Page 39 of The Jasad Crown (The Scorched Throne #2)

I probably looked as bewildered as Wes. The guardsman shifted, his knuckles ghosting over his collar.

In the training tunnels, I had noticed how the Nizahl guardsmen wore their unique insignia on different parts of their uniform.

Jeru kept his hidden under the flap of his chest pocket.

Wes, the collar of his shirt. Ren had worn his on the inside of his sleeve.

Vaun wore his pin on his chest; I remembered tearing it off his uniform when we fought.

“Ask, my liege. My answer will be my own.”

Dread lined my stomach at the rigidity of Arin’s profile. Whatever this task, he vehemently did not want to ask it of Wes.

“I cannot figure out where they are,” Arin said in a rush, half defeat, half aggravation. “I have spent days scouring my maps, but I would have felt them. I should have felt them.”

I shifted forward, straining to hear.

“I suspect that after our conversation, my father might detour to the mines before returning to the Citadel. I hope I’m wrong. I truly do.” Arin fell quiet, his struggle palpable.

“I don’t have the time to explain magic mining to you, nor do I believe it in your best interest to know the details.

It will suffice for you to understand these mines were used by Malika Palia and Malik Niyar to store the magic they drained from the Jasadi people—the magic my father and the rest of the kingdoms secretly divvied between them in a practice nearly as old as the woods we stand in. ”

If I had doubted the absence of my magic during these appearances to Arin, this moment would have confirmed it.

If I had my magic, the tree bearing my weight would be in flames.

In fact, every tree in my proximity would be in flames, and I would spread the inferno until it reached Supreme Rawain and charred him alive.

I tried to fight past the roaring in my ears. Supreme Rawain—Queen Hanan, King Murib, Sultana Bisai—they had all traded in the magic my grandparents mined from the lower wilayahs? They had been participants of the very practice they torched our kingdom for?

Any illusions I had held of my grandparents had been most effectively shattered over the course of the Alcalah, but this was another level entirely.

Not only did Gedo Niyar and Teta Palia murder our own people and redistribute their magic to the already-wealthy upper wilayahs, but to hand it over to Omal, Orban, Lukub, and Nizahl? To trade it like jewels or land?

And what did Arin mean, this was an old practice? An old practice of Jasad or of all the kingdoms? Sweet Sirauk, how far back did this go?

I was not in a state to think through this revelation, and I could already feel my insides squeezing, the bottomless void of my panic roiling. The earlier lull must have been a false calm. I pressed my knuckles to my mouth before Arin heard me gasping like a land-stranded fish.

Arin looked at his guardsman for a long moment. “When my father leaves, I want you to follow him.”

The reason for Arin’s solemnity eluded me a minute longer than it did Wes. Comprehension settled over the older man. The lines in his forehead smoothed.

Entirely too calm for someone who had just been asked to accept a death sentence.

If Wes was lucky, spying on the Supreme would see him thrown in prison and executed as a traitor.

If he were less lucky—if Arin was right and Rawain planned to leave the Citadel’s grounds to determine the security of highly illegal magic mines—then getting caught meant Wes would never return to Nizahl.

The guardsman would not be permitted to live long enough to send word back to his Commander.

Wes knelt before Arin and folded his hands over his bent knee. “I serve you, Arin of Nizahl, freely and of my own will. It is my honor and my duty, to whatever end.”

Arin caught Wes’s arm, hauling him back to his feet. They stood like that, arms clasped, a lifetime hanging between them.

“Do not get caught,” Arin said.

Wes grinned, briefly. “I won’t.”

“Thank you, Wes.”

They separated, and Wes reminded Arin of his regiment’s readiness to depart before taking his own leave. We watched him go.

I rested my forehead against the tree, grimacing at the scrape of sap dried into the bark.

Part of me wanted to follow Arin to the soldiers’ encampment, but what was the point?

I knew where they were going, and I could hazard a guess how many were accompanying him.

In many ways, this visit was an enormous boon—if Arin was headed to Orban to persuade Murib to open the trade routes, then I could predict his path and ensure ours would not cross it.

I should feel glad. I should feel anything other than the horrible pit in my stomach. The molten panic in my chest, steadily burning through me.

I needed to get a handle on myself before Namsa came to collect me for the journey.

They couldn’t see me like this. I had barely begun to find a place with them, to feel like a real leader.

Falling apart because of a couple of veins?

Because there was a small, tiny chance that when the cuffs fell away, the sudden resurgence of magic in my body after a lifetime of suppression had accelerated symptoms of magic-madness?

One second I was alone, and the next, my shoulders stiffened beneath the sharp point of a sword.