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

A teasing voice cut across Arin’s thoughts like a well-aimed blade. Wait, are you important or something?

Arin’s fingers curled.

“Your Highness?”

Arin sat back in his chair, elbows balanced on the armrests as he folded his hands together.

Rodan still hadn’t touched either drink.

It always amused Arin how careful fickle men became when it was their own life on the line.

“You’ve worked for the Citadel for many years. Since the start of my father’s reign.”

The High Counselor nodded, relieved to be back on familiar footing. “Nearly twenty-four years.”

Arin considered the man sitting at his table with the same level of interest he might afford an insect on the bottom of his boot.

He’d rarely had cause to deal with Counselor Rodan in the past. The High Counselor’s role positioned him as an advisor to the Supreme and gave him a seat on the council—powerful privileges, but not ones that made him notable to Arin.

Twenty-four years. Decades Rodan had slithered around the Citadel, privy to the secrets of the most powerful kingdom in the land.

Arin couldn’t fathom it. Nothing about the High Counselor marked him as anything more than another dull, crown-kissing sycophant. Age lined his narrow face, and his hairline’s backward march had reached his ears. He was thin as a stalk of barley. Just as easy to snap.

Utterly unremarkable.

“I see.” Arin tilted his head. “And how many of those twenty-four years did you spend molesting little girls?”

The question hit the High Counselor with the force of an open-palmed slap. His breathing changed, turning shallow and quick. Arin’s vaguely bored expression did not change.

“S-sire, a grave misunderstanding is afoot.” Rodan’s trembling voice steadied. Just as abruptly, the lines carving across his graying skin eased. As closely as Arin was watching, he still couldn’t see them. The signs of his deception.

In any other situation, Arin would be impressed. Long and sustained deceit required a certain finesse. The fidgety man in front of him hardly seemed capable of it.

“I cannot imagine what tales that licentious, traitorous Jasadi spoke, but you must know better than to believe her.”

Arin heard the words the High Counselor didn’t dare say: You should have known better than to believe anything she said. You should have known better. You should have known .

There was a time when the provocation would have evaporated on contact, dispersing against the unyielding wall of Arin’s focus. A time when nobody but Rawain had the right weapons to get under Arin’s skin.

A time before a dark-eyed Jasadi became the fastest blade under which Arin could bleed.

Arin took one breath, long and slow. Anger needed embers to catch—stone against which the flint might strike. The most efficient way to dispose of an inefficient reaction was to keep moving. Crush it underfoot and never look back.

Until five days ago, the strategy had worked. Arin devoted a lifetime to designing the lay of his own mind—crafting every valley and bend.

But now, there were breaches. There was the blade.

Arin reached into his coat and extracted a tiny bottle containing four ivory beads, each roughly the size of a fingernail.

“Why did Sayali Barakat flee your home when she was fourteen?”

A flash of surprise, wiped in an instant. The High Counselor opened his mouth, and Arin lifted a finger. “Think through what you say next. I offer you one chance, and one chance only.”

Rodan’s palms flattened on the table, leaving Arin with no choice but to observe the dirt creased into the other man’s knuckles.

“I have nothing to think through, my liege. She is a thief. She abused my kindness and broke her mother’s heart.

She stole everything I’d saved for her future to run away with her fair-haired lover. ”

One bead rolled from the bottle into Arin’s palm. “Strange. Your wife told a different story.”

Leaning over the table, Arin dropped the bead into the glass on Rodan’s right. It dissolved with a hiss. The two of them watched ivory flecks settle at the bottom of the glass.

Neat. Predictable—like this entire conversation.

Rodan didn’t take his eyes off the tainted glass. “Time has diminished the truth of her daughter’s treachery. She cannot be relied upon when it comes to Sayali.”

“I am sure Sayali felt similarly.”

Meeting Sefa’s mother had been a strange experience.

She’d wasted an hour preparing tea and honey cake, jittery with apologies as she rushed to accommodate Arin and his guardsmen.

It was almost, almost a perfect replica of her daughter’s endearing mannerisms. Except where Sefa’s eyes were always warm with mirth, a void tunneled through her mother’s.

The rumors of her long-lost daughter appearing with the Nizahl Champion had unsettled her, and as he’d anticipated, Arin’s careful questions rattled the last of her defenses.

He finished dissecting the truth from her before his untouched tea went cold.

Arin crossed his legs. “Sayali—Sefa—spent much time in my company. What I know of her is this: she is entirely led by her sense of right and wrong, she hates to be watched while she eats, and the only obstacle interfering with her loyalty to her friend was her fear of you.”

