Page 41 of The Jasad Crown (The Scorched Throne #2)

Damn him. “I bet the Mufsid blamed Hanim for the fortress falling. Richly ironic, if you ask me. Hanim didn’t sack Usr Jasad.

She might have written the false enchantment, but who read it?

” I wondered how much Arin knew about what had happened on the other side of the fortress the day it fell.

It wasn’t until Soraya’s vision that I learned Usr Jasad had fallen before the fortress, ravaged at the hands of its own people.

“Soraya was working for Hanim, by the way. They were poisoning my mother in Bakir Tower and passing it off as an affliction of her mind.”

At the mention of Soraya’s name, Arin’s face went curiously still.

My former attendant was the same woman who had given him the scar on his throat.

She had managed the impossible and infiltrated the Citadel under an assumed identity, but instead of targeting Rawain, she had tried to kill his adolescent son.

I still didn’t understand why; had I been in her position, I would have shoved Rawain’s scepter through the other side of his skull while I could.

Despite the sumptuous temptation I’d laid before him, Arin didn’t bite. It seemed he had hit his limit of human conversation for the day.

“What I know for certain is that your father expected it to fall. The Blood Summit, the march on Jasad, the fortress—he planned every moment, accounted for every detail. An artist of destruction, that man. I nearly admire it.”

“Is this how you amuse yourself?” My triumph at prodding him out of his pen of silence faded fast. His voice stayed crisp and infuriatingly even, as though my insults were as insubstantial as a raindrop hitting the surface of a river.

“You lie awake at night and run in the same circles of suspicion until you tire?”

The same strategy, but applied to much greater success. He wanted to provoke, to fluster. At this rate, he’d probably succeed much faster than I would, so I pressed my tongue to the back of my teeth and reassessed my approach.

There was one method he wouldn’t see coming. One front where our weapons hadn’t previously crossed, where our moves had not yet been charted.

Years of proximity to Marek caught up to me in an instant.

I let my head loll against the tree as the blanket slid below my bare shoulders, and I twisted my lips into a taunting smile.

“I have nothing better to tire me at night. How would you suggest I amuse myself, Your Highness?” The question emerged low and inviting.

When Arin stared at me, momentarily dumbstruck, my laugh blew a cool breath over the last embers of panic still flickering in my chest. I crossed my legs at the ankle, and the blanket parted around my knees.

Arin’s gaze flicked to my calves, and I belatedly remembered the veins.

Fortunately, the one on my right leg ran up the back of my calf. Out of sight.

The reminder doused me in cold water. It would be an absolute disaster if Arin discovered the veins. If the exchange I had witnessed between Rawain and Arin was any indication, the Nizahl Heir had stepped over a line and into a territory of unspeakable danger.

Arin had begun to question the Supreme.

Discovering that my magic was manipulating my memories, superseding my will, and leaving traces across my body?

There was only one conclusion Arin would come to, and why wouldn’t he?

I had no other conclusion to offer. No other explanation for why my magic and I interacted like strangers who had not quite decided whether the other meant them ill.

“So much time you have spent worrying about where we’re hiding,” I said. “Perhaps you should have spent some of it worrying about what your father is hiding right under your nose.”

A distant shout echoed past the throng of trees. “Your Highness!”

I inclined my head toward the sound. “Your men await you, my lord.”

Arin didn’t glance in the direction of his camp. In one of his long-legged strides, the gap between us suddenly closed. Startled, I stumbled away from the tree and tripped over the sword he’d driven into the ground.

Two things happened at once. The blanket, which slipped when I tried to catch the sword’s hilt, was caught in a gloved fist. Before I could careen to the ground, Arin’s other arm went around my waist, hauling me into his chest.

Pressed together from shoulder to knee, I counted the rise and fall of his chest as though it were my own breath traveling through him. Eventually, I tipped my chin back, meeting the patient gaze above me.

“There you are.” His chuckle brushed my forehead, sending heat racing over my skin. “You want my suggestions on how you should amuse yourself?”

I gripped his lapels, viscerally aware of the brush of leather at my collarbone where he held my blanket aloft.

“I have some thoughts on the matter.” The silky pitch wrung a shiver out of me.

I shouldn’t have offered this new angle to our game, not when I was just as likely to lose. Just from standing pressed against Arin, my heart had apparently decided the inside of my chest was no longer its preferred residence and was attempting to pound its escape through my ribs.

As though he could read every thought warring in my head, a slow smile curved over Arin’s lips. I could feel every single strap of his vest against my chest. I had a notion that if I dropped the blanket, I might find their impressions stitched into my skin.

He thought he was winning.

The thought annoyed me back to myself. Seduction might not come as naturally to me, but then, seduction rarely worked on Arin anyway.

How many stories had I heard in Mahair about the Nizahl Commander’s rejection of perfectly suitable royals or the most coveted women of the season?

Arin’s control over himself was merciless.

He allowed himself no quarter for error.

As long as he remained so tightly wound, no one could ever snag a thread to unravel him.

I remembered the snide remarks I’d made to Jeru and Wes as they escorted me to the training tunnels.

Oh dear, did you think lust overcame your Heir? My caustic laugh. Are you calling your Commander frigid?

Despite the tight fit of our bodies, I drew my arm out to grab his chin and yank his face toward me.

He offered no resistance. He let me cage his jaw in my hand, his eyes rapt on mine.

What I understood of desire wouldn’t fill the eye of a thimble, but I knew mine didn’t feel like what Marek described or what the girls at the keep gushed about.

I wanted to taste his pulse and trace the sharp curve of his hip.

I wanted his poison-tipped tongue and his moon-stricken hair, my nails in his thighs and my lips at his throat.

But I also wanted to crawl into his chest until the rest of the world went dark and quiet.

I was losing the battle against my dread, flagging beneath the force of my uncertainty.

I had been fighting alone since I was ten years old, and the thought of trusting someone else to fight for me, to fight alongside me…

the force of my wanting pulled me apart, exposed every crack and scar where the world had taken a swing.

“Come back, Suraira.” Arin tilted his chin in my grip. Something seized my spine when the corner of his mouth brushed my thumb, his lips too soft for a man who rarely used them for anything other than chiseling daggers out of every conversation. “You’re hiding again.”

Suraira. Two names in my possession, yet Arin chose to name me after a Nizahlan demon of mishap said to haunt Sirauk Bridge and lure the unwary to their doom.

I rasped a laugh, and with no small amount of force, welded myself back together. Maybe someday I could rest behind someone else’s armor and trust it to hold the world away, but it wouldn’t be today.

“Hiding is what I do best.” I flashed him a grin. “You and your ocean of maps still haven’t found me.”

He offered me an arch look. “Is that what you think?”

“It’s what I know. You can try to track me until my hair is as silver as yours, but if you could have found me, you already would have.” I slid my hand from his chin to the back of his neck.

Arin swallowed, and for a second, I wondered if he had ever wanted to rest behind someone else’s armor. If he would ever trust me to hold the world away.

“Why should I bother tracking you when I need only to wait?” He pressed the words against my temple. “The moment you leave the mountains, you’re mine.”