Page 52 of The Jasad Crown (The Scorched Throne #2)

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

ARIN

L ives were ending a handful of paces away from him. On the horizon, flames crackled over thatched rooftops. Gray smoke billowed into the placid sky. The acrid scent of burning straw smothered them.

These were events demanding Arin’s full and undivided attention. He should be devising methods to circumvent the laws preventing him from marching into the mayhem and extracting the Jasad Queen. He should be attentive to any opening they would give him to cross the border into Omal.

But Arin couldn’t seem to focus beyond the way the man had put his hand on her arm. How she had covered it with her own.

A girl no older than twenty screamed as a soldier on horseback grabbed a handful of her hair. He thrust his sword, and the sound cut off abruptly. Her body dropped, joining the rising number on the ground.

“Sire—” One of the third-years, Riddah, stepped forward, only to meet the resistance of Arin’s arm.

“Hold,” Arin ground out. He loathed standing and watching as much as they did.

It was a massacre. Felix had sanctioned an execution of entire villages, extinguishing livelihoods and families in minutes.

They had committed no crime. The only danger they posed was to Felix’s image, which had already gone through the mud and back again.

A massacre on this scale was purposeless cruelty, solely intended for massaging his ego and sending a message.

But Nizahl could not intervene. This line could not be crossed.

The longer Arin watched Sylvia, the harder it became to remember why.

Her sword sliced through a soldier’s neck, severing it in one neat swing.

She leaned back in her saddle, narrowly avoiding another soldier’s sword.

It pierced the empty air where her torso had been, and she grabbed the hilt, trapping the soldier’s arm as she brought her sword onto it.

He screamed as his hand fell into her lap, the hilt spasming from his orphaned fingers.

She silenced his cries with his own weapon, shoving his sword through his chest and kicking him out of his saddle.

Her braid swung from one shoulder to the other as she moved with ruthless efficiency to her next target.

Arin could watch her fight until weeds grew around his boots, and he had the sense he would never tire.

“Uh…”

The dumb sound from Riddah forced Arin’s attention back to the village’s entrance, where a row of Omalian soldiers had gone still as stone. Snarls rippled over their faces. Fingers clenched and unclenched around sword handles.

As one, they veered to where Arin and the Nizahl soldiers stood.

A current of magic vibrated in the air, pricking Arin’s senses to high alert.

The Omalian soldiers kicked their horses into motion, swords aloft and pointed in their direction. Attacking Nizahl soldiers on neutral ground while they stood by, doing nothing?

A small smile touched the corners of Arin’s lips.

Why… it tasted like political pandemonium. So delicious Arin wanted seconds.

“Hold!” Arin shouted. Laughter bubbled in his chest. Clever, clever Suraira.

“If they attack, you have my clearance to enter the village and drive out the Omalian soldiers. Do not throw your spears unless it is in close contact—if any of you kill a villager out of carelessness, I will leave your fate to their family.”

The Omalian soldiers burst through the entrance and vaulted over the bodies half-buried in the mudslide. In seconds, they would be upon them. A ripple of anticipation flowed between his men.

Arin dropped his arm. “Now!”

His soldiers streamed around him, steel crashing into steel, horses rearing as their riders tumbled from their backs. Arin picked his way around the mess, tucking his hands into the pockets of his coat, and entered Mahair.

Another vibration of magic preceded a swarm of shrieks coming from the main road. Arin spared a glance at the people bent in half, hands pressed to their ears. The magic slammed into him and dispersed, as insubstantial as smoke barreling into a wall. An interesting tactic from one of the Jasadis.

Ash blanketed the sky, gray specks gently raining over the bodies of the fallen.

Where was she?

A sword slashed Arin’s sleeve. He ducked the next swing and struck out, hauling the soldier attached to the arm off his horse and to the ground.

The soldier struggled, but Arin held him fast. His hands framed the Omalian soldier’s head and twisted.

A hard crack, and the soldier’s struggling body went still.

Arin tossed him aside and frowned at the tear in his sleeve.

By the time he had reached the middle of the main road, he had disposed of another four soldiers without catching sight of her.

“Kenzie!” The bone-chilling cry tore across the melee.

A fair-haired man raced to the collapsing body of a woman.

A red glow poured from his cupped hands, and Arin stopped short at the twin spheres of flame that shot through the air.

