Page 5 of The Jasad Crown (The Scorched Throne #2)

CHAPTER THREE

SYLVIA

C hildren’s laughter skittered in the dark.

Ugh. More brats. Didn’t the keep have enough mouths to feed already? Raya insisted on taking in every dusty, nose-picking little orphan Mahair coughed out. There were more cows than people in this Omalian village; where did she keep finding these children? Under a hat?

A voice broke through the chatter, soft and melodious. Sefa?

In the emptiness, Sefa’s name sparked like flint skating across stone.

This woman wasn’t Sefa. She couldn’t be. I sent Sefa away.

How did I send Sefa away?

“Many, many years ago, there once lived a brave and honorable Awal. His name was Rovial, and he was the kindest of all the Awaleen. Do we remember how many Awaleen there were?” the voice that wasn’t Sefa’s said.

“Four!”

“Five!”

“Minna wins! The four Awaleen of our earth were Dania, Rovial, Kapastra, and Baira. Before there was us, there was them. Kapastra became the mother of Omal, known for her terrifying rochelyas and glorious weather magic. Baira was the beacon of beauty, and she built Lukub in her image. Battle beat in Dania’s bones, and she sang its bloody song through Orban.

But Rovial was different than his siblings.

He wasn’t searching for a place he could shape to mirror his own spirit.

More than anything, Rovial wanted the land to speak to him in its own language.

He wandered for years and years, looking for such a land.

All his siblings found his plan ridiculous, but Rovial wouldn’t give up.

Some say Rovial’s heart was molded from the lights that hang in the night sky, and it lit a path only he could see. ”

My fingers twitched. Oh. I had fingers.

“One day, Rovial grew weary from his travels. He found a sturdy tree to rest beneath for the night.”

A date tree. The shape sprouted in my head. I could almost feel the rough bark scratching my palms. Suddenly, it wasn’t a strange voice telling the story, but Hanim’s.

No. Hanim was dead. I killed her twice.

Tension knotted between my shoulder blades. The darkness rippled.

“Rovial slept deeply and soundly. The best sleep of his whole immortal life. When he woke, a rabbit stood near his head. It was chewing on a fallen date and watching him. He stroked its ears and marveled at its tranquility. The air filled his chest with new life. He ate from the tree that had watched over him through the night. ‘This land is for me, and I am for this land,’ he said. But the first problem appeared when he tried to find water to wash down his date. The river cut too far north of the land, and the seawater sweeping the other shore couldn’t be swallowed.

So Rovial walked until he found the nearest spot where Hirun flows and pulled it south, stretching the river until it ran all the way down to Janub Aya.

This way, the people of his land would never need to travel too far for water. ”

Water. I needed water. My mouth tasted awful. I probed the darkness for a way out, but it held firm.

“That land, Rovial’s land, is our true home. It was peaceful before they burned it to ash.”

“Is there anything left?” a child’s voice asked.

“We are what’s left of Jasad.”

I am what remains.

My eyes flew open. I was moving before my body remembered how.

I hit the ground in a crouch. A group of children sitting in a circle shrieked, rushing to their feet and stampeding to the door.

The young woman at the front froze, watching me with wide eyes.

I reached for the knife in my boot without thinking.

No boot. They’d taken my clothes. My knives. A simple brown dress covered my body.

With the attention I wasn’t using to take stock of my surroundings, I assessed the willowy stranger.

She couldn’t weigh more than my left leg.

Black hair fell in a frizzy curtain around her pale, round face.

Bright brown eyes roved over me with too much fascination and not nearly enough caution.

My fists would be more than enough to get her out of my way.

“I can’t believe it. You woke up. We were so afraid you wouldn’t. They had to put more than a dozen arrows of sim siya in your body before your magic stopped. A normal person just needs one.” She paused. “I’m Omaima, by the way. You can call me Maia. If you want.”

Had she just offered me her nickname in the same sentence she described tranquilizing me like a feral animal?

“Where am I?” I ground out.

If possible, the girl’s eyes grew rounder. “You don’t remember?”

I took a step toward her and nearly crumpled. Maia backed to the door, fumbling for the handle. My legs—they were shaking. My hands, my jaw. A clacking sound scraped in my ears, and I recognized it as my teeth knocking against one another.

I reached for my legs—and stopped short.

My wrists were bare. Not a single remanent of the cuffs I’d worn almost my entire life showed itself on my skin.

