Page 22 of The Jasad Crown (The Scorched Throne #2)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

ARIN

O f the myriad of unpleasant ways Arin had spent his evenings lately, the prospect of dinner alone with his father was the worst.

Dusk painted the Citadel’s gardens in muted pinks and blues.

Arin strolled through the groves, dry leaves crunching beneath his boots.

He’d been circling the gardens for twenty minutes and passed Isra’s Fountain, the reason for his visit, twice.

His feet carried him past the statue of his mother each time he tried to stop.

Arin had not been alone with his father since the night of the Victor’s Ball. A night where Arin had expected a reckoning from the Supreme the likes of which he had never seen before.

But Rawain hadn’t mentioned the small matter of the Jasad Heir. Not then. All he had said was, “You are a Commander. My Heir. No son of mine succumbs to his feelings in the presence of company. No matter how very tempting it is to kill the Sultana.”

This dinner would be the true trial. What Arin had known about the Champion, the circumstances of her selection, the nature of their relationship. Arin would have to sit across from the Supreme and decide whether to reveal the depths of his own dishonor or lie through his teeth.

On his fourth circuit around the garden, Arin finally stopped beneath the shadow of Isra’s statue. Hers was one of seventeen in the Citadel’s sprawling groves, each statue erected like a guard post across the miles of greenery.

The statue of Arin’s mother gazed out over the gardens. Freshly picked stone flowers bloomed between her curled hands. She was kneeling on the pedestal, her gown flowing over its sides and touching the ground. A delicate sadness lingered in her features.

It was always her sadness that hit Arin the hardest. How telling that a sculptor had mused over which of the late Isra’s most distinguishing characteristics to mold for eternity, and they had chosen her sorrow.

Not the fear permanently lurking behind her eyes or the skittish dance of her fingers, both of which Arin remembered just as keenly.

“Forgive me for not visiting sooner,” Arin said. He plucked loose the branches trapped in the folds of her stone dress. “I was away.”

The wind ruffled Arin’s hair. He should start walking to the tower if he wanted to reach the dinner table before Rawain.

Curiously, the idea of turning his back on Isra unsettled him more than arriving late to the dinner.

Ridiculous. A slab of stone did not care that he hadn’t come to see it in months. A slab of stone was not his mother.

“I am still away, I think.” The confession slipped out before Arin could stop it, hiding itself in the fading light.

Arin stared at Isra and tried to find the words to explain how the pit of dread in his stomach grew larger each day.

War haunted his thoughts, weighed on his bones.

Half of Arin was fixed in the future, the other half in the past. It left nothing to spare for the present.

“There was a girl.” Arin’s gaze dropped to the bottom of the pedestal, and he had never felt more like a child in his entire life. “You’ve met her.”

Strange to think of Isra meeting Essiya before Arin, but his parents had paid Usr Jasad multiple visits throughout his childhood. Arin hated himself for wondering whether Isra had liked her.

It didn’t matter. Sylvia would probably have terrified Isra, since everything but Arin had terrified Isra.

Arin had sometimes thought his mother weak for the way she loved him, the anguish she endured on his behalf.

None of which Arin had appreciated at the time, having dedicated the whole of his focus to pleasing Rawain.

Isra’s love was guaranteed, easily won, so Arin had set his sights on the unobtainable.

I do not know if I am the right man for this kingdom , Arin wanted to confess. What if I cannot do what must be done?

The last of the sun disappeared, draining away the dregs of color left in the sky. Within seconds, the windows of the Citadel brightened with freshly lit lanterns.

Arin stood in front of Isra, and he shared none of the things he wanted to say. They were useless to a dead woman. A woman who’d died at the Summit besieged by the Malik and Malika of Jasad.

He pulled a cloth from his pocket and ran it over the contours of her face, removing the dust collecting in the creases. The gardeners hadn’t bothered to maintain the statue in his absence.

When he was younger, Arin would sometimes imagine Isra’s stone face softening when he touched her cheek.

Warmth replacing the chill of her, and the eyes that stared unseeingly into the distance finally turning toward Arin.

Those moments when hope had melted into disappointment were the only times Arin ever wished for magic.

He folded the cloth and tucked it back into his pocket.

“I won’t be gone so long this time,” Arin said.

Arin turned, leaving his mother in the shadows.

Only the reflection of the lanterns from the Citadel illuminated Arin’s path.

Rosebushes bordered the cobblestone track, the branches nurtured to magnificent heights on either side of Arin.

