Page 36 of The Jasad Crown (The Scorched Throne #2)

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

SYLVIA

I n the face of catastrophically bad news, the mountain decided to throw a party.

I watched in bemusement as Maia’s husband—a title which, upon introduction, had shocked me speechless—spun her in the middle of the dining hall. The low tables had been pushed to the sides of the room, leaving plenty of empty space in the center for dancing.

Lateef reclined on the ground, his back propped against the long stone counter in front of the kitchen.

He’d gone around the room collecting the hastily tossed cushions and piled them into his corner, where he lounged like a bird guarding its nest. A gaggle of children sat cross-legged in front of him, listening raptly as he regaled them with the tales of Goha and his silly donkey.

On the kitchen floor, a row of young girls scooped warm rice out of the enormous pots they had carried in from the firepits outside and rolled it into thinly cut and steamed grape leaves.

At the counter, six boys traded insults as they chopped piles of parsley and onion.

I winced sympathetically at their watering eyes.

“We save mahshy for special occasions,” Namsa shared with a tone of great magnanimity. We were clustered on the single cushion Lateef hadn’t managed to steal, observing the revelry and hustle from our own quiet corner.

“Probable death is a special occasion?” I curled my legs in time to avoid a stampede of boys running past, cackling at the top of their squeaky, prepubescent lungs.

“Well, yes.” Namsa shot me a sly smile. “When death lives around the corner, you learn to pay no attention to its shadow. Besides, we finally have a plan. A goal to put into motion. Soon, change will come. One way or the other.”

In the center of the room, Efra played the tubluh with flabbergasting skill, drumming as though he hadn’t spent the better part of an hour screaming himself hoarse as he was flung around the surface of the sea.

“I don’t understand why everyone is so calm,” I said.

“The informant was nearly in tears. Omal’s lower villages are overflowing with soldiers, and Felix has patrols posted across the borders.

Vaida is expanding her territory by miles in every direction within Essam, and she floods each gained acre with her soldiers.

Orban closed their trade routes—their trade routes, which I might remind you, are the only way Jasadis in other kingdoms can even cross to Jasad.

” I massaged my forehead, ignoring the faint echo of Raya ranting about wrinkles. “And Nizahl…”

“We don’t know what the Silver Serpent is commissioning. It could be nothing.”

“Nothing, Namsa? Yara said every blacksmith in Nizahl was asked to fashion a special kind of weapon. Rawain spent half his early reign amassing an arsenal beyond any the kingdoms could compete with. What kind of new weapon would the Heir need thousands of?”

Namsa picked at the dirt under her nails with a marked lack of nerves. “Do you know what Nizahl can’t commission?”

I narrowed my eyes. “What?”

“Magic.”

I groaned. “I’m serious. The Jasadis are trapped. If they manage to survive leaving their kingdoms, they will be killed on the way to Jasad. If not by soldiers, then by the creatures we unleashed at Galim’s Bend.”

“The creatures will just disappear into the Mirayah.”

A plate appeared in front of me, heaped with a mountain of mahshy, missaka, and a grilled tomato.

My mouth watered embarrassingly fast. Maia mistook my pause as dismay and immediately began rocking on her heels.

“We usually use ground beef with the missaka, but beef is difficult to transport or preserve in the mountains. Potatoes make a decent alternative, and I have always thought the key part of the dish was the spiced tomato sauce, of which you will find plenty—”

I took the plate from Maia, curtailing what was sure to be the start of her long saga on sauce. “Thank you,” I said. “It looks delicious.”

She beamed, sliding down the wall to join me and Namsa on the ground. “What were you talking about?”

“Namsa appears to believe that the Mirayah is a real place,” I said, with the sort of patronizingly indulgent tone one reserves for speaking in front of children or the senile.

“Next, we will discuss if she sees the Awaleen standing at the foot of her bed while she sleeps. Do they lean over and whisper sweet prophecies in your ear, or—”

An elbow caught me in the side, rocking me toward Maia. Gathering my plate close, I glared at Namsa. “My mahshy!”

“The Mirayah is real, Essiya,” Maia said, slicing into a baked potato circle soaked in her beloved sauce.

I stared. One was funny, but two was worrisome. “Surely, you don’t believe there are pockets of ancient magic scattered around Essam Woods? Actual realms of rogue magic?”

“What would you call Ayume Forest? You were there. You must have felt the perversion of Dania’s magic left over from the Battle of Ayume.

That battle happened several millennia ago, yet to this day, the very air in Ayume can kill you.

” Namsa snatched a finger of mahshy from my plate before I could swat her away.

“I don’t believe there are entire realms of rogue magic in Essam, no.

But magic was born in those woods. It is in Essam’s very soil, the roots that stretch across our kingdoms, the river we rely on for life.

Who knows what other worlds it sustains? ”

“I lived in Essam for five years,” I said tersely. “The woods are disturbing and unsettling, but they pledge no power of their own. If there was a realm of rogue magic wandering around, I would surely have stumbled upon it.”

“How?” Oil glistened at the corner of Maia’s mouth.

She wiped it on the inside of her wrist. “You were hidden from the strongest tracking magic for a decade. The Mirayah is as ancient as Essam. If you couldn’t be found and it did not want to be found, you could have walked straight past each other. ”

I opened my mouth to argue and reconsidered. Flimsy as it might be, she had a point. The cuffs had protected me against most magic, repelling it as strongly as it trapped my own. It was not entirely impossible that a similar force existed to hide some pocket of magical fluctuation in Essam.

