Page 64 of The Jasad Crown (The Scorched Throne #2)

CHAPTER FORTY

ARIN

A rin was being watched.

He stepped away from the window, letting the curtain fall shut behind him. The prickle of magic at the back of his neck hadn’t faded since he woke up twelve hours ago. Woke up alone , his hand sliding over the space where a warm body should have been.

“And this is the holding Vaida swallowed under her border?” Arin palpated two fingers against the underside of his jaw, testing for knots. The only benefit of losing four days to the Mirayah was skipping the tedium of healing.

The right side of his face had sunk into a black-and-blue bruise, and his eyes twinged if he blinked too hard, but the damage could have been worse. The most irksome effect was the fuzziness in his head, unraveling the seams of his thoughts before they could piece together.

He wouldn’t be surprised if the disorientation had nothing to do with his injuries, and the Mirayah had simply dosed him with magic in an attempt to alter his memories of finding it.

But Arin remembered her. He remembered every detail.

“It is, sire.” Jeru paused as Arin stripped off his coat and laid it flat on the table. “Vaida asked to be informed when you woke.”

“Did she?” Arin assessed his chest in the mirror. The gashes from Galim’s Bend had already closed. In a week or two, they would be just another scar. The bruises from Mahair, meanwhile, throbbed across his shoulders and chest.

Other marks, much more pleasantly obtained, were scattered across Arin’s body. He grazed the bite mark on his stomach, a small smile playing over his lips.

Arin knew his reputation at court and around the kingdoms. They called him withholding. Heartless. Frozen.

Frigid, on their bolder days.

For a time, he had believed them. Aside from Soraya, Arin had spared the lowest level of attention toward pursuing the whims of his body.

When Arin decided on a course of action, it was premeditated.

Measured and thoroughly considered. Planning was the antidote to passion, and Arin had rationalized himself away from every bed that had tried to invite him in.

Arin leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees as he cataloged the marks on his chest.

What they had done in the Mirayah was not premeditated, measured, or thoroughly considered, and it had been the best night of Arin’s life.

Vaun materialized beside Arin, his expression a mask of fury as he gestured at Arin’s battered face.

“I will repay her for each injury she has dealt you twice over, my lord. She will regret ever laying hands on you. You helped keep those ungrateful, insipid villagers alive, and in return she nearly killed you !”

Arin flicked a dismissive hand. “Superficial wounds. She was trying to save my life.”

Arin’s attention caught on Vaun’s lapel, where he typically displayed his guardsman pin in flagrant disregard of his own safety. “Did you lose your pin?”

Vaun’s hand flew to his lapel. He seemed mystified to find it naked. “I must have dropped it. Apologies, my liege—I will see to getting a new one.” Vaun shook his head. “How would tying Your Highness to a wall and brutalizing you save your life?”

Jeru pulled aside one of the excessively long drapes to peer out the window.

Arin withdrew a long-sleeved black shirt and set it aside while he rifled for a new vest. “As long as I was conscious, I was a liability to both of us. The Urabi would try to kill me to prevent me from capturing the Malika, and my soldiers would arrest every Jasadi in the village as soon as the Omalian threat was subdued. But if I am critically injured—”

“Your soldiers have to immediately ensure your safety.” Vaun’s scowl could carve through steel. “She cheated.”

“No.” Arin pressed his tongue to his teeth in an effort not to smile. “She played the game.”

“They said she flew out of the village on the back of a kitmer.” Jeru leaned against the wardrobe. “Riddah and some of the other soldiers reported seeing gold and silver thunderbolts flying from her hands.”

The vest Arin had triumphantly located slipped from his fingers. The haze over his thoughts cleared away at last, and Arin went cold.

Every time I use my magic, I find a new vein.

I am afraid that I will have to choose—my mind or my people.

“My lord?” Jeru tentatively picked up the fallen vest. “You have visitors. Layla and Bayoum are eager to confirm your good health, but I can tell them to return at a later time.”

Jeru tried to hand Arin the vest, but Arin pushed it away. He drew the shirt over his arms and lagged, staring at the laces waiting to be done.

“I’ll require a moment alone.” Arin spoke without inflection. “Tell Layla and Bayoum I will be out to see them shortly.”

When his guardsmen withdrew, Arin picked up his coat. He couldn’t recall if he had returned the pieces of her cuff back into his pocket after showing them to her.

A wrinkle in the inner left pocket disrupted Arin’s search. He paused, noticing the slight bump for the first time.

Arin extracted a sheaf of torn pages folded tightly within the heavily lined pocket.

The pages were worn in the center from countless folds, their surface faded from the press of too many negligent fingers.

The writing wasn’t in her hand, so Arin flipped to the last page immediately and skimmed for the signatory.

Binyar Lazur, First General of the Southern Regiment of Nizahl.

Binyar Lazur? Arin’s brows drew together.

When would Essiya have crossed paths with a deceased Nizahlan general?

