Page 105 of The Jasad Crown (The Scorched Throne #2)

CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

ARIN

M agic never stayed still.

It was a detail Arin had taken for granted. Magic always swirled or churned when a Jasadi used it; it never lingered too long.

The rings of gold and silver in Essiya’s eyes had settled into irises. The colors shaded the dark of her eyes in still pools of silver and gold, and Arin had never been more scared in his life.

She glanced past him disapprovingly. “You knocked out Jeru in the middle of a battle?”

Arin slammed his fist against the fortress.

It refused to give, as solid as steel despite its fluid appearance.

“Enough. You did it—you raised the fortress. The fighting has ended, and it will never renew. I am Supreme, and there will be no war. You are done . Get off the bridge before the mist returns.”

As soon as the mist rose, Sirauk would devour her. And Arin would be stuck on the opposite side of this damned wall, pounding his knuckles bloody.

Her chin jutted out, her features taking on a stubborn set. “Why should I take orders from someone who nearly killed himself kissing me? You can barely stand, Arin.”

“I do not need to stand, Essiya,” Arin snarled. “Do you want me on my knees again? Do you want me to beg?”

Essiya set down the scepter, and Arin startled. He hadn’t even noticed it when he kissed her. She wrapped her fingers around the orb, hiding the raven’s beady gaze.

“Essiya,” she repeated with a wan smile. “The almost-Heir. The sort-of Malika. I suppose their annoying little test wouldn’t have been complete without the temptation of total power.”

Arin took out his dagger and started hacking at the fortress.

“The stories are wrong, you know. Mostly wrong. They trapped me on the bridge—that much is true. But I didn’t ‘scream so loud that the skies crashed down,’” she scoffed.

“Kapastra did. They also didn’t draw runes on my forehead.

What a silly notion. What effect would runes have had against my magic?

Also—and this is by far the most aggravating—I was not the ‘kind and compassionate’ Awal.

Perhaps I was compared to those three, but I was also impatient and short-tempered, and I once tried to stab my sister for stealing all the mangoes out of my trees as a jest.”

It took a beat for Arin to hear her.

She tapped her nails against the glass of the scepter.

“The most consistent part of the story is the ending. I am dragged over the side of the bridge, trapped in eternal entombment. Satisfying, isn’t it?

I understand why nobody examined the ending too closely.

After all, the alternative was unthinkable.

The alternative meant the mad Awal might have walked away.

Rovial, roaming the kingdoms, alive and well while the only people capable of fending against him slept beneath Sirauk. An unbearable conclusion.”

“What. Are. You. Saying.” Arin could scarcely force out the words.

“They didn’t drag me down.” She sighed. “We fought, and they killed me the only way they could.”

Arin took a step back. He couldn’t begin to process the concept—the very idea—

No. No, her magic had muddled her, and she would be fine as soon as she distanced herself from that infernal bridge.

“Halfway killed me, really. They tore out my magic and cast it down into Hirun. Then they ripped Rovial apart. The truth is not so pretty as the story, I’m afraid.

” She shrugged. “You were right about the rate of magic-madness. Once every hundred years, with widespread devastation. Rovial’s magic reincarnated every century, and every century it would meet the same fate.

” She tapped her temple. “I feel every single life layered over mine, though they don’t feel as though they belong to me.

Neither does Rovial’s. But the magic… the magic has always been ours. ”

The world tilted onto its ear, burst into flames, and suffocated Arin in the smoke.

“If you don’t want to be trapped, why are you still on the bridge? The mist will take you.” Arin was barely audible to his own ears, but of course, she heard it.

“You cannot begin to imagine how much I want to stand on the other side of this fortress with you,” she said.

Her resignation, the stark defeat, clawed back Arin’s panic with a vengeance.

“But there is a reason Rovial’s magic has killed its host every time.

That kind of power has no place in this world anymore.

What kingdom could thrive beneath a leader who could never die?

A leader who could decimate them with a spare thought? ”

Her breath hitched, and Arin saw a spark of terror behind the facade of calm. “I can barely hear myself think behind this magic. If I walked across this fortress, it would only be a matter of time until it extinguished what was left of my humanity. My control.”

She took a step back. “I will not let it win again. I will not let it trap me in my own mind.”

A wisp of white curled around her ankle. Arin hammered at the fortress with a force his body shouldn’t have been able to produce.

She was going to do it. Join the Awaleen in their entombment and lock her magic away beneath Sirauk.

“Let me go, Arin. I can’t cross the fortress, do you understand?

If I choose to stay, it will not mean the death of a few hundred or thousand.

It will spell the end of our entire world.

Nobody but the Awaleen could stop Rovial’s magic, and they are in the middle of enjoying their eternal slumber.

This is the precise power you have fought your entire life to prevent. The exact madness you feared.”

“I can find another way,” Arin said, and it was the truth. “Give me time. We can mitigate your magic, seal it off. I have the cuff—”

“No! Cutting myself off from my magic was never the answer. Sefa and Marek were the answer. Dawoud, Raya, Fairel, Rory.”

Softly, “You.”

It was the last straw. Arin dropped his fists to the fortress, his fingers spreading against it.

“If you will not stay, then take me with you.” The mist wound faster and higher around her legs, threading between the rickety boards of the bridge.

“Do not dare tell me I owe a duty to these kingdoms. I swore myself to you . My father will receive his justice. Every leader who helped facilitate the Jasad War is already dead or out of power. Someone else can handle what comes next.”

“Yes, and if there is any benefit to finding out I am in possession of eternally fatal magic, it is that the person handling what comes next will not be me.”

She took another step back. The mist had risen to her waist. “And why would I drag you to your death when a new life is beginning for you?”

The hand on his father’s scepter contracted, crushing the orb. Glass rained into the mist and bounced off her skin harmlessly. She snapped off the raven and let the scepter drop to the ground.

For some reason, the sight of her hand without a single nick from the glass ruined the remaining ounce of disbelief Arin had clung to.

Rovial. She had Rovial ’s magic.

She balanced the raven on the flat of her palm. “I think this belongs to you.”

Essiya blew gently on the raven, and Arin jerked back as the wretched pile of feathers suddenly moved.

It fluttered its wings and hopped off Essiya’s palm, flying toward him. Instead of smashing against the fortress, the raven sailed straight through.

The raven slammed against—and into—Arin’s chest.

The Nizahl Supreme fell to his knees, and he burned.