It was just mostly impossible.

I changed the subject before they could jump on my hesitation. “When do we leave?”

Namsa shot me a knowing smirk. I squinted, not entirely convinced the woman I’d brought back from the cliffside was the same woman who had kicked my liver into my skull the first day we met.

Who knew she had such emotional range? Until this morning, I would have said she was capable of two expressions: scowling and lightly scowling.

“Ten hours. The journey to the Omal palace will take roughly five days, if we push our magic to its limits.”

Our. Foreboding tightened my throat. “Who else is coming with us?”

“Me!” Maia grinned. “Lateef, of course, and Medhat. Efra, Namsa, Kenzie—”

I held up a finger. “There it is.”

Maia paused. “There what is?”

More and more, I marveled at how the Urabi had managed to evade capture for years. “The limit to how many people can move together in Essam Woods without alerting a patrol. In fact, I would be more comfortable if we stripped out two, but I could be persuaded otherwise.”

Maia’s gaze slid past me to Namsa, and my lips compressed into a flat line. Yet another silent look. Malika this, Mawlati that, all the airs and none of the actual authority.

“I agree with the Malika,” Namsa said lightly. “The kingdoms are on alert. We will need to move inconspicuously.”

“Speaking of moving.” I stood, keeping an eye on the platters of food maneuvering around the room.

“How exactly are we getting to the Omal palace? You said five days, but Omal is nowhere near the mountains. It would take two weeks to cut across the Desert Flats, travel around Ayume, and move through Essam. If we factor in the added patrols and border sentries…” I tipped my hand side to side as I estimated how long it would take seven people to navigate the new obstacles. “Closer to three weeks.”

For the first time, a hint of nerves showed itself in Namsa’s restless fingers, picking at a loose thread by her pocket.

“Right. Under normal circumstances, you would be right. Our method of transport to Omal might be a bit… disconcerting. It is difficult to explain, but we will reach Omal much faster than three weeks.”

She yanked at the thread as though it had spat on her mother’s face, so intent on avoiding my gaze that I couldn’t help but comfort her. “As long as it isn’t the spine of the Sareekh, I will not be disconcerted for long.”

Maia giggled too loudly and slapped a hand over her mouth.

“Not quite the Sareekh.” Namsa tore the thread loose and gestured at the crush of Jasadis entering the dining hall. “If you want more stuffed squash, you’d better hurry.”

Sitting naked on the floor of my room, I stared into the mirror and counted the veins a third time.

It had taken a while to hunt them all down. One was a mere strip of gold under my right breast; another curved quietly along the joint of my hip. My belly, my leg, the inside of my thigh. All visited by a fresh vein.

A vein for each time I used my magic.

I dragged the blanket from the bed and wrapped it around myself, unable to move from the floor, petrified to leave the mirror and rise to a new reality where my paranoia became fact.

Nobody could see the veins but me. I’d tested it three times since the last vein appeared. When I held out my hand to take the plate from Maia, I’d kept my palm open and exposed. The vein was impossible to miss.

I traced the lines on my skin. A vein for each time I appeared to Arin. A vein for the magic I’d thrown around while drowning, before the Sareekh arrived. A vein for each kitmer I created on the cliffside. A vein for the magic I’d used to catapult Efra around Suhna Sea.

I had seen the veins multiply, and I had ignored them. I had felt the strange presence of my magic, pressing against the back of my head, and I had brushed it off.

My breath shuddered, growing shallower. The worry I’d throttled into submission over the last month broke from its captivity, submerging me into the panic I had fought so hard to avoid.

The figures from the waterfall. The memory of the woman dying at my hand. The visions my magic produced each time I asked for more of it.

Something was wrong with me.

I bent forward, pressing my forehead to the cold stone floor. The lifelong habit came on instinct, and my palm covered my wildly pounding heart.

One, two. I am alive.

Three, four. I am safe.

Five, six. I am not losing my mind.

My teeth chattered, shaking along with the rest of me.

I reared away from the floor, gasping for air.

The last time panic had consumed me so wholly had been the day after the first trial, when Supreme Rawain walked into my chambers to congratulate his Champion and call me a merit to Nizahl.

It had taken hours to regain myself afterward, and I didn’t have hours.

We were to leave for Omal in an hour. I was supposed to pack.

If we failed to convince Queen Hanan to reinstate me as the Omal Heir, we would have no choice but to raise the fortress. I would have to read the enchantment that burned Qayida Hend alive. The amount of magic it would demand—the amount of magic I would need to expend—

I tipped my head back, averting my gaze from the mirror, and focused on taking tiny sips of air.

Magic-madness was not real.

I exhaled shakily.

I was not losing my humanity like Rovial.

The fear, once ignited, started dripping in the back of my mind. Staining each thought, bleeding my world red.

The bands around my lungs tightened. I tried to remind myself that there was an array of possible explanations for the veins.

I barely understood anything about magic, let alone a magic that had been trapped beneath my cuffs for most of its existence.

For all I knew, I was terrified of nothing more than a cosmetic quirk.

I curled against the ground, drawing the blanket over my head. My breathing, already slowing, stopped.

Magic-madness wasn’t an option I could calmly think through and plan for. This was not a reality I could navigate even in theory.

In the cover of dark, it was much easier to notice the pinch of magic at the back of my skull.

I shoved my head out from under the blanket in time to see the room disappear.