntok spat. He was taunting her. He wanted to distract her while his mother and the others fled. Laya didn’t care.

She hurled a blast of wind toward him. It hit him square in the chest. The dagger flew from his grip. He hurtled several feet backward, rolling to a stop inches away from the cliff’s edge, winded. On shaking arms, he struggled to push himself upright.

Laya ran over and grabbed the collar of his shirt. His hands shot to her fingers, but he didn’t fight to free himself from her grip. He stared up at her, and for a wild moment, she thought he might try to kiss her again.

Instead, he shook his head. His lips parted in disbelief. “Laya. You wouldn’t.”

She glanced over her shoulder to where her father was bleeding out on the grass. She could hear Ojas’s deep voice booming for more bandages. The datus flocked to the king, offering strips of cloth torn from their shirts and clean pairs of hands. But they couldn’t give the king what he needed most?—more time.

Amidst the chaos, she saw her mother. The queen had folded herself over her husband’s bloodied chest. She was sobbing, brutally, brokenly, because she already knew the truth. Hari Aki was beyond saving.

He was dying, Laya realized. A sharp stab of pain pierced her soul. Her fingers clenched into fists, threatening to rip through Luntok’s marriage vest. At her beckoning, black clouds gathered overhead and the cool, coastal air crackled and sparked. Her vision cleared and a strange calm washed over her, the quiet that preceded a typhoon.

“Laya,” Luntok whispered from where he knelt. “Please.”

Laya looked down at him. For a moment, the fear melted from his handsome face. In her mind, an old memory flickered, where their positions were reversed. He was bowed over her naked body, dragging his lips between her breasts; when he met her gaze, his eyes burned. It was not love, but obsession.

She let out a ragged breath. He was the reason for all of this. Her family’s undoing, her father’s downfall, was all because of him.

“For anyone who dares harm my family,” she said as her gaze frosted over, “let this be my message.”

Farewell, my love.

Without hesitation, Laya drew her palm back. An arc of wind rushed forward to meet it. She cast it down at the man who loved her, pitching him headfirst over the Black Salt Cliffs.

Thirty-One

Luntok

Beautiful,he thought, the moment before she cast him to his death. He caught a glimpse of her face. He marveled at the storm brewing within her eyes, at the dirt and blood that marred her lovely cheeks. In her desperation, in her grief, Laya had become the wrathful god Luntok always knew her to be.

His neck snapped forward when Laya pushed him. The wind swept through his thin marriage silks and sweat-slicked hair. It roared in his ears, bitter as the woman who summoned it.

Laya’s storm clouds swirled in the blazing sky. The last rays of the sun shone from below the horizon, scattering orange up through the spaces between the clouds, and the glow of their underbellies blinded him.

The wind whipped the water below into violent peaks, threatening to swallow him whole. The sharp rocks that punctured the bay grew closer and closer as he fell. Soon, his bones would shatter like glass against their jagged tips.

No time?—the rivers of death drew frighteningly near. Their waters washed over him, his body swept up in their unrelenting currents. He wasn’t afraid. He could hear the eternal music of the underworld and the grumbling giants who awaited him.

I’m coming,he told them.

He closed his eyes, bracing himself for the impact. His fate had been sealed from the first day he climbed the white stone walls of the palace. This was no different. A pleasant numbness hummed through his body. He knew this well, this feeling of weightlessness.

The wind whirled past him in a dying gasp of breath. He thought of Laya’s lips, soft against his?—a final earthly ache.

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