They landed on an Omalian soldier, enveloping him in fire.

The horse reared, unseating its burning rider, and galloped in the opposite direction.

Three unique magics Arin had encountered in the last ten minutes alone. How many did the Urabi have among them?

He walked toward the crouched Jasadi, who sobbed as he tried to stem the blood pouring from the young woman’s stomach. Arin didn’t need to get much closer to deduce she had already passed. Another Jasadi?

“Medhat, watch out!”

Arin whirled around. There she was—leaping over the bodies of the fallen, clothes tattered and bloodied. An Omalian soldier rode past Arin, raising his broadsword to lop off the weeping Jasadi’s head.

With no real urgency, Arin picked up the spear lying beside the torched soldier and dusted off flecks of crisped flesh. He leaned against the wall, watching her sprint toward the pair on the ground.

Arin raised his arm, shifting his weight to the back of his foot. He waited until the Omalian soldier’s sword curved down, the momentum guaranteed to slice the sobbing Jasadi’s head clean from his shoulders.

Arin threw.

Three-pronged and short-handled, the spear had been designed to pin wild boars at short range.

Arin had thrown high, hedging the weight of the spear against the distance.

A howl tore from the Omalian soldier as the spear skewered him through the shoulder, sundering through flesh and bone.

The sword dropped inches from the weeping Jasadi as the soldier tumbled from his horse.

The impaled soldier’s ankle caught in the stirrup, and his hoarse shouts echoed behind him as the horse took off, dragging his body over the burning debris and scattered corpses littering the village grounds.

Arin had barely lowered his arm from the throw when he was raising it again, this time to slam aside the knife barreling toward him.

Arin grabbed her wrist, holding firm as she tried to jerk free, and dragged her back against his chest. He twisted her arm so her own knife balanced at the underside of her throat.

“Found you,” Arin murmured in her ear. She tipped her chin up to glare at him, ignoring the blade at her throat.

This close, Arin could see every fleck of brown in her velvet dark eyes, read every emotion like it was written in a language he was born to speak.

“I warned you what would happen if you left the mountains.”

“It would have been embarrassing if you hadn’t found me,” she said. “I was worried I might have to start drawing signs.”

Amusement swelled in his chest. “Is this my thanks for saving your weeping friend?”

“I had it handled. I didn’t need your help.”

Arin did not have a hope of stopping his grin, any more than he could halt his lungs from drawing in the scent of her.

She smelled terrible—like mud and river mold—but underneath it was the unmistakable sweetness of Sylvia.

She was here. Not a ghost in his head or a magic-made apparition in his chambers.

“I suppose you didn’t need my help driving out the Omalian soldiers entering from the west, either. It was mere good fortune they attacked my men under the persuasion of magic, facilitating our intervention.”

An elbow drove into Arin’s middle in the same instant that a set of teeth clamped around his gloved wrist. He withdrew before he accidentally sliced into her, allowing Sylvia to spin out of his arms and face him from the safety of a few feet’s distance.

He rubbed the teeth marks in his glove, his ridiculous grin widening.

Malika of Jasad or not, she still had the temperament of a deranged goose.

“I will not let you take me,” she warned. She raised a sword, adjusting her grip on the hilt. She wore gold gloves nearly identical to the ones she had kept during the trials. “Don’t force my hand, Arin.”

Arin took a light step toward her. “I thought I taught you better than this.” Another step. “Never extend a challenge to an opponent you cannot defeat.”

“Baira’s blessed hair, you think highly of yourself.” Sylvia stepped as he did. They circled each other. “We aren’t sparring in the tunnels anymore. I am not the same girl you prepared for the Alcalah.”

“Good.” Arin considered and discarded the spear, picking up the broadsword from the slain soldier instead. Not an ideal weapon for close combat, but he may as well give her a lead. Arin swept an inviting hand in the space between them. “It is about time you showed me who you really are.”

To her credit, her first strike nearly caught him by surprise. Low and diagonal, a well-met aim would slash him open from right shoulder to left hip. Arin twisted out of the way, and in the same movement, pulled a dagger the size of his longest finger from his coat and threw.

It embedded itself a hairsbreadth away from her foot. She froze, and Arin said, “Your first and only warning. You bend your knees before you swing; it gives you away and instructs me of the direction you intend to pursue.”