Page 51 of The Jasad Crown (The Scorched Throne #2)

When the magic swept through me this time, I welcomed it. I greeted an old friend with open arms.

I kneel in the mud, rain sluicing over my hair and shoulders. I failed. I failed. I failed.

The figures from the waterfall appeared beside me. We wouldn’t let her die. We would save her. We would not lose her the way we lost Dawoud. They knelt in a circle around Raya, shoulders touching.

“Essiya,” Rory repeated, low. “My child, magic cannot reverse death.”

“She lives, chemist,” we said. “Death has not laid its claim.”

One hand closed around Raya’s wound. The other, we pressed to the center of her chest. Together, we counted the beats.

One, two. She will live.

Three, four. She will be safe.

Five, six. She is ours.

Light bloomed in the center of Raya’s chest. It built, a sun burning through its mortal skin. Gold waves lapped over one another as it grew, searing into the eyes of the girls crouched around Raya. They cried out, turning away, but my eyes held steady.

I pressed down against her chest, her heart trapped between her spine and the heel of my hand, and her wound began to bleed. Silver blood poured from Raya’s chest and trickled onto the ground. Gallons and gallons of silver, pooling around us. Soaking our knees and swords.

Once given, it cannot be returned , the others whispered. Billows of gold unhinged like a ravenous mouth, unspooling out of Raya. If you make her ours, we cannot take it back.

I didn’t want anything back. There was no Mahair without Raya. These girls would not become vagrants at my hand. Raya’s story would not end today, not like this.

We pressed until a bone cracked in Raya’s chest.

A drop of silver slithered back into Raya’s wound. Then another, and another. Sliding into her skin, brightening her veins as we watched. The golden light flared in tides that could reach the ends of the world, rise as tall as the mountains on the edge of the sea.

We pressed our wrists together, the memory of silver cuffs trapping us never too far behind, and threw our arms open.

The face in the bucket of water smiles. Behind her, the mutilated bodies of the cats that wouldn’t play sway from the branches of her favorite trees.

The gold and silver in her eyes hold perfectly still, and she is too busy admiring them to notice the shadow stretching over the water, nor the shovel hurtling toward the back of her head.

As suddenly as they had flooded forth, the tides of gold receded, shrinking until they were a single glowing ember floating in the air.

Soft as a feather, it melted into the center of Raya’s forehead.

I gasped as my magic waned. The figures disappeared around me, emptiness following in their wake. I wanted to cry at the loss.

“What did you do?” Rory whispered, and his fear finally drew me away from the aching nothingness. Rory had an arm out as though to shield the girls from me. They cowered behind him, and two thoughts collided as one.

Why would he think I would hurt them?

Does he think he could stop me? I can strip their bones dry in the same time it takes him to waste my name on his lips.

A shudder rolled over me. I scrambled off of Raya, startling my horse. Rory and I stared at each other, wide-eyed, and I opened my mouth.

Except, I didn’t trust my voice. If I spoke, I wasn’t sure who would shape the words.

Me, or it .

The answer would remain unknown to us both, because Raya groaned. I crawled toward her, hovering without touching. Terrified of what my hands would do if they reached for her.

“Raya?” I said, tentative. “Can you hear me?”

A guttural groan. “I wish I couldn’t.”

The girls embraced one another, knees weakening with relief as we gathered around our fallen guardian. Everyone except Rory. He watched Raya as though she might grow claws and swipe off his head.

“Her wound is gone,” Daleel murmured in wonder. “Dania’s bloody axe, Sylvia, you healed her.”

“No cursing,” Raya admonished.

When she opened silver- and gold-streaked eyes, something inside me relaxed.

Ours , it said.

To avoid spiraling, I did what I knew best—I threw myself into battle.

I twisted in my saddle and sliced into a soldier’s spine just as he yanked his sword from a villager’s chest. The soldier collapsed atop the villager he had slain, and I spared a second to hope someone would pull him off.

Raya and Rory were safe in the keep with the other girls. Rory had tried to speak to me, but the battle still raged. I couldn’t hear what he had to say. I had no answers for him. No explanation for how Raya was not one of the many corpses strewn over Mahair.

