Page 32 of The Jasad Crown (The Scorched Throne #2)

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

ARIN

A dead body stretched out by Arin’s boots.

Body wasn’t the right term. Body implied a semblance of structure still existed. A body was something recognizable—something that had once dwelled among the living.

Shards of crystallized bone tore through skin translucent as glass.

Where a face might have been, a caved-in bowl held empty eye sockets and blackened teeth, thin red tendons wrapped around the mash of what might have been a nose.

Rib bones pierced his chest, facing different directions like the sterns of sailing ships.

Red spikes covered his stomach, drops of blood sharpened into thorns puncturing through his belly.

His legs had splintered from thigh to ankle, the bones of his calf peeled backward like cornhusks. Layers of crystallized flesh and bone overlapped in thin fillets, and a single shard of white bone held the limbs to the rest of his body.

By any definition, Arin was not an easily shaken man. He had spent years crafting the fortifications necessary to withstand the horrors of higher command, to hold firm against any assault.

But he had not accounted for the sight of a magic-mined body lying at his feet.

Brutal, isn’t it? They feel every minute of it, too. They don’t stop screaming until their tongue turns to glass , the Mufsid hummed, the disembodied voice ringing in the back of Arin’s head.

Arin exhaled, tearing his gaze from the mangled body to the wailing girl crouched beside it.

Decadence had trailed its fingers across every surface of the room they were in.

Billowing ivory drapes hid the gaps in the walls where shutters should have shielded against the wind.

Rubies glittered along the crown molding.

Tapestries woven with breathtaking detail covered the right side of the room. In them, Arin found his first answer.

He was in the Ivory Palace.

“How did you bring me here?” Arin uttered, low. The girl paid him no heed. “What magic is this?”

Pleased to make your acquaintance, Your Highness. I am Waid Entair, Bone Spinner of Crowns.

Neither the name nor the title held any meaning to Arin. He wasn’t sure which unsettled him more: that the Mufsid had blown a crater into Arin’s understanding of magic in less than two minutes, or that a magic capable of affecting him existed.

Your lack of enthusiasm wounds me. I am the only Bone Spinner in two hundred years. I see the stories of the dead. I divine secrets from the magic left in their bones, and I travel through time while my feet stand still.

Bone Spinner. Arin tucked aside the information for later examination and returned his attention to the problem at hand.

He was in a memory stolen from the dead. Whose bones had Waid used? Whose memory was this?

The door burst open, and two guards spilled into the room. They assessed the space, gazes sweeping straight past Arin.

A woman strolled in behind them, and any doubt about his location disappeared. The type of beauty this woman possessed—a beauty capable of leading men to murder and stopping a battle in its tracks—was reserved for one lineage, and one lineage only.

The lanternlight winked off of her towering crown, crafted in the shape of a rising sun. Rubies crusted the rim, which supported three rays of alternating heights composed of… white quartz? Onyx?

Loose curls gathered around her head like a spring cloud, brushing the collar of an elaborate gown trailing several feet behind her.

Intelligent brown eyes stared out of a face that sent a chill of recognition down Arin’s spine.

It was a face crafted by a supplicant at the altar of Baira, capable of rending hearts from chests while still beating and bloody. He had seen its likeness in another.

Sultana Nafeesa. It took me seven years to find her bones. She had decoy tombs set up all over Lukub.

Impossible. If the woman staring down her nose at the corpse was Sultana Nafeesa, then the Mufsid had taken Arin to a four-hundred-year-old memory.

It meant Arin was in the presence of the ruler who brokered the Zinish Accords. Vaida’s ancestor.

“She dragged the body into the courtyard, Your Majesty,” one of the guards murmured. He nodded to the sobbing girl. “We apprehended her before she could bother the guests, but some of the servants saw her.”

“How did she get past the obelisk?” Nafeesa snapped.

Right. Four hundred years ago, Lukub still possessed its magic. If Arin recalled correctly, the ruby obelisk had originally been designed to signal to the Ruby Hounds if any danger ventured toward the Ivory Palace from Essam Woods.

The age of monsters was still in full swing, which meant nobody dared enter or travel through Essam save for the most urgent of necessities, and Ruby Hounds still prowled the perimeter of the Ivory Palace.

Arin held himself still, perilously aware of the precipice upon which his calm teetered.

“You killed him,” the sobbing girl finally managed.

She couldn’t be more than nineteen years old.

In her fraying green frock, she looked completely out of place in the palace.

