Page 4 of The Jasad Crown (The Scorched Throne #2)

Jeru turned his eyes down, but not before Arin caught the spill of pain.

Arin understood what he was asking of his guardsman.

His family had lived in the lower villages for generations, only lifted out of poverty thanks to Jeru’s position with the Heir.

Arin’s orders would see him enter his former home on royal horseback, a sword in hand, fighting against the people he’d almost died to protect.

“It is not certain yet,” Arin added. If Arin had his way, it wouldn’t even be close. “If I fail, can you be trusted in this charge?”

Thunder cracked outside as Arin waited. This was the moment he’d foreseen when he took a mud-streaked village boy and dressed him in the Citadel’s uniform. A crossroads of duty.

When Jeru faced Arin again, his features were resolute. “I won’t fail you again, my lord.”

“Good.” Arin turned to his maps. “Now get out.”

The Citadel’s library was useless.

With a groan, Arin flipped the cover of The Marvelous and Macabre Histories of the Awaleen shut and pushed it aside.

Piles of books lined the table, several left open on pages he had deemed worth a second glance. He rubbed the pads of his fingers, where dust had settled into his calluses. Hours and hours of poring over these books had so far yielded nothing but a faint headache and a guttering candle.

Arin set his elbows on the table and pressed his knuckles to his temples. His gloves were folded beside the latest four-hundred-page waste of his night. None of the books he spent his evenings leafing through discussed Jasad or the Jasad War beyond a few paltry, self-censoring lines.

He had also spent hours searching for verified accounts of magic-madness over the last several centuries. When it became a recognized affliction, how it presented in different kinds of magic, how quickly it accelerated. And once again—nothing.

Arin stood, scraping his chair back, and picked up the book to return to its shelf.

It would serve a better purpose as kindling for his hearth.

He studied the rest of the row, frown deepening into a scowl.

So many spines were cracked with age, lines running over the leather like rings around a tree.

How could such a wealth of information exist at his fingertips, but so much of it contain nothing of actual use?

Returning to his seat, Arin poured another glass of talwith, the thud of the bottle echoing in the spacious library. When he flipped the cover for the next book, Arin stopped short.

The Slow Death of Rovial: A History of Magic-Madness Then and Since.

Arin set aside his glass, drawing the book toward him. It sounded entirely too good to be true. There were only fifty pages in the entire text, and all of them were in Resar.

By the time Arin finished reading, black smoke curled from the candle by his elbow. Long shadows slipped across the walls, trailing over the shelves like curious ghosts. Dust motes swirled above the pools of moonlight spilling through the open window.

Arin wished he knew the author. The person responsible for a work of such scholarship deserved recognition—they deserved a name. They had managed to condense a lifetime of study into a text a fifth the size of the intellectually destitute tomes Arin had been reading all week.

He flipped through his notes, cross-checking them against the text to make sure he’d captured the right details.

Every hundred years, one notable case of magic-madness emerges. Every time, in every century, it was a Jasadi whose magic would drive them to madness.

The author had tracked the cases over the last five thousand years.

The earlier legends were recorded through carvings in Essam’s trees, and some of the pages were sparse where a particular story had been passed down orally in lower villages, since the communities were either not literate or avoided keeping records in fear of the higher courts.

The first known case after Rovial was a girl named Lena.

A welder’s daughter who loved to chase the cats around her village until she turned thirteen, when they found Lena covered in scratches after hanging every cat in the village from her favorite tree.

When they located the remains of the woman who tried to save the cats, her body had been turned inside out.

The next morning, they caught Lena in the middle of skinning the dogs.

The villagers killed her and burned her body.

The following century, a nineteen-year-old named Rath was imprisoned for putting a horde of Ruby Hounds under his thrall and compelling them to slaughter everyone in the Ivory Palace.

The Sultana managed to regain control of her Hounds eventually, but it stood as one of the largest massacres to ever occur in a royal court.

They only managed to keep Rath imprisoned for two hours—his magic, which should have been temporarily drained from such an expenditure, tore apart the guards. It also wound up destroying the entire dungeon and burying Rath beneath the debris.

The stories continued, each more gruesome than the next.

Only three variables remained constant: the magic-mad Jasadis were typically young when they were executed, they carried a staggeringly high quantity of magic, and nobody seemed to notice the signs of their sanity slipping away until it was too late.

Two of them, three hundred years apart, had disappeared into the Mirayah, never to be seen again.

Arin had needed to stop and reference a different text when he saw the long-forgotten name.

The Mirayah was a void for magical monstrosities—a shifting realm buried in Essam where the rules of magic did not apply, where beasts fled after the purge of Essam and escaped criminals sought refuge.

Few who found the Mirayah were ever seen again.

After magic had passed from the kingdoms, it seemed reasonable to assume the Mirayah had disappeared along with it.

Arin rubbed his eyes and stood, stretching his bones until they popped. He moved to the only window in the library. He took a deep breath, filling his chest with fresh air, and forced his circling thoughts to settle.

Beyond the three towering iron gates protecting the Citadel, the wilderness of Essam Woods waited with a predatory anticipation.

Magic may have run dry in the rest of the kingdoms, but Essam…

Essam had played host to countless wars between the Awaleen.

To bloodshed and magical atrocities Arin’s generous imagination could never stretch far enough to accommodate.

If the Mirayah had existed, it wouldn’t have faded like the magic of Lukub, Orban, and Omal.

It would not have weakened like Jasad’s.

Like a parasite, the Mirayah would sustain itself on the bleeding magic of the woods. It would be the eyes of Essam, staring back at Arin every night as he fought not to saddle his horse and ride into its waiting teeth. Its voice, whispering blood-tipped promises in his ear.

Arin couldn’t shake the feeling that if he struck out on his own, he’d find her.

Arin exhaled harshly, his breath misting the window. He hated this—hated fighting a force that could not be reasoned with, that refused to surrender any ground in Arin’s mind. He would give anything to reach inside his chest and tear out the rot of her. To close his eyes without seeing her face.

Unusual cruelty is your specialty , she had said once, her tone accusatory and full of spite.

And maybe she was right, but one thing Arin knew: He would never have done this to her.

He would never have let her step toward this precipice with a lie wrapped around her neck.

He would never have watched her willingly drop herself over the edge.

Arin took a handkerchief and wiped his breath from the window. Easier for the woods to keep watch.

Lighting another candle, Arin opened the book again.