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Back Black Salt Queen Save as PDF
Chapters (50)
  1. Praise for
  2. Title Page
  3. Dedication
  4. City of Mariit: Capital of Maynara Map
  5. One
  6. One
  7. Two
  8. Three
  9. Four
  10. Five
  11. Six
  12. Seven
  13. Eight
  14. Nine
  15. Two
  16. Ten
  17. Eleven
  18. Twelve
  19. Thirteen
  20. Fourteen
  21. Fifteen
  22. Sixteen
  23. Three
  24. Seventeen
  25. Eighteen
  26. Nineteen
  27. Twenty
  28. Twenty-One
  29. Twenty-Two
  30. Four
  31. By Order of General Ojas,On Behalf of Her Majesty Hara Duja
  32. Twenty-Three
  33. Twenty-Four
  34. Twenty-Five
  35. Twenty-Six
  36. Twenty-Seven
  37. Twenty-Eight
  38. Twenty-Nine
  39. Thirty
  40. Thirty-One
  41. Thirty-Two
  42. Thirty-Three
  43. Five
  44. A Coronation Prayer
  45. Thirty-Four
  46. Epilogue
  47. Acknowledgments
  48. Thank You
  49. About the Author
  50. Violetear Books x Bindery Books

“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

line

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.

Thunder erupted in the sky above. Then the bay sucked him in as the underworld beckoned to him. The waves kissed his eyelids, his cheeks, the faint line across his back where his mother had healed him. Darkness enveloped his body, the warm embrace of an old lover. If this was death, it was but a mere shadow of mortal pain, and he felt none of it.