“I told him not to believe you. I told him it wasn’t possible to gently drain a little magic.

You tore him apart. You took everything . ”

Lashes tipped in red swept the top of Nafeesa’s cheekbones in a slow blink. “Your husband made a deal, and I kept my end of it. Your farm is thriving now, no?”

“My… farm?”

“Besides,” the Sultana continued, “his magic allowed six of my Hounds to stay alive. Six! You should be proud of him.”

“May the Awaleen damn you.” Rage crackled over her, twisting her youthful features into a snarl. “May you meet your justice, you lying wh—”

“Now, now.” Nafessa lifted her hand. At the sight of the ring on her second finger, Arin took an involuntary step forward.

Vaida’s ring.

“If you want your husband back,” Sultana Nafeesa said. “By all means, darling. Have him.”

White bloomed in Sultana Nafeesa’s eyes, encircled by a glowing red ring. Her magic didn’t churn like the gold and silver of Jasadi magic, but unfurled like the petals of a poisonous rose.

This is my favorite part , Waid said.

The rage melted from the girl, sloughing off like a lizard’s skin. She beamed at the broken remains of her husband. “Hani! Oh, you silly man. I was so worried.”

She gripped the fractured sides of her husband’s head, and the shards of his cheekbones pierced through her hands. The smile didn’t leave her face as she bent to bathe the cavern of his face in kisses. The crystallized skin shredded her lips, her cheeks, but her bloody smile never faded.

It is a merciful fate. There are worse illusions the Sultana could have created.

The girl kept going until ribbons of her skin clung to her husband’s corpse. Arin couldn’t do anything but watch, spellbound with revulsion, until a shard of rib bone impaled her right eye. She slumped over the corpse, finally limp.

Sultana Nafeesa gave the bodies a disdainful sniff. “See if they assigned next of kin for the farm. If not, slaughter the animals and empty out the house. We need a new den for my Hounds.”

She turned, the tail of her gown trailing across the blood spreading over the rug. “Get them out of my palace.”

Arin moved to follow her into the hall.

Ah ah ah , Waid tutted.

The floor beneath Arin sank, caving like a house of sand. He could feel the Mufsid’s magic around him, its oily residue thick on his skin.

Waid groaned. So obsessed with your rules and reason, aren’t you? Rest assured, you are still draining my magic, just much slower than you would if I wasn’t aiming most of it at the space around you instead of at you.

But I am the Bone Spinner of Crowns, and you still have much to see.

The ground hardened beneath Arin. Fighting through a surge of nausea, he braced himself on his thighs.

When Arin straightened, he found himself inches away from his mother.

Fidgeting toward the end of a long table, Queen Isra’s fingers twisted in her lap, knotting in the sleek fabric of her dress.

The sun glowed across her tawny brown skin.

A delicate chain bearing the Nizahl crest hung from her neck.

Her gown was a perfect fit, but from the way Isra pinched at it, it may as well have been suffocating her.

Arin struggled to draw his breath. This was no lifeless stone statue.

Whose memory was this?

Under the table, a ringed hand squeezed Isra’s wrist until her restless fingers spasmed and lay still.

Rawain subtly drew away from his wife and smiled across the table. Age had yet to leave its mark on his father, and untamed power rolled off the young Supreme.

“Be reasonable, Niyar. What can any of us do with five percent of the magic? That will hardly sustain us a single winter.” Rawain tucked his scepter under his arm, the other propped on the table.

“You are not in a position to quibble with me over the terms of how we divide our people’s magic.

You get what we give you,” Malik Niyar said.

The ruler of Jasad leaned forward, raising his brows at Rawain.

“If you need more than five percent to survive a bitter winter, you should consider whether your kingdoms have greater problems to handle.”

No. Arin couldn’t be hearing this.

Sultana Bisai, Vaida’s mother, scowled. “These agreements have been in place for nearly five hundred years. Why are you changing them now? It used to be an even split.”

Five hundred years?

Arin took a step back, every inch of his being recoiling from the scene in front of him.

Peals of laughter echoed across the table as Malika Palia clapped. “Yes, and five hundred years ago, you still had magic to trade. Today, you sit here with nothing. This is not a transaction, Bisai. You come here as beggars, and you should mind how you address us.”

“Beggars? You foul wretch,” King Toran snarled. He leapt to his feet, smacking the shoulder of the young man beside him. “Emre, draw your sword.”

Emre of Omal. Sylvia’s father.