Her eyes…

The back of my neck prickled. I froze as a soldier barreled toward me and earned a deep slice into my arm.

“Ihzary!” Namsa. Maia, maybe. I didn’t know. I didn’t care. The warning meant one thing.

I turned to the entrance.

Black-and-violet uniforms swarmed the edge of Mahair and formed even rows along the border. I counted forty-six Nizahl soldiers—far fewer than the Omalian force still battling inside Mahair, but ten times deadlier.

At the front, his arm thrust to the side to halt further forward movement, stood Arin.

The world narrowed, reshaping itself around the Nizahl Commander.

Unbelievably foolish, to lose touch with my surroundings when those surroundings contained soldiers valiantly attempting to run me through. Beyond stupid, to grip the reins of my horse so hard the leather cut into my palms. I couldn’t convince my chest to unfreeze long enough to draw in air.

He found me.

Silver hair brushed his collar, longer than the last time I had seen him in the flesh. The end of his coat lifted in the wind, setting flight to the ravens embroidered on the hem. Every lace on his vest perfectly tied, every stitch of his black pants neatly trimmed.

No chaos dared lay a finger on Arin of Nizahl. The icy Heir, the untouchable Commander, as pristine on the battlefield as in a royal court.

But when I looked into his eyes, there was nothing cold about them. Arin stared at me as though inches separated us, as though the sea of fighting did not merit a second’s attention. I felt scraped raw and exposed, more aware of myself than I had been in a long time.

My pulse pounded, the frantic thrum drowning out any competing sound. I needed to snap out of this. If he got ahold of me, it was all over. Queen Hanan, the fortress, Nuzret Kamel. Every option would be lost.

Even if Arin had begun to question his father and the truths he had grounded himself in his entire life, it wouldn’t stop him from apprehending me while he searched for the answers.

Arin scanned the flames leaping over the wall, the mudslide, the soldiers hemmed into the front entrance. Piecing together my strategy.

When his gaze met mine again, it glinted with pride.

Someone grabbed my sleeve. I only just managed to slow down in time to avoid ripping Efra’s arm from its socket.

“Do you know what you’re doing?” he hissed. He looked ahead, fixing on Arin with an expression somewhere between bone-deep fright and burning hatred.

My barrel of patience had scraped bottom, but I summoned enough to clasp the hand he had over my arm and say, “He will not enter unless we pass the wall or use magic. Chasing us now would require killing the villagers or the soldiers in their way, and it would be viewed as a declaration of support from Nizahl to the Omal crown. Nizahl absolutely forbids involvement in nonmagical conflicts within and between kingdoms.”

I glanced at Arin. He hadn’t moved, but his eyes had ticked to the spot where my hand covered Efra’s and gone curiously blank. “Arin would allow us to escape before he broke his kingdom’s laws. Unless we give him an opening, we are safe.”

An explosion behind us rattled through our bones, shaking the earth. Efra tackled me off the horse, using his body as a shield as flaming debris rained around us.

I shoved him off, swiping at the wood shavings burning through my clothes. “Damn it to the tombs,” I swore. “Just once, I would like to be wrong .”

More Omalian soldiers had arrived, entering in through the unprotected western borders of the village. They swarmed from the back of the main road, the flag of Omal hoisted at the fore. We were about to be penned in by Omalian soldiers on both sides.

“You need to use your magic if you want to save your precious village!” Efra snapped. “Otherwise, we need to evacuate the survivors and get away from here. We cannot risk your capture.”

Do not ask me to use my magic , I wanted to plead. You have no idea what it might cost.

I couldn’t ask them to leave. They wouldn’t. They would stay and fight until their bodies stacked over one another.

“Listen!” Dirt crusted Efra’s hair, muddying his clothes. “We can’t defeat them all.”

I knew Efra didn’t care about Mahair. He saw this as an unfortunate Omalian conflict with no bearing on Jasad or magic.

But this was my home. Mahair and everyone in it were mine . A piece of me would always remain here, and I wouldn’t let Felix take it.

“Not on our own.” I raised my head, meeting Arin’s unwavering gaze. I would need to run back to the keep and fetch the gloves I’d packed. “Tell me, how many people can your magic influence at the same time?”