Page 19 of The Jasad Crown (The Scorched Throne #2)

CHAPTER ELEVEN

SYLVIA

I woke up on the ground, Maia and Namsa sitting cross-legged on either side of me. They sipped from steaming reddish glasses, casual as a sunny day.

Battling the dizziness in my head, I pushed myself onto an elbow and tried to convince the muscles in my stomach to contract and pull me the rest of the way up. “Where…” My throat tightened, rippling with pain. “Where am I?”

“The Geneina,” Maia answered. “We like to bring the children here to celebrate the holidays. Youm il Fark, Zeenat Hend, you know. We thought it might be less jarring for you.”

Gold and silver light whirled around the domed ceiling, creating an imitation of the sun that hurt to look at for longer than a second.

Though the sun might have been false, the rows of green crops rustling around us were very real.

So were the flowers—more colors and kinds than I could count, wrapping around the walls, dangling in vines from the ceiling, blossoming over the ground.

I stared at the gently rotating sun. The hall I had trained in for the Alcalah had had a moving sky just like this. Instead of flowers, the opposite wall had showcased a looping scene with Usr Jasad and my grandparents.

“What happened? The last thing I remember is trying to kill Efra.” I perked up. “Is he dead?”

“No,” Namsa said.

“He is in quite a bit of pain, though,” Maia reassured me, earning herself a quick frown from Namsa.

“Maia put you down before you could do serious damage. It took every drop of her magic,” Namsa scolded.

“Put me down,” I repeated slowly.

“I have a… specific kind of magic,” she said. “Many of us in the Gibal do. One of my abilities includes severing someone’s consciousness without causing them harm.”

“You were going to kill Efra,” Namsa added. “We had no choice.”

My body finally remembered it could function, and I pushed myself the rest of the way upright. I slapped aside the ropes of flowers trailing dozens of feet from the high ceiling like a suspended waterfall of color. Petals carpeted the ground.

Sultana Vaida would drown a hundred children to get her hands on these flowers.

“So the dream—it was your doing?” I demanded. “It wasn’t real?”

Maia and Namsa exchanged another glance. One more secretive look, and I would start biting. They had already put me down like a feral animal twice. I may as well reap the benefits.

“Dream?” Maia folded a long, wavy strand of hair behind her ear. “I was very careful to keep your mind clear, Mawlati. I didn’t want to risk causing your magic to react against mine.”

“What kind of dream? What did you see?” Namsa set aside her glass, watching me intently.

I saw him .

The words clogged up in my chest, restrained by a caution I didn’t entirely understand. It had just been a dream—what harm was there in sharing a dream?

The Citadel had looked as dread-inspiring and terrible as the first time I rode through its gates.

With seven stone wings curving out from a sky-high central tower, the Citadel’s architecture resembled a nightmarish spider waiting to pounce.

Except for the wing I had destroyed the night of the Victor’s Ball, every grim detail had been the exact same.

My dreams were always vivid, but this… I’d prodded the wall of the central tower, and when it didn’t dissipate into smoke, I’d fallen to the ground, tearing at the grass.

Trying to break the illusion, because it had to be an illusion.

I’d escaped from the Citadel. I was in a mountain many leagues from this accursed place, bracketed by the woods and the sea.

Then I’d heard a woman shout.

A woman stood at a less-than-respectable distance from him, her petite features colored with worry.

There he was. Blue eyes like a cold fire, fixed on me.

An illusion could perfect many aspects of Arin.

The cut of his black coat falling to his boots.

The matching gloves, as synonymous with the Nizahl Heir as his shining silver hair.

Even the tiny violet ravens etched into the sleeves of his coat could be conjured by a creative and observant bit of magic.

But his eyes. The steadiness of his gaze. The iciness of it, nearly impossible to penetrate or crack.

No magic could re-create Arin of Nizahl’s eyes.

The woman had grabbed Arin’s arm. He’d turned his head, removing me from the shackles of his attention, but it was too late. Half a second was all it took to understand that either I’d suffered a critical loss of sanity or my magic had gone awry.

Seeing the woman take Arin’s arm as I disappeared had also inspired a fury I wasn’t familiar with, and I was familiar with many, many flavors of fury.

