Page 33 of The Jasad Crown (The Scorched Throne #2)

Emre glanced up from the book on his lap, blinking owlishly behind his spectacles.

“Sit down, Toran,” snapped the woman on Emre’s other side. Arin barely recognized Queen Hanan. The scowling ruler looked nothing like the sorrowful cloud of a Queen sitting on the Omal throne.

What he was witnessing didn’t meld into any plane of reality Arin understood. It repelled comprehension. Every time Arin tried to process it, he slammed into the iron resistance of his mind.

Arin needed to exercise care. It was an inopportune time to implode.

Settling back, Arin scanned the table once more. With an impassive hand, he began to take the scene apart.

The rulers of each kingdom had assembled here to discuss how they should divide stores of mined Jasadi magic between themselves.

The trade apparently began five hundred years ago, before Sultana Nafeesa’s lifetime. In the age when the kingdoms still carried their own magic, every ruler had apparently mined from their own people. It would have cost thousands upon thousands of lives.

The practice had continued into Arin’s lifetime, and his father had engaged in it. Rawain, who pummeled into Arin never to rely on or trust magic, had sat across a table and complained about only receiving five percent of magic brutally mined from its Jasadi owners.

The Malik and Malika of Jasad were not the original magic miners. They were just the last.

“Whose memory is this?” Arin asked flatly. “Whose bones did you use?”

Patience, young King.

Queen Hanan held her head high. “Consider it compensation for Jasad’s raids, Palia. Are the three hundred of our soldiers you slaughtered last month not worth more than five percent?”

Palia leaned back in her chair, affecting an innocent mien. “I am sure I don’t know what you mean, Hanan.”

“Orban will accept five percent,” King Murib bellowed. He clapped hands wide as paws together. “It will be enough to lift our drought, and we can handle the rest.”

Groans around the table. The arguing resumed in full force, but Arin had ceased listening.

He knew who this memory belonged to.

Seated beside Niyar and Palia, dark eyes dancing as she watched Emre read, was Niphran. The first Heir of Jasad, and Sylvia’s mother.

After a moment or two, Emre glanced up. Arin watched as Niphran arched a brow at the skittish Omal Heir, who managed to look spellbound and nauseous at the same time.

See? Waid said. Your patience will be rewarded.

The visions were coming faster. The Mufsid’s magic was waning.

My magic is only partially at fault , Waid muttered. Not all the bones have stories. Some of them just like to scream.

Footsteps pounded down the hall. Arin barely had a second to step aside before Niphran barreled past him, an older man close at her heels.

It took Arin a second to place him. The last time he had seen the man pursuing Niphran, Arin had ordered five of his most trusted fifth-year recruits to transport his body to Jasad for burial.

The time before that, Essiya had been carrying his corpse out of Dar al Mansi and handed him to Jeru as her third trophy.

She’d wept for the first time that night.

“Niphran, stop!” Dawoud panted. “This is childish.”

“Stay away! I won’t let you touch her.” Niphran spun around, and Arin caged his breath.

The child in Niphran’s arms giggled at Dawoud, seemingly delighted with their game. Black curls bounced around her round face. “Go, Mama, go!”

Dawoud raised placating hands as he approached Niphran. “The Malik and Malika merely want the second Heir to join them for supper. No harm will come to her. I promise you.”

Sweat dripped from Niphran’s forehead. Fear had stripped away the carefree confidence of the woman in the last vision, leaving a pale and shaking parent in its stead. “I know what they want to do to her.”

Dawoud glanced around them, lips pursed in disapproval. “They would never harm an Heir of Jasad.”

Kicking her feet, Essiya tugged at her mother’s earlobe. “Mamaaaaaa.”

“They didn’t even want her, Dawoud. She links them to Omal permanently. Her existence obliterates their bargaining power.”

Dawoud’s brows knit together. “Omal disinherited her.”

“Only after my father offered them three percent more magic from our stores, and because Emre’s fool parents still don’t understand how powerful she is,” Niphran whispered, and the terror in her voice shredded through to Arin’s core.

“Are you willing to stand there and swear that Niyar and Palia would never think to mine a magic as potent as hers? That in a time of crisis, they would not turn to the readily available resource living under their roof?”

Dawoud hesitated. When Niphran took off in a sprint, Essiya’s gleeful squeals ringing behind her, he did not give chase.

A bearded man crouched over a sleeping Essiya, holding a cuff.

“Are you certain, Mawlati? Once I place these on the child, nothing and nobody can access her magic—including her.” The man ran his thumb over the etchings on the cuffs. Letters Arin had memorized front and back. “They may never come off.”

Niphran’s gaze didn’t waver from her daughter. “Put them on.”

