Page 56 of Children of Virtue and Vengeance

She bends down so low her white hair brushes against my cheek.

“The maji will be better off without you. Orïsha will, too.”

Somehow her words cut deeper than her magic. It’s Father’s blade ripping through my back. Mother using my rally of peace to attack.

“Idá a ti okàn—”

My heart beats so loudly in my head it blocks the rest of her incantation out. I feel Ramaya’s hatred like the pain within me. A rage that will burn my kingdom to the ground.

I reach for the power in my blood, pushing though I don’t understand. The gods gave me this magic for a reason. I will use it to save Orïsha, even if the maji hate me for it.

I scream as I dig my hand into Ramaya’s hair and pull, driving my elbow into her temple. She stumbles back from the blow. I take advantage of the opening and knock her down.

I straddle her body as a cobalt blaze ignites in my hands.

The needle isn’t working.

So I release the hammer.

“RAH!”

Ramaya’s ear-splitting scream shakes through the mountaintops. My magic carves through her mind like a knife as I dig through her scars, opening them the way I opened mine on the warship.

I feel the rough hand of a guard around her neck. I see the father who died for pushing him back. I flinch from the crack of knuckles over her left eye. I feel the warm blood that spilled from the wound.

“Amari, stop!” Zélie shouts from afar, but I can’t release my hold. My eyes flash with blue light. The bones crack in my arm as my magic spins out of my control. A never-ending flood of Ramaya’s life fills my mind. Every shard of pain that rips into her being rips through mine.

I don’t feel the hands that pull me back. I barely see Ramaya seizing before she collapses. Shouts I can’t decipher ring out as Zélie’s face breaks through the madness, her voice muffled by the pain in my head.

Beyond her, Ramaya’s body lies unconscious.

I can’t tell if her chest still moves up and down.

“Khani, quick!” Mama Agba yells.

Khani, the elder of the Healer clan, runs onto the bloodstone. Her white braids swing as she presses her hands against Ramaya’s neck, feeling for a pulse though Ramaya’s eyes stay frozen in an empty gaze.

After a long moment, Khani exhales. Her lips turn to a frown.

“She’s alive.” The Healer shakes her head. “Barely.”

Tears come to my eyes. My hands start to shake. “I didn’t… I wasn’t—”

Zélie pulls me into a hug. She rubs her hand up and down my back, but I can hear the tremble in her breath.

“Don’t look.” She squeezes my shoulder. “Don’t do anything.”

CHAPTER THIRTY

ZÉLIE

MY FEET DRAGas I make my way to the elder quarters. The days since my ascension have blurred together. With all the new maji and divîners that’ve flooded the sanctuary since we lost Lagos, getting anywhere makes me feel like a salmon swimming upstream. We now have over two hundred mouths to feed, and most are still powerless divîners. Rations decrease as our dormitories swell.

Every day, new people arrive, sharing stories of the monarchy’s raids on the maji. I don’t know how we’re going to strike back. It feels like we’re constantly losing ground, ground the monarchy is hungry to take. Victory that once felt a battle away slips further away from our grasps.

“Z, you coming?” Nâo brushes my shoulder, distracting me from my concerns. The Tider’s blue-tinted armor glints in the sun, the right arm sculpted to show the waves tattooed along her dark skin.

The other elders stand under the vine-covered archway outside the dining hall, waiting for me to go to the council room. They seem to look to me more now that Ramaya’s in the infirmary.

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