Page 1 of The Jasad Crown (The Scorched Throne #2)

CHAPTER ONE

ARIN

A rin firmly believed an attempt on one’s life was the highest form of flattery.

Becoming a threat by the very virtue of your existence, inspiring the sort of mad dedication that drives men to murder… what could be more of an accomplishment?

His father endured at least two dozen assassination attempts a month—more than the rest of the rulers combined.

Arin had waited impatiently for his turn. On the eve of his tenth birthday, it came.

A commotion had erupted outside his chambers, and Arin followed it into the hall. His guards had shouted for him to return to his room, occupied trying to hold back the intruder.

Preposterous—as if Arin were some fragile bird in a glass cage. Only cowards hid.

Besides, he had waited for this. Planned for it. At ten, Arin had begun to grasp the role he played in his kingdom. The power he stood to inherit. The fact that someone had come to the Citadel seeking to kill him meant others had begun to realize his power, too.

Later, he’d learn the assassin was one of fifteen sent to infiltrate the Citadel on the eve of the Champions’ Banquet, which was being held in Nizahl that year. The others were apprehended before they ever reached the Citadel’s grounds.

When the assassin spotted the Nizahl Heir, a manic light had brightened in his eyes. He darted around the guards and reared his arm back.

The knife flew.

Arin could have avoided it. Unlike his graceless guards, Arin could measure exactly what movements he needed to avoid injury. One twist to the right, a collapse of his right knee, and he would have been out of harm’s way.

Except, Arin didn’t want to avoid the knife.

Arin knew his flaws—they were frequently recited to him. Cold, heartless, stubborn. Arin’s mother called his shortcomings by kinder names than Arin’s tutors. To Isra, his shortcomings were a keen regard for precision . A personal standard that demanded nothing short of perfection.

But his worst flaw, universally agreed upon by all, was Arin’s curiosity. Once a question blossomed in the Heir’s mind, he could not rest until he found an answer. His curiosity eclipsed everything—his sense, his reason, his very sanity.

So Arin stood still for the knife. He pulled his arm over his chest, drawing his shoulder over the fatal points of entry. The knife cleaved into him. The suddenness of the impact temporarily whitened the world.

Arin had screamed. He barely registered the guards jumping onto the assassin or the heavy thud of bodies hitting the ground. His arm hurt. Everything hurt terribly.

The next time he had opened his eyes, he was in his own bed, the wound hidden beneath a thick bandage. His mother was fast asleep next to him.

“You scared her,” Rawain said. He stood in front of Arin’s window. “You know I detest when she cries.”

Tear tracks had indeed dried on Isra’s cheeks. Arin moved to wipe them away and stopped when Rawain glanced over. The Supreme disliked it when Arin showed his mother affection or let her fuss over him.

Without ever being told, Arin understood that Rawain did not love her.

Arin withdrew his touch, because loving his mother meant losing a little bit more of his father.

“You let him hurt you,” Rawain said, staring out the window again.

His hands were clasped around his scepter, fingers tight above the glass orb.

Arin did not have to peer closely to make out the raven’s wings, the black feathers unfurling above the two swords clashing at its feet.

The symbol of Nizahl, cast in exquisite gems at the head of his father’s scepter, always seemed alive enough to glare at Arin.

His heart pounded. “I did not let —”

“Arin,” Rawain interjected lightly. Too lightly. “What is my first rule?”

An all-too-familiar weight pressed down on Arin. He fought to breathe through it. “I am not lying, my liege.”

“One last chance.” Rawain turned, moving from the window to hover over Arin’s bedside. Terror closed Arin’s throat, the slow suffocation rendered infinitely worse beneath his father’s knowing gaze. The raven’s beady glare pierced into him. “Why did you let him hurt you?”

Resignation settled like a shroud over Arin. Punishment was inevitable. The only variable Arin could control now was its severity. Telling the truth would mean months of grueling training and the confiscation of his books and maps.

But lying would sentence Arin to the Capsule.

“I wanted to know how it would feel,” Arin said. He knotted his fingers into the blanket, ignoring the pull on his arm. “The injury.”

“You’ve been injured by many knives in your training.”

“Never stabbed.” Arin swallowed. “I wanted to see if I could survive it.”

A heavily ringed hand settled on Arin’s throat. His father’s finger ghosted over Arin’s pulse. It beat sickly fast, betraying its owner.

