CoS25

## Chapter 25

**Chapter 25** of **City of Spells** follows **Karam**.

## **Full Version**

THE FOREST WAS DECIMATED.

The tree house that Saxony had kissed Karam good night in had fallen from its stoop and the tree that housed it—best at ferrying messages from one side of the camp to another—was burned to cinders.

There was barely anything left of the place Saxony and the Rishiyat Kin once called home. The Uncharted Forest was gutted and all that was left in its ashes were bodies. It looked like the Shores of the Dead that Karam and Arjun had left behind, desperate to find hope back in these woods.

“It’s all gone,” Arjun said. “The weapons and the magic. Do you think it was a raid? It must have been Ashwood and that bastard busker Nolan. They split us up so they could attack us when we were most vulnerable. Everyone is gone and we’re all that’s—”

“Check the bodies,” Karam said. “Check who they are.”

*Check if they are anybody we care for*, she thought.

She wouldn’t consider the worst until she’d seen it for herself.

So they thumbed through the dead and with each body Karam turned over, or those whose faces were bloody enough that she had to go by their clothing to see whether they were busker or Crafter, she prayed that she wouldn’t see anybody she loved.

There were some Rishiyat Crafters and a few of the buskers Karam recognized from their camp, but she couldn’t find Saxony, or Tavia, or anyone in Saxony’s family. She couldn’t see her friends and when Karam sat on a charred log that looked like it had been part of a building once, she let out a long exhale.

They were alive, somewhere out there.

She shouldn’t have wanted to smile, surrounded by so many bodies—so many of someone else’s loved ones who didn’t make it—but Karam had already lost so much that she thought she was owed this small spark of hope.

“What do we do now?” Arjun asked. “We came all this way and they’re gone.”

“Saxony wouldn’t have fled this place without me,” Karam said, certain. “She would have left a sign somewhere to hint at where they were going.”

“Signs can be read by anyone,” Arjun argued, unconvinced. “They wouldn’t have risked that.”

“Then it would have to be something only I know,” Karam said. “A thing only I would be able to follow.”

“Karam—”

“Stop it,” she said. “We’re not losing anyone else.”

Arjun pressed his lips together and nodded.

Asees was gone and six of Arjun’s friends had died with her. Karam and Arjun had been too late to save them, but they weren’t too late to save the others. Whatever had happened here, their army had survived, and that meant there was a chance of redemption for Karam.

She could still live up to the legacy of the Rekhi d’Rihsni her family had formed to save magic.

She could still help them win this war.

She could still save Tavia from that awful future she had seen.

Nobody else Karam loved was going to die.

“Think,” Karam said to Arjun. “What would only we see? What here would mean something to only us?”

Arjun picked up a piece of ashen wood. “Maybe they wanted to leave something and didn’t have the chance,” he said. “If they had to run from this attack, then they couldn’t have stayed around to leave signs and clues. There wasn’t time.”

“Saxony would have found a way,” Karam said.

If there was one thing in this world she still had faith in, then it was Saxony; it was the woman she loved and her inability to give up on somebody she cared about. Saxony wouldn’t have abandoned Karam, any more than Karam would have fled this forest without her, or a way for them to find each other again.

Love didn’t bow to time and neither did Saxony.

“You’re glowing,” Arjun said.

Karam wrinkled her nose. “What did you just say to me?”

“You’re glowing,” he said again.

Her nose stayed wrinkled.”I told you to think, not to be weird.”

“No,” Arjun said, sighing. “I mean you’re really glowing.”

He stretched out his arm and took Karam’s hand in his, holding it up to her face for her to see. The ring that Saxony had given her was alight. The green eyes of the serpent whose body coiled around her fingers and all the way up to her pulse were indeed glowing, just like Arjun had said.

“What is that?” he asked.

Karam didn’t know what it was, but she felt a comfort when she looked into its eyes. It made her feel inexplicably warm, as though there was a voice somewhere inside of it, familiar but not enough so that she could put her finger on it, telling Karam it would all be okay.

“Saxony gave it to me before we left,” she said.

“It’s a strange present,” Arjun said, examining the snake. “Whatever happened to flowers?”

Karam didn’t reply; she just kept staring at the serpent, wondering what it was trying to tell her with those fire eyes. She didn’t have to wonder for long, because once Karam had blocked out Arjun and kept her focus on the creature curled around her finger, the snake began to whisper to her.

*This way*, it said. *Out of the forest and into the ivy.*

“Do you hear that?” Karam asked.

Arjun frowned. “What am I supposed to hear?”

*This way*, the snake said again. *She is waiting.*

Karam turned around, just in case the voice was coming from somewhere else, but the moment she did, the snake’s eyes fell dark.

“It stopped glowing,” Arjun said.

She looked back at him. The eyes of the creature lit up again.

Arjun stepped back. “What *is* it?” he asked. “It’s looking straight at me.”

“No,” Karam said. “Not at you.”

She stretched out her arm and walked forward, past Arjun and farther into the clearing. All the while, the snake’s eyes grew brighter.

“I think it’s a compass of sorts,” Karam said. “It’s going to lead us out of the forest.”

“To where?” Arjun asked, following behind her.

Karam didn’t know where to, but she knew *who* to. Saxony could have given her a weapon of some sort, a protection charm to keep with her or something to curse any enemies Karam came across. But she hadn’t done any of that. Instead, Saxony had given her this ring, and it had to be for a reason.

*It’ll help you find your way home*, Saxony had said. *Back to me.*

Karam’s smile grew.

The ring wasn’t just a compass; it was a map, it was a beacon, it was a way for them to finally find what they were looking for.

“Where is it going to take us?” Arjun asked.

“To Saxony,” she said.

And that was all she needed to know.