Page 42 of Queen of the Wicked
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, but I can’t stay here.” I show him my arms, and then look up to him with sorrow in my eyes. “I’ll hurt people if I stay, so just let me go.”
Saddiq examines me for a moment, and he looks like he might be in denial, but then he comes to his senses, taking my hands in his.
“You will always have a home here.”
That’s the last thing he says to me. As I shed my headscarf and let the wind carry it away, I sink to my knees and bow with my forehead touching Saddiq’s boots. I don’t just bow to him, but to all the al-Abadi people who I’ve come to love as a second family. To Anya and Habiba and to the smell and sounds of the desert.
When I stand again, I watch a single tear fall from Habiba’s eyes, and I blow her a kiss before I turn, leaving the desert behind me.
Thirty-Eight
Adelasia
My heart lurches at the sight of the Blackwood.
I swore to myself I’d never return here after what it took from me. After the blood and the screaming and the agony it brought me.
I shouldn’t be here. I can feel the Well and Eternity’s influence like invisible tendrils wrapping around my limbs, but where else can I go?
I won’t bring suffering to Saddiq and his people. My mother rejected me the moment she realized I was no longer human, and my two lovers are dead. I have no one…
Perhaps this is what Eternity wanted for me, to realize hers are the only arms I have left to run to. The only arms that will take something as broken as I am.
The deeper I go, the denser the trees become, and the quieter the air is. It swallows the sound of my bare feet on the dirt and roots, replacing it with sounds that eerily resemble bones scraping together. I clutch the edges of my cloak tighter as I walk aimlessly through the forest.
It feels wrong to be here alone. Every instinct is telling me to hide, or to run, or even to simply let the darkness take me. Everyfew steps, I look to my left and right, expecting to find Rowan’s smirk or Kaius’ steady presence.
But they’re not there. They never are.
All I have left of them is the last time I saw their faces. The silence where their voices used to be is unbearable.
I whisper aloud, just to hear something: “I can’t do this.”
The trees give no answer, but the magic inside me does.
It shifts like a beast under my ribs, pressing upward, curling sharp claws against the back of my throat. I stagger, gripping a trunk to steady myself. My fingertips leave black streaks across the bark, rot seeping outward from the touch until the wood hisses and splits.
“Stop,” I beg. “Please.”
But the Well is calling, and the deeper I go, the stronger it becomes.
It’s in the air, in the soil, in the faint vibration humming through my boots as I step over roots slick with rain. Every breath feels borrowed, like I am breathing in someone else’s lungs. Someone else’s will.
Return to me.
The whisper is not sound but sensation, sinking into my bones. I grit my teeth against it.
My voice cracks like broken glass. “You can’t have me.”
But the truth is more complicated. Because even as I fight it, part of mewantsto surrender. Wants to sink back into that blackwater, let it close over my head, let the darkness take me so I no longer have to keep walking alone.
The thought makes my knees buckle. I catch myself on another tree, pressing my forehead against its damp bark, sucking in ragged breaths. My reflection flashes in my mind: the girl who danced, the girl who begged to die, the girl who clawed herself back from the grave.
Which one am I now?
None of them. All of them. A hollow vessel walking deeper into a forest that wants to devour me.
The rot creeps higher. It stains my fingers past the knuckles now, winding into my palms. I curl them into fists to hide it, but the shame burns worse than the pain.