I rolled my shoulders, dislodging the dream like a stray piece of lint. “What Efra said on the cliffside. Is it true?”

Namsa sighed. “The plan was in motion before we captured you at the Victor’s Ball. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have authorized it without your input.”

I staggered to my feet, grabbing one of the dangling flower ropes to steady myself. The world blurred, and I squeezed my eyes shut as my stomach revolted. “Someone needs to warn him.”

“Warn who?” Namsa shot to her feet. “The Silver Serpent? Are you mad?”

“This breaks the rules.” I could hear the nonsense spilling out of my mouth, and despite my full awareness of how it would sound to the other Jasadis, I couldn’t bring myself to rein it in. “We have rules.”

Maia grabbed Namsa’s arm when she took a step toward me. Namsa’s glare would have shriveled another person, and I shrank from the force of her disgust. “Awaleen below, maybe Efra is right. Maybe she cannot be trusted.”

“Of course not!” I exploded. “You abducted me, shot me full of tranquilizers, and then knocked me out again when I wasn’t behaving the way you wanted.

Your rules are clear: keep the Heir docile, keep the Heir away from any important decision-making.

Guess what? I have my own rules, too. I know the Nizahl Heir better than any of you, and our greatest chance at success is by staying within the parameters he ascribes to.

Arin follows the precise letter of his laws—what do you think will happen when we use magic to unleash a slew of magical beasts onto an unsuspecting Nizahlan lower village? ”

Maia held her arms out to the sides, trying to wedge herself between me and Namsa. “Efra acted recklessly, but the strategy is sound. Disarray allows us to move undetected.”

“No, it allows them to move unchecked.”

Namsa’s teeth clicked together. Were I not so profoundly furious, her silence would have been gratifying.

“These kingdoms have decree after decree dictating their every decision. Hundreds of internal and external agreements and accords. In all of them, you will find a provision basically stating that none of it counts if a kingdom faces an imminent risk to its security. What you are about to cause is anarchy. It is imminent risk.”

“How do you know this?” Namsa regarded me strangely.

“How do you not know this? Doesn’t half your ridiculous plan hinge on reinstating me to the Omal line of inheritance? You should have tracked down copies of every important document and memorized them front and back.”

Hanim’s specter rose, looming over me. She had known reviving Jasad would require more than just magic, more than effectively swinging a sword. The most lethal acts in a royal court often happened without shedding a single drop of blood. Words were the currency of the powerful.

“Is there any way to stop it?” I forced out.

Namsa shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

I wrapped my hands around two of the vines and yanked with all my might. A plume of petals rained over us, and the vines went slack in my grip as they tore at the root.

“Gather your Aada, Namsa.” I tossed aside the vines, shoving past the pair. “Maybe we can prevent our first strike in this war from being our last.”

While Namsa gathered the council, I hunted down Efra.

It took some time, since the architecture of the Gibal was governed by magical logic instead of structural coherency.

Each layer of the mountain served a separate function: the top was reserved for bedrooms and the dining hall, the middle three for recreation and strategy rooms, and the bottom for basic functions like bathing.

I tracked Efra to the lowest level. Steam billowed over me as soon as I entered the washroom, soaking into my tunic.

The walls curved around the heated spring like a stone raindrop, a hole punched into the side for the steam.

The spring took up the space of a modest lake, and I wagered it could hold forty to fifty people at a time.

With the lake frozen on the cliffside, Maia had mentioned the children loved to swim here during the winter.

I had been taking my baths upstairs, where nobody could see the scars forming a second skin over my back.

Efra leaned over the edge of the spring, shirt discarded and fingers hooked at the waistband of his pants. A giant black-and-blue bruise in the shape of my boot decorated his torso. His lip had stopped bleeding, but the stretched skin around his eye had blackened and sunk.

Maybe Maia had had the right idea, knocking me out.

When I materialized from between the clouds of steam, Efra jumped, dropping his shirt into the spring.

“Damn it,” he growled, fishing out his sodden garment. “Can you wait? I’ll be done in fifteen minutes, and I would much rather not spend those fifteen minutes sharing a bath with you.”

I rolled my eyes. “I would sooner bathe with a corpse.”

“If you finish what you started earlier, you very well might.”

My lips twitched. Were Efra not the equivalent of a walking migraine, I could see myself enjoying his company every now and again.

