Page 113 of Children of Blood and Bone

“Hey!”

A voice calls from above, but I can barely hear it. They took magic. They took Mama. They won’t take Tzain, too.

“I’ll kill you.” I move the dagger over the masked boy’s heart and pull back. “I’ll kill y—”

“Zélie, don’t!”

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

INAN

IREACH 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.

“Letgo,” 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.

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