Arin had met Binyar during his brief stay in the Citadel.

A stalwart, matter-of-fact man with stern notions of honor and family legacy.

Nothing like his younger brother, whose only commitment in life was to a girl ten times braver than him.

Perhaps the younger Lazur brother had given Essiya these pages.

Arin sat on the armchair by the window and began to read.

The fortress fell before the messenger did.

Arin had reread the pages four times, rearranging the pieces of the story over and over again, and failed to find a fit.

Arin brushed his thumb over Binyar’s increasingly frantic script. He aligned the pages into a neat stack.

The fortress fell after the Blood Summit. Because of the Blood Summit. Nobody fully understood how it had happened, but the most commonly cited theory was the loss of Jasad’s entire royal bloodline had weakened the fortress and left it vulnerable to collapse.

Which might have been perfectly plausible if not for Essiya of Jasad. The second Heir of Jasad survived the Blood Summit. Her magic and bloodline had still existed when the fortress fell.

Arin took a measured breath. He needed to look further—to pull new pieces onto his board.

It cost Arin to set aside the death-of-the-royal-bloodline theory. It took a hammer to the ground beneath his feet, and through the cracks, Arin saw flashes of the dangerous sinkhole waiting just beyond the surface.

If it wasn’t the death of the royal family that caused the fortress to collapse, then the enchantment must have failed.

The enchantment sustaining the fortress around Jasad was the kingdom’s best-guarded secret.

The only information he’d been able to find vaguely mentioned the ceremony to refresh the fortress every year.

The Qayid or Qayida would recite the enchantment to renew the original magic cast by Qayida Hend thousands of years ago.

Arin traced it back again.

Niphran was Qayida when the fortress fell.

She had been Qayida once before, but her parents had stripped her of the honor when they exiled her to Bakir Tower.

Niyar and Palia reinstated her sometime around Arin’s fourteenth birthday.

He remembered the date because his father had accepted an invitation to the festival and left for Jasad the week before.

Isra had insisted on staying behind for Arin’s birthday, and she had snuck him out of the Citadel to visit the preserved ruins in Ukaz.

She’d stuffed his hair under a knit cap and waited patiently whenever Arin’s attention snagged on a strange pattern in the carvings or a collection of stones he’d read stories about.

Two years later, she had left for the Blood Summit, and Arin had spent his birthday alone in his chambers, designing the statue that would stand above his mother’s tomb in the Citadel’s gardens.

Arin’s fingers curled. He wanted to rise and cast these pages into the flames. Not every question needed a satisfactory answer. Plenty of people were content with uncertainty; they lived and died without expending themselves to understand anything beyond the corner of the world they occupied.

They would not stand directly over the sinkhole and push down .

But Arin could no more halt the turn of his own mind than Essiya could halt the call of her magic.

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?

Arin stood, tossing the parchment toward the armchair. The pages fluttered to the ground as he started to pace.

Even if Arin posited that reading the wrong enchantment could destroy a fortress thousands of years old, it didn’t explain how Nizahl would have known beforehand.

According to Binyar, Nizahl’s armies were already marching for Jasad.

Thousands of soldiers had been waiting behind the fortress when it fell.

How could his father have known the wrong enchantment would be read for the first time in Jasad’s history?

Hanim was their leader for a time, you know. Before her exile for conspiring with your father against the Jasad crown.

The cracks above the sinkhole widened. A warning to stop, to step back from the precipice.

But the pieces had begun moving of their own volition, racing into place.

How can you sense magic?

Why would Hanim tell Rawain that she’d given the Mufsids the wrong enchantment?

Assuming Rawain and Hanim had conspired together when Rawain was the Nizahl Heir, Rawain had already resoundingly betrayed Hanim by the time he became Supreme.

The Qayida may have been monstrous, but she was no fool.

She would never risk the fortress unless she stood to gain something immeasurable.

Something she had tried to claim through Essiya, the last living Heir.

Jasad’s throne.

What had reassured her in the Supreme’s word after he had aided her exile and turned his back on her once before?

A piece quaked at the center of the frame. On it, Arin saw Isra’s face. He saw the lower village girl plucked from obscurity to marry the Nizahl Commander, the son born too soon after the wedding.

Was your hair black before the curse?

Arin braced himself on the wall as the room spun.

Hanim had to have believed Rawain meant to lay claim to Jasad’s throne instead of destroying it. Something had convinced her Rawain would put her on the newly taken throne.

I met your mother at the Blood Summit. Isra knew she was going to die. She walked into that Summit knowing what Rawain planned to do.

To risk the fortress, it would have been more than mere alliance. More than promises. It would have needed to be the same claim she had sought through Essiya.

The strongest claim to a crown was blood. Rawain’s son would have become Heir to Jasad and Nizahl.

Rawain’s son… and Hanim’s.

The sinkhole yawned open, and Arin disappeared.