She was more cunning than the stories gave her credit for , Waid said. Soraya and Hanim invested a small fortune in poison to keep the first Jasad Heir docile.

Poison?

The first cuff closed around Essiya’s wrist. The bearded welder’s eyes swirled gold and silver as the seams of the cuff sealed together. The etchings shined a brilliant white before the cuffs thinned, melding into Essiya’s wrist like a second skin.

As soon as the second cuff had sealed, Niphran withdrew a dagger from her boot and slit the welder’s throat.

His body thumped to Arin’s right. Niphran stepped over him and crawled into bed with her daughter, drawing her into her arms.

As I said. Waid chuckled. Savage little creature.

When Arin landed this time, he knew the Mufsid’s magic was nearing its end. He could see the gray of the cell behind the vision, fading in and out.

A muddy creek flowed around the trees of Essam Woods, their branches lush with summer leaves. The texture of the vision was off, not as vivid or heavy as Niphran’s had been.

I had only a single fingerbone to draw from.

It is a testament to my talent that I was able to pull anything at all from such a tiny bit of bone, let alone a whole memory , Waid sniffed.

Unfortunately, Essiya is just as clever as her mother.

We have never been able to recover more than a finger from Qayida Hanim’s bones.

Wherever Essiya buried that wretched traitor, it was far from wherever Hanim had imprisoned her.

A whip split the air, and Arin whirled around.

A girl knelt in the mud, a red line bisecting her naked back. A woman stood tall behind her. One hand held the whip, and the other deftly knotted her wavy hair into a bun at the base of her neck.

The girl’s arms hugged the tree, her wrists tied around the other side of it. A band of black fabric covered her eyes.

Arin had weathered fires and stab wounds, poisons and beatings. He’d begun training to become a soldier at an age most children were learning how to sound out their letters. His very existence as Commander necessitated a close and familiar understanding of the many ways he could be harmed.

In short, Arin thought he knew pain.

He thought he knew rage.

The whip fell again, Sylvia jerking silently beneath it, and it became abundantly clear Arin didn’t know a thing about either. His real education came in that moment, eviscerating the tentative hold on his stability he’d managed to maintain throughout these visions.

Arin would find the body of Qayida Hanim and kill her again. He would hunt down each of her bones and crush them between his bare hands.

The lashes on Sylvia’s back multiplied until a curtain of red poured from her neck to her waist.

She never made a single sound.

This memory is how we knew she was still alive , Waid murmured. This is how we found the Jasad Heir.

Arin didn’t hear him. His entire being had narrowed to the lift and fall of the whip against Sylvia’s back. He thought of a room in Orban, a towel easing to reveal layers upon layers of brutal scarring.

I have a legacy of disappointing people, you see.

Bile built in Arin’s throat until he thought he might retch. After an eternity, Qayida Hanim moved behind the tree and cut through the ropes around Sylvia’s wrists. The Jasad Heir slumped forward, curling in on herself.

“You may take it off,” Hanim said.

Sylvia swept off her blindfold, red-rimmed eyes rising to Hanim’s. Softly, she whispered, “Do you forgive me?”

Her teeth clattered. Arin couldn’t fathom how they weren’t rushing to clean her wounds, to stop the blood loss.

“You were a good girl.” Hanim held out the whip. “Clean it off in the river. When you’re done, we can bandage you by the fire.”

“Thank you.” Sylvia took the bloody whip.

The Citadel’s cell materialized around them, and Arin finally saw the Mufsid. He was slouched on the cot, skin sallow with fatigue.

“Can it be?” Waid chuckled weakly. “Is that a glisten I see in the Silver Serpent’s eyes? Now, now. That was only the story of a single finger. How might you weep if we had recovered the rest of Hanim’s bones?”

Arin let himself have just one minute. One minute to re-collect as many pieces as he could from where he’d left them scattered by the magic-mined farmer, across the rulers’ trading table, and in the woods by Sylvia. He wanted nothing more than to leave this cell, to go—anywhere else.

But in less than an hour, Arin would watch dawn rise on the death of Waid Entair, Bone Spinner of Crowns. He would leave Arin with more questions and die with the answers inside him.

Even now, the Mufsid’s temporary lucidity was fading; the roving eyes had returned, the restless twitching.

“What did you want from the Jasad Heir’s magic?” Arin’s voice hardened. “Did you hope to mine it?”

The Mufsid had rearranged himself onto his cot once more, obscuring himself in the gloom of the windowless walls. Only the yellow of his gaze was visible, piercing Arin with a chilling intelligence.

“Naughty Commander.” The whisper floated on the back of a caustic laugh. “Mining magic, draining it. Same thief in a different hat. What matters is not what is taken, but where it goes.”

The Mufsid gave Arin his back and spoke no more.