Page 67 of The Jasad Crown (The Scorched Throne #2)

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

SYLVIA

I gazed out at the expanse of Omalian uniforms and wondered how many more waited outside the throne room. Felix had to have sent at least four or five thousand to attack the villager armies amassing at the perimeter of the upper town. How many soldiers would be left in reserve? Tens of thousands?

I gestured at Queen Hanan’s corpse. “Have you been naughty again, Felix?”

“Me?” The new King of Omal pursed his lips in a mockery of concern. “My dear Essiya, you are the one who executed the Queen of Omal. Your very own grandmother.”

When comprehension struck, it brought with it a bolt of begrudging respect. Well, well, well—my cousin had finally cast aside his little boy tantrums and played the game like the rest of us.

The raids in the lower villages had been his opening ceremony.

The heralding of his new reign, establishing what fate would come for those who opposed him.

Mahair was the last lower village he had targeted.

He had wanted to give me enough time to see what would befall the town if I didn’t come running to save them.

There weren’t many guards protecting the palace because Felix wanted me to infiltrate the throne room. I needed to be caught beside the slain body of the Queen so he could claim the throne and my head in one fell swoop.

Even the dullest of minds could be sharpened against a powerful grudge.

Felix had never recovered from Arin denying him his right to kill me that day at the waleema.

I had stabbed him in the leg, insulted him, foiled his plot with the ghaiba, and then had the audacity to become a threat to his crown.

Arin must have told them I was to be taken alive, but who would blame Felix for executing the Jasadi responsible for slaughtering the Queen?

His revenge had given him the greater claim to my life.

“You can keep the crown,” Felix said magnanimously. “I had it made just for you.”

I rotated the false crown between my fingers. “Do you believe in death, Felix?”

The King crossed his arms over his chest. Indulging me in my last moments, it seemed. “Are you certain you wish for your last words to be such stupid ones? You might try begging for your life instead.”

“I have never been particularly averse to death,” I mused.

“I didn’t welcome it. I resisted it with all my might.

But at the end of the day, it was always a matter of scale.

I would rather be a powerless fugitive than dead.

I would rather be dead than trapped. I fought so hard against anything that might tie me to this earth—anything that might weigh the scale against death if ever I was trapped again.

I cast aside my identity, my magic, my affections.

I told myself they were nothing but stones in my pocket.

“I can’t fight my way through your soldiers, and I can’t die before Nuzret Kamel,” I said. “I have to choose living, and the only way I live past today is if I break the scale. If I surrender to my magic and walk into a trap from which there is no escape.”

Queen Hanan was dead. Even if I killed Felix right now, if I bypassed her council to reinstate myself to the line of inheritance and claim this kingdom in blood—it would not be enough.

My claim would force Omal into war with Nizahl on Jasad’s behalf, and with two dead rulers supposedly slain at my hands, the armies would mutiny.

I had known the chances of victory today were slim, but some foolish part of me had held on to hope. There is a chance , it would whisper. Still a chance.

But a chance was mercy, and mercy was not for those with blood on their hands. For us, there were only choices.

Only the scale.

A true ruler is one who puts their people before themselves. No matter the cost.

I dropped the crown to the ground. The glass crunched beneath my boot.

“I make you this promise, Felix of Omal: your name will not be remembered. When your story is told for generations to come, it will be an accessory to my own. Even the hate your people hold for you will dwindle, taking the last seed you’ve sown into this world with it.

When you finally fade, dear cousin, you will taste true death long after you’ve rotted in your grave. ”

An enraged flush darkened Felix’s neck, and he raised an arm.

A row of archers in the back of the room lifted their bows.

In the front, hundreds of spears flipped toward the platform.

The soldiers in the center withdrew their swords and pointed them at the ground, waiting.

He had taken layers of precaution against my magic.

If only it mattered.

How deep can you dig, Essiya?

Bows strained as the archers notched their arrows, and Felix grinned as he stepped behind a throng of his guardsmen.

I couldn’t whisper when I called for my magic anymore. What I demanded from it would answer only to my scream.

