Page 109 of The Jasad Crown (The Scorched Throne #2)

OMAL

TWO YEARS AFTER THE ENTOMBMENT

F airel trailed her fingers over the languid surface of Hirun River.

School started tomorrow, and she most decidedly did not want to go.

Why did she need to learn about yet another battle between the kingdoms?

What did it matter if she knew how to calculate sums off the top of her head?

Fairel would much rather help Rory around the shop and spend her breaks shooting arrows from the highest spots she could climb.

A splash caught Fairel’s sleeve as a frog leapt out of Hirun, its little legs blurring in its panic. Another joined it, then four more.

Fairel sat up, the basket of ingredients beside her forgotten. What on earth?

The surface of Hirun bubbled, and Fairel shrieked as hundreds of frogs shot out of the river. Before she could scramble away, streaks of pale blue surged over the water’s surface.

Fairel snatched her hand from the river, but it was too late. The blue coated her hand, sinking into her skin.

Hirun churned again, and Fairel grabbed her cane, raising it toward the river.

Why had she left her bow and arrow at the keep?

Raya was always chastising her about carrying them around.

She was going to feel so guilty when a swarm of crazed frogs murdered Fairel because she wasn’t allowed to bring her bow and arrows.

What emerged from the river was not a frog.

Four stout legs hefted a reptilian creature out of the water. Its blue-and-white scaled body stretched as long as the trees behind Fairel, glittered as brightly as diamonds cast across the sunlit surface of the river.

Petrified, Fairel clutched her cane and watched the beast slither out of the river.

She had seen renditions of this creature twined around Kapastra’s shoulders on every mural in Mahair.

She had studied the fatal effects of its venom in class—the same class she was now certainly going to miss, because she would have the excuse of being dead.

The rochelya aimed a slitted glare at Fairel. Her blue hand turned crushing around her cane.

A strange feeling passed through Fairel. It was almost like falling asleep. Black dots swam in Fairel’s vision as the glow around Fairel’s hand traveled up her arm and disappeared under her sleeve.

In the river’s reflection, Fairel’s eyes swirled blue and white.

She gasped as her cane twisted in her grip. In its place, a bow materialized, shinier and bigger than the one she left in the keep. Two arrows lay across her lap, waiting to be notched.

Magic? Had she just—yes. But how?

She lifted the bow to her shoulder, fingers tight around an unloosed arrow. Fairel tracked the rochelya as it meandered up the banks of Hirun, following the terrified frogs into Essam.

When she was sure it was gone, she lowered her arm and stared at the river in disbelief.

“Nobody is going to believe me.”