The world bucked and heaved as I struggled to understand.

I remembered kneeling before Rawain to plead for Sefa and Marek’s lives.

My cuffs falling to my feet when I rose, declaring my true name.

The kitmer borne of my magic roaring in the center of the Citadel’s ballroom and the entire wing of the castle crashing around us.

The sting of arrows dissolving into my skin and the strange faces surrounding me as the world faded to black. Had it all been real?

“Malika Essiya.”

I snapped to attention as a woman appeared in the spot Maia had occupied.

The girl must have taken advantage of my stupor to fetch her.

The newcomer’s hair was gathered in a severe bun, and a series of white scars forked through the brown skin of her throat.

A dagger the length of my forearm dangled from the belt at her waist. The muscles on her arms bulged as she crossed them over her chest.

My fists would not be enough against this one.

“You’re one of the Urabi,” I said accusingly, scouring the room for anything I could use to protect myself. If I could get her close, maybe I could wrestle the dagger from her.

“I am. My name is Namsa. It is a pleasure to meet you, Malika Essiya.”

I flinched. She kept calling me that, and my nerves were too raw to tolerate the added scrape of the title.

“You drugged and abducted me from the Victor’s Ball.”

“We see it as drugged and rescued.”

“Oh, well if you see it that way.” I balled my fists. “Let me leave.”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible.” Namsa didn’t bother with the pretense of regret. She stayed cool in the face of my unraveling temper. “Your safety is our highest priority.”

My nostrils flared. She had unwittingly stomped right on one of the few threats someone could make to drive me straight out of my sanity. The last time I had felt trapped, I fled into Essam and dangled my bleeding body over the rocky bank of a river. The time before that, I’d left behind a corpse.

“Get out of my way.” My muscles, sore from disuse, bunched in preparation.

She set her feet. “Mawlati—”

I swung, fist colliding squarely with her right eye socket. An odd whine slipped from her mouth before she raised her arm to block my next blow.

She defended against each blow I tried to strike, not ceding a single inch. I couldn’t get close enough to reach for the dagger, nor could I maneuver around her to the door.

It took me longer than it should have to notice she hadn’t raised a hand against me once.

“Fight back!” I snapped. “What game is this?”

Namsa wiped the blood under her nose. “We aren’t in the habit of striking our leaders here, Mawlati.”

“Stop calling me that!” I shoved her shoulders. She went back on her heels, but again, her arms remained poised only to defend.

The resigned set of her jaw, the weary pull of her brow. I stopped in my tracks, furling and unfurling my stinging knuckles.

She wouldn’t fight me. No matter how hard I hit or for how long, she wouldn’t strike me back.

In the realization, I heard the ghost of my own voice, teasing and inquisitive.

“Do you train the new recruits yourself?”

Arin sighed. “Rarely. They are too frightened of me. They will simply obey.”

“Is obedience not what a Commander should seek?”

“Obedience should be conscious, not instinctual.”

Something vast and sickening cracked open inside me.

Arin.

I staggered back, catching the edge of a dresser.

My mind curled into itself, shutting off the memory before it could spawn more.

I couldn’t think about him. I couldn’t remember the way he’d looked at me before my cuffs fell away—the depths of the betrayal reflected in the eyes that only moments before had been gazing into mine as though they might never be convinced to look away.

“Are you all right?” Namsa lowered her arms, taking a cautious step in my direction.

A mistake.

I hit her in the stomach and shoved her to the side as hard as I could. Without waiting to see where she landed, I sprinted toward the door.

Pretty as Arin’s notions of honor and responsibility were, they were Arin’s alone.

My rules were simpler: survive, survive, and survive. Feel guilty about the means later.

A grip on my hair reeled me backward just as I crossed the threshold, dragging me into the room by my curls.

Namsa shoved me to the ground, releasing her absurdly tight grip on my hair. She scowled down at me, her nose a mess of clotted blood, twin streams running over her lips and chin.

“Since we’re playing dirty,” she said, and proceeded to kick me in the stomach like my organs had done her a personal disservice. She did it without fanfare, without even pulling her leg back far enough to give me warning.

Pain erupted in my middle. I gasped, curling around my stomach and coughing violently.

“I think you ruptured something,” I choked out.

The coughs turned into ugly hacks. Concern hedged out Namsa’s wariness, and she knelt by my side.

Baira’s blessed hair, it wasn’t fun if it was this easy.