“I can assure you, sire, I would never—”

Counselor Rodan absorbed the impassive set of Arin’s features.

Then, a marvel.

Like a canvas stripped of its paint, the panic drained out of Rodan. In its stead waited a chilling blankness. “Well, here we are.”

Arin’s lips curved in a humorless smile. He considered it a personal victory every time he convinced a beast to show him its teeth.

“You have a choice,” Arin said. “A kinder choice than you deserve, but a fair one.” He nodded to the twin glasses.

“Drink from the glass on the right, and your atrocities die with you. Your wife will give you a decent burial, and your name will not be stricken from our records. My father and the other counselors will lay the royal wreath on your headstone. You will have a grave for Sayali to spit on.”

Rodan licked his cracked lips, fixing on the poisoned glass. “And if I drink from the left?”

“A drink from the left is your death delayed. You will live—for a time. But when your death catches up to you, it will not be gentle. I am a creative man, Counselor, with limited opportunities to properly express it. Your killers will arrive with instructions to exact horrors upon you that your very worst nightmares cannot fathom. Those who bother to mourn you will remember you as a traitor and thief who stole from the Citadel and vanished. And when you eventually die, it will be with tears of relief on your lips. What remains of your body will be disassembled, burned, and cast into the river.”

And since Rodan had paid him the courtesy of showing Arin his true face, Arin repaid him in kind.

His voice hardened, crystallizing beneath the force of the violence clenched behind his teeth.

“Personally, I hope you choose the second. Sayali may have haunted you, but I will hunt you. I will see to it that every shadow in your wake takes my form. Every sound you strain to hear in the night will whisper in my voice. I will feed you your death in doses and enjoy watching it rot you from the inside. The glass on the right, Rodan? That is your one chance at mercy.”

Rodan stared at Arin, frozen.

After a lifetime, a laugh shuddered out of the frail High Counselor. “I warned them, you know. Even as a child, it was clear what you were. What you are.”

This conversation had already taken longer than Arin allotted for, but he supposed he could indulge a dead man. “What am I, Counselor Rodan?”

The High Counselor regarded Arin as one might gaze upon ropes hanging from the gallows. The terror was the first genuine emotion Arin had seen from him tonight.

“Nizahl’s doom,” Rodan whispered. “The end of everything we have built.”

The High Counselor gripped the poisoned glass. “My only regret is dying before I see my prophecy fulfilled.”

Rodan drained the talwith in one pull, slamming the empty glass on the table. “But it won’t be long now, Arin of Nizahl. Your legacy is death, and I am merely the first sacrifice.”

Outside, the rain pummeled the side of the Citadel, pouring over the windows in a dull roar.

Mildly bemused, Arin arched a single brow. “Do not grant yourself such credit, Rodan. If death is my legacy, it was anointed long ago, by adversaries far more worthy than you.”

Rodan went rigid before Arin could be regaled with further pontification. The High Counselor’s chair screeched across the floor as he bent forward, gripping his stomach with a groan.

Reaching for the glass on the left, Arin observed the sweat pouring from Rodan’s shiny head. Drops splattered on the table, which shook beneath the dying High Counselor’s tremors.

Arin took a sip, greeting the burn of the talwith like an old friend. “The night of the Victor’s Ball, I made a decision.”

Five days ago, a wing of the Citadel burned.

Five days ago, the Malika of Jasad stepped forward in Sylvia the village apprentice’s skin.

Five days ago, Arin strangled Sultana Vaida until blood broke in her eyes. One more second, and the ruler of Lukub would have been dead in his hands.

Control. For others, it was a pillar. Something steadfast to hold them up, to hide behind when the pressure became too much.

For Arin, control was a cliff.

One step too far, and everything that made him who he was shattered on the rocks below.

One step too far, and a beast would rise from his remains.

Arin had fought his entire life to remain on the right side of the cliff.

To turn his sights away from the temptation of what waited just beyond the edge of his control.

White spittle foamed between the High Counselor’s lips. Rodan toppled from his chair with a clatter, clipping his head against the table leg. His body seized in rapid tremors. A wet patch spread over his groin.

“My people will not suffer another war while the likes of you walk freely in the heart of the Citadel. While I live, those in Nizahl’s court must prove every day that they deserve their place. Power hoarded where it doesn’t belong is power borrowed, and I intend to collect on the debt.”

In the wild, savagery was survival. It took only what it needed when it needed it and did not ask for more.

But behind the walls of the Nizahl royal court, savagery was an art.

As a baker might measure out ingredients for the perfect dish, so Arin measured each move he made.

He bided his time. He gathered information.

And when he struck, he struck to kill.