“Do you think if you put yourself in the path of what you fear and let it hurt you, you will somehow be stronger for it? That you will know your limits better?” Rawain’s hand moved to Arin’s arm.

Without hesitation, he dug his thumb into Arin’s bandage.

Pain roared through him, and Arin barely remembered to trap his gasp behind his teeth.

He couldn’t risk waking his mother. Rawain did not tolerate her interruptions when he was teaching his Heir a lesson, and Arin hated it when she was punished because of him.

“Those who survive longest never put themselves in a position to be hurt. They see the threat coming and they step aside .”

Red leaked beneath the bandage. His father pressed harder. Arin tasted blood. He had bitten into his own tongue.

“You are my sole Heir. You will inherit my kingdom, my throne, and my enemies. How can I trust you if you cannot command your impulses or quash these infernal curiosities? How, Arin?”

Black dots swam in Arin’s vision, and only then did Rawain withdraw his hand. He wiped his thumb on his robes. “Your lessons resume at dawn.”

His mother woke two hours later and fought with the servants who came to dress Arin for his training. “Can’t you see he’s hurt? He cannot train today. He is only a child! Please, he’s in pain.” The servants moved around her while she wept, ignoring her attempts to hold them off.

And Arin, who still felt the imprint of his father’s thumb, had found himself disgusted by her tears.

She put herself in a position to be hurt , he thought, suddenly and without much emotion. She loves me too much. She will see the threat coming and stand perfectly still, if only to let me live a minute more.

Arin put his hand on the bandage and pressed.

The pain grew, and grew, and grew.

He would become familiar with this pain. He would learn to think through it.

And then he would never see it coming and stand still again.

Rain pattered against the window, obscuring the sight of a sleeping Nizahl from its watchful Heir.

The stormy evening possessed every hallmark of nights his mother called sieges of the Awaleen .

The wind picked up, its mournful howl cutting through the stone walls.

Arin could almost hear his mother’s phantom sigh, the tap of her thin fingers against the shaking glass.

Sleep is the space between life and death.

A space where anything can happen , she would say, in the faraway tone Arin had grown to fear.

The Awaleen have dwelled in their dreams for centuries.

Look at the sky, Arin, and tell me you cannot see them in the clouds.

In her last few years, she had developed a habit of speaking such nonsense where others could hear. Persistent superstition was a relic she carried over from her village in Nazeef, and his father hated any reminders of Isra’s lowborn origins.

A crackle of lightning washed Arin in shades of blue. If the Awaleen truly slept, down there in their eternal tombs, then their sleep knew only nightmares.

A knock came at the door. Arin smoothed a palm over his vest, dispelling the phantom of his mother. He had plans with the living to oversee.

“Enter.” Arin didn’t move from the window as the door creaked open behind him.

“Your Highness. You summoned?”

“Have a seat, Counselor Rodan.”

Arin turned from the window. The High Counselor bowed deeply, gaze meeting Arin’s for a brief instant before darting away.

Rodan moved to the chair nearest to the door and hesitated.

The seat would be close to the head of the table—within Arin’s reach.

Executing a shuffle unbecoming of anyone above the age of five, the High Counselor instead chose a chair at the center of the table.

As though Arin would ever expend the effort to physically assault him. There weren’t enough gloves in the world. The entire episode had taken less than a minute, but it told Arin what he needed to know.

It didn’t end there. When Arin lowered himself into his chair, the High Counselor flinched. Flinched.

“Peculiar weather tonight.” Rodan picked at his thumb, seemingly indifferent to the blood crusted in the hinges of his nail. The thought of replacing his table because the High Counselor bled on it irritated Arin to distraction.

Arin’s silence only further aggravated the High Counselor. Over the years, Arin had found silence a most effective tool for excavating the inner workings of someone’s mind. To some, silence scraped and clawed and screamed. Others settled in it, content to float on its ebb.

Save for a bottle of talwith and two glasses, the table lay empty. Arin uncorked the bottle. In each glass, he poured two fingers’ worth of the lavender liquid. Rodan watched the bottle, wiping his knuckles across his chin. A smear of blood from his thumbnail caught on his whiskered jaw.

When Arin placed both glasses in front of Rodan, the High Counselor blinked. “None for you, my liege?”

“I have had more than my fair share as of late,” Arin said genially. “I presume you’re familiar with talwith?”

The High Counselor regarded the glasses with transparent unease. “The Orbanian beverage. Quite difficult to import to Nizahl, isn’t it?”