Mist crept over my skin. When I had summoned my magic before, it was usually a shapeless command. Protect. Fight. Save. The means through which it achieved those goals hadn’t mattered.

Shouts rang in the throne room as whirls of smoke erupted between the guards. They writhed like fallen storm clouds.

There was nothing shapeless about what I wanted from my magic this time.

Silver wings sliced through the smoke. The shouts matured to howls as hundreds of kitmers materialized between the rows of soldiers.

Twice the size of any I had created before, they were near-perfect replicas of Rovial’s kitmers.

Vicious black eyes blinked beneath curved horns.

Feathers sharper than any blade unfurled as the kitmers rose to their full height.

As one, they roared.

Long claws gouged into uniformed chests, eviscerating soldiers where they stood.

Anarchy claimed the throne room as attention turned to the kitmers and away from their creator.

Arrows flew through the air, bouncing ineffectually against the creatures.

One of the arrows went through the eye of the soldier sprinting toward me, and he dropped like a sack at the foot of the platform.

“Make way for the King!” came the order. “Get him out of here!”

“No!” Felix bellowed. “Kill her! Someone kill her!”

Gold and silver veins flowered over my arms, effervescent beneath my skin. He still didn’t understand, did he? I was already dead. Sylvia, Essiya, whoever the other faces were—by Nuzret Kamel, they would be gone.

Magic was a greedy conqueror. When it finally laid claim to the rest of my mind, it wouldn’t share.

“For Fairel,” I murmured. “For everything your people have lost at your hands.”

One of the kitmers flew past my shoulder, obeying my silent command. Felix shrieked as the kitmer’s claws unfurled. They gouged into my cousin’s neck and yanked through muscle and bone. His screams choked off as blood filled his mouth, spraying thick and tacky onto his guards.

“For our grandmother.”

When Felix’s headless corpse fell to the ground, joining the slew of other carcasses, I felt no joy. I felt nothing much at all.

Blood spattered the serene walls of the throne room.

The last of dusk shifting through the glass dome trailed its light over mangled and eviscerated bodies heaped like offerings at the altar of the dead Queen.

Between them, moving under the veil of hundreds of beating wings, walked the gold-and-silver-eyed sole survivor.

“Fly to every corner of this land and tell them that the throne of Omal has fallen,” I ordered. “Take my voice and tell my people the Malika of Jasad is calling them home.”

I shielded my head as the kitmers smashed through the dome, raining glass over the graveyard they left in their wake. A blanket of silver and gold seethed over the darkening sky as the kitmers pooled together above the palace.

I watched through the dome’s shattered opening as Jasad’s symbol rose above the Omal palace like smoke from a burning pyre.

The kitmers flew apart, shadows streaking into the horizon. Carrying my voice, my message, to every corner of these kingdoms. When Nuzret Kamel came and the fortress rose, every Jasadi needed to be on the other side. War was upon us, and the time to choose had come.

I paused beside Felix’s body. His head had flown onto a slop of gore farther away, and I picked it up by its feathered hair. They would want proof, the villagers. They would want a memento to take back to their ravaged homes.

I retrieved his fallen crown, cleaning it off on my pant leg. I set it back on his hair.

“You can keep the crown,” I said.

A face reflected out of my cousin’s staring eyes, moving when I moved. It belonged to a stranger. A child this time, perhaps eleven or twelve years old.

My heart pounded. A sick rush of fear spread through my chest, spilling into the darkest recesses of my mind. I stared at the face, and I did not scream when I heard the voice.

You see us , my magic whispered. We know you see us.

Gritting my teeth, I closed Felix’s eyes. If madness was my destination, I would not ease its way.

I walked past the collapsed columns of the throne room.

I tore the torch from the wall and touched the flame to the shredded leg of a dead soldier.

It licked hungrily over his uniform and leapt to the next body.

It would reach Queen Hanan last, but it would reach her eventually. Nobody would be spared.

Nobody except me. Felix hadn’t understood—nobody did.

When the dust settled, I would always be the one left standing.

Survival was not the story of my success.

It was my eternal punishment.