Navigating the gardens in the evening didn’t bother him, but he knew the mazelike pathways intimidated the servants. They rarely wandered after nightfall.

Which was why when the bushes rustled, Arin halted.

Another rustle, closer this time. Arin reached inside his coat and quietly withdrew a small blade. It barely spanned the length of his palm, but it would slash a throat as effectively as any dagger.

He turned the corner, blade tucked above his thumb.

A woman materialized inches away from Arin, nearly ramming into his chest.

The breath shuddered out of Arin. He stared, and then stared more.

Velvet brown eyes widened in wonder. “You again,” she said.

Blood pounding in his ears, Arin took a step back. The prudent move, the intelligent one, was to close his eyes and wait until the hallucination passed.

“You aren’t real,” he whispered.

“Funny,” the Jasad Heir said. “I keep thinking the same of you.”

Her tunic didn’t ruffle with the wind. The iridescent fabric of her sleeves cinched at her elbow and draped loose around her wrists. Against his better judgment, Arin remembered how he’d grasped those arms as he drew her close. His swell of pride and admiration at the strength there.

Once again, her curls tumbled loose down her back. His delusion didn’t seem to care that the real version rarely wore her hair in anything other than a braid.

“Have I gone mad?” Arin asked.

She smiled. “The world will fall to ruins long before your mind does.”

“Don’t.” It tore out of Arin.

“Don’t…?”

“You aren’t real. These hallucinations are symptoms of… exhaustion. Yes. Exhaustion.”

Arin was not sure who he wanted to convince. In an instant, Arin stood inches away from her. Like a chemist teetering on the brink of creation or catastrophe, Arin couldn’t bring himself to take the final step toward discovery.

“Probably,” she agreed, not seeming to mind his close scrutiny.

“But what would you say to me if I was real?” She offered the question on a platter of humor, and Arin burned beneath a surge of his old frustration.

She was a mere figment, but a bitterly convincing one.

The real Sylvia had the same avoidant tactic of threading sincerity with comedy, masking fear with aggression, sorrow with coldness.

If Arin was stone, then she was a river. Always moving, always flowing, no matter how fast the tide or how frequently she broke against its shores.

The wind ruffled his hair. It left hers still.

“That bad?” she whispered at his rigid silence.

Bad? Bad was the greeting. Bad would be the first sentence of a book Arin planned to fill with blood and agony and words so heavy with cruelty they would pin down any tongue that tried to speak them.

The page where he would record her fate would wrinkle to escape the horror of his pen, and he would ink it with the blood he poured from her.

Sylvia’s gaze dropped to the knife in Arin’s grip, then swung back up to him. She huffed a short laugh.

He struck fast, but she had seen it coming. The knife went airborne as Sylvia reared back and kicked Arin’s wrist, sending a spasm of pain through his arm. Before he could reach into his coat, she collided into him like a bull, slamming his back against Isra’s statue.

“You still don’t think I’m real,” she heaved. Her hands bunched in Arin’s lapels, pinning him to the statue. “You wouldn’t fight me so leisurely if you truly believed I was here.”

Arin studied the collection of freckles on the underside of her chin. Interesting. The pattern looked remarkably identical to her real freckles.

Not freckles—hasanas.

It was ludicrous to argue with a hallucination, but this woman—and apparently, even her apparition—frequently compelled Arin to the ludicrous. “Were you truly here, I would have felt your magic the instant you entered the Citadel’s grounds.”

She was pinning him to the statue so earnestly, her arm a solid bar against his collarbone. Arin almost smiled. Fine, then. If his hallucination wanted an actual fight, Arin may as well indulge her.

Sylvia wheezed when Arin’s knee slammed into her stomach. He grabbed her wrist and twisted the arm she’d used to pin him behind her back. “Is this satisfactory to you?”

He launched the hallucination into the rosebushes.

She careened into the bushes and hit the ground. Slapping off the burrs caught on her sleeve, she leapt to her feet. “You stubborn, tombs-damned man, I am trying to warn you —”

Footsteps farther up the grove drew Arin’s attention. Urgency burst across Sylvia’s features, and she spoke fast. “Arin, you need to listen. Evacuate Galim’s Bend. The cages—”

“Sire?” Wes turned the corner, a lantern held aloft to ward away the encroaching shadows. “There you are. Is anything the matter?”

Arin didn’t move his gaze from Wes. He knew she was gone.