BooksBarbecue
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

Well. They need not wait for her any longer. Laya smiled as the riverboat rounded the corner onto the main canal and the white stone walls of the palace came into view. The palace’s tiered roofs peeked up above the walls, sunlight glaring off their gold-encrusted finials. At the sight of the riverboat, one of the guardsmen barked the orders. A moment later, the gates swung open for their new queen, revealing the marble staircase that rose up to the palace’s great giltwood doors. Over Mariit, the day broke with a blinding fervor.

Hara Laya had arrived.

Epilogue

line

Yari

Yari shivered inside the creaking hull and pulled her shawl snug around her shoulders. Over a month had passed since they’d escaped Mariit on a stolen ship. They were racing through choppy waters into the eye of a storm.

A violent wave crashed into the hull, turning Yari’s stomach. She vomited into the bucket beside her bed.

“That’s disgusting,” snapped the young man with whom Yari had been sharing her cabin. He was one of Datu Kulaw’s sword-trained serving boys. Before they attacked the palace, he had sung Imeria’s praises to whoever would listen. The Gatdulas had never cared for a nobody like him.

Yari left the cabin, hauling the bucket with her. She climbed the ladder to the main deck and tipped the bucket over the railing, spilling its contents into the Untulu Sea. She didn’t regret throwing her lot in with the Kulaws. While Imeria hadn’t thought of Yari as more than a tool she could sharpen for her own gain, at least she had learned her name. That was more than Yari could say for Hara Duja.

She set the bucket on the deck and leaned against the railing. The fresh air whipped her hair from her face and cleared her head. She drew in a deep breath, the scent of brine filling her nostrils. The water stretched for miles, with no land in sight.

Angry shouts echoed from down in the hull. Vikal and Datu Gulod were arguing again. Vikal wanted to rendezvous with the Kulaws’ allies in the south. Gulod kept telling him that the war for Maynara was already lost.

Yari didn’t care where they went. Her sole request was that they dock somewhere where Hara Laya could not chop off her head.

She headed to the bow of the ship, where Luntok’s remains lay beneath a threadbare tarp. Vikal had insisted on taking the dead boy with them when they’d escaped from the Black Salt Cliffs.

With Imeria gone, no one dared touch Luntok. But several weeks had passed since that awful wedding. Surely, the bow should be tainted with the sickly-sweet smell of decaying flesh at this point.