“Maia said you could have prevented me from killing you, but you chose not to.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “What kind of magic do you have?”

Efra scoffed. “The better question is why I would have rather died than used my magic on you.”

I blinked. “The same reason Namsa refused to fight me when I woke up in the Gibal. I am your Malika.”

“No.”

I waited, but he did not elaborate further. I thought about pushing the matter, but frankly, I was more interested in Efra’s magic than in his philosophy about its use. “It cannot be defensive magic—not with how feebly you fight.”

He wrung his shirt out in the spring. “I can show you, if you’d like.”

I shrugged. “All right. Do your worst.”

Gold leaked into Efra’s eyes. Silver streaked over his irises just as he lifted a hand and said, “I thought you would never ask.”

Rage.

My fingers curled as rage roared to life inside me.

I itched to feel Felix struggle beneath my hands as I strangled the life he didn’t deserve to live out of his pampered body.

I would carve Fairel’s name into his corpse and leave his decaying remains on her doorstep.

I wanted to rip my knife into Supreme Rawain.

I’d aim for his face first, open him from cheek to cheek like prize meat at a festival.

I would take my time. For his death, I would master patience.

Draw out his agony until the walls rang with it. He—

“Wow,” Efra said. “Certainly potent and ready with your rage, aren’t you?”

He flicked his hand.

Grief.

Tears filled my eyes. I missed Marek and Sefa almost more than I could bear.

I didn’t know where they were, if they were safe.

Their friendship had weakened me. Before them, I hadn’t known what it meant to be lonely.

I just was, and life went on. Fairel, Rory, Raya—what did they think happened to me?

It felt like Dawoud dying in my arms all over again.

Efra cleared his throat. A single tear had slipped out. My fingernails tore slashes into the heel of my hand. He could enhance my emotions, but could he see the reasons behind them?

I didn’t know the name of the next one. Suddenly, I was at the head of the stairwell in the Ivory Palace, placing my gloved hand into Arin’s as we descended.

I was watching him arrange my clothes by the door so I would be ready in the morning.

Holding me as I wept in my burning room in the Omal palace.

I am just a man , and the tenderness spreading over him as he hovered over me, the vulnerability in his eyes as I smiled and drew him down for another kiss.

His face as the cuffs slid from my wrists and magic ruptured through the Citadel.

“Sad little broken heart.” Efra flattened his palm, and I gasped, freed from the choking misery of missing a man I didn’t dare name.

“There is something back there I don’t recognize.” It sounded like Efra was talking to himself. “What is that?”

The next wave had the opposite effect of the others. Instead of a barrage of intensified emotion, I relaxed. The furrows in my forehead smoothed, and my arms loosened at my sides. Frost chased away the residue of pain in my heart.

The man near the spring watched me with alarm. “Essiya?”

The vein in my palm was glowing again. I tilted my head, bemused. I had known this man’s name at some point. I also vaguely remembered he had tried to harm me.

This is for your own good!

I sneered. That voice! I knew it as well as I knew that the name this insect had just spoken wasn’t the right one. I needed to find the voice and finish it once and for all.

Before I had taken a step, the panicked boy swept his hands apart, threads of magic sparking in the space between his fingers. The net flew toward me and melted against my skin.

I coughed and massaged my ribs.

“Impressive,” I said, straightening from my hunch. “Enhancing and diminishing emotions. A nice trick. Unless it extends to physical sensations like hunger, I think you overestimate its value.”

I may as well have spoken in a foreign tongue for the attention Efra paid my remark. “What in the tombs was that?”

“What?”

“What I amplified… I’ve never experienced anything like it. It felt—” Efra passed a shaking hand over his forehead. “Whatever that was inside you, it is completely devoid of any humanity. If I hadn’t pulled my magic back, I think you would have killed me.”

“I wouldn’t have killed you.” But even as I said it, a seed of doubt caught in my teeth. Already, the memory of the strange coldness was retreating. I’d wanted to go somewhere. Find… something.

I shook my head, casting it aside. I had enough real problems without inventing new ones. “The steam addled your limited senses. Make yourself decent and be present at the Aada so we can fix the catastrophe you created.”

I left, Efra’s gaze heavy on my neck, and crushed the seed before it could root.