Page 7 of The Jasad Crown (The Scorched Throne #2)

The hall narrowed the farther we walked, until Namsa had to walk slightly behind me to fit.

The top of my head brushed the roof, sending pebbles tumbling into my hair.

I struggled to identify anything I could place: a smell, a sound, even the color of the dirt.

But the odor tickling my nose wasn’t one I recognized.

Not the mildew or mold found near the river, but something sweeter. Less pungent.

My head sent another shower of pebbles crumbling from the soft stone ceiling. Namsa glanced up with a frown. “Apologies. You’re taller than most.”

I shrugged. My height served me too well to quibble about its inconveniences. “Are we underground?”

“Not quite.”

I pressed my tongue against the point of my sharpest tooth, resisting the urge to throttle the woman. Unlike my body, my patience was famously short.

Fortunately for her health, she kept speaking.

“The Silver Serpent doesn’t know the truth.

We aren’t killers, and we only abduct those who give us no other alternative.

As much as we wish it were otherwise, it is not always possible to win compliance from those comfortable in their secrecy or who believe our cause is doomed.

We bring them back here. They meet the others and learn of our plans.

They see that Jasad is not gone. Its spirit still fights, and so must we.

Once they understand, we send them back.

There are some who prefer to remain here, and those are the individuals flagged by the Nizahl soldiers.

The rest reintegrate quietly, working for us from the inside. ”

“They can’t return.” I twisted, blocking her path. “Once you take them, they become targets. Ar—the Nizahl Heir hunts you and the Mufsids through the people you take.” He had recruited me as his Champion for the express purpose of luring the groups close.

“We do not send them back to the same place. They are scattered across courts and kingdoms.”

“So you strip them of their homes and force them to spy for you?”

“ Jasad is their home,” Namsa said, anger finally bleeding into her tone. “As it is yours. They are glad to serve it.”

The implication couldn’t be clearer: They are glad to serve. Why aren’t you?

Sultana Vaida’s wall of suspected Nizahlan spies flashed through my mind. I had thought no one could possibly rival Arin in paranoia until I met her. If she knew the Urabi were taking our people from Lukub and bringing them back as spies, she would never sleep again.

Namsa moved around me, rounding the bend at an irritated clip. For someone who brought me here as a captive, she was certainly self-righteous.

The hallway ended, opening into a cavernous space vibrating with hundreds of voices.

I stopped walking. An unfamiliar panic surged through me, catching me off guard.

How many people were out there? Did Namsa say?

I braced my shoulder against the wall. I’d been chased by mutated dogs without experiencing this much panic, and certainly not this fast.

I slid my hand over my heart, counting out the beats.

One, two. I’m alive.

Three, four. I’m safe.

Five, six. I won’t let them catch me.

Nothing happened. My heart continued to beat wildly beneath my palm, heedless of the mantra I’d recited to myself for years.

And why not? It wasn’t true anymore. I was alive, but I wasn’t safe. I was alive, but I—Essiya—had finally been caught.

“Mawlati?” Namsa reappeared in front of me. I dropped my hand from my heart and fixed on the little divot in her right brow, its arch clearly sharpened by an expert thread.

I needed a new way to calm myself down, and fast.

“If you stop calling me that,” I ground out, “then I’ll walk out with you.”

Namsa considered. “Come along, Essiya.”

My stomach rolled unpleasantly, and I almost recanted. Essiya came with its own knives.

I shuffled out behind Namsa, flinching as bright light replaced the gloom of the hall. I raised a hand to shield my eyes—and immediately stepped back.

The cacophony of voices quieted as hundreds of people turned at our entrance.

More Jasadis stared at me than I had seen in one room since I was a child. Which… there were children here. Not just the handful from my room, but dozens of them, toddlers and infants and sullen adolescents. Generations of Jasadis. Generations of magic.

Namsa gestured at the cavernous space around us. Alabaster stone walls rose into a high peak, the bumpy pattern of the pale rock face reminding me of freshly kneaded bread. Blankets covered the ground, and colorful hand-stitched cushions were strewn around low-rising wooden tables.

“Welcome to the Gibal.”

Maia waved shyly from behind a makeshift stone counter.

“We still don’t know for certain she’s the Heir.” A girl roughly my age approached us alongside an older man. “Just because an insane Mufsid tried to kill her? It proves nothing.”

The Mufsids had hunted me alongside the Urabi, but the Mufsid the girl meant could only be Soraya.

My former attendant who killed my mother and conspired with the rest of the Mufsids to overthrow Usr Jasad.

Who hated my family enough to defect from the Mufsids and poison me during the third trial in a desperate effort to kill me before either the Mufsids or Urabi could put me on the throne of Jasad.

“Enough, Kawsar. I tire of this conversation. The Mufsid who tried to kill her knew her family—she worked in the palace. Soraya served the royal family and helped orchestrate the Blood Summit. Besides, Essiya is not the Heir.” The gravelly voiced older man stopped a few inches away, peering down at me with kind brown eyes. “She is the Malika.”

A ripple ran through the room. The intrigue in their eyes, the tentative hope… it hit me harder than any anger could.

I can’t do this. I can’t do this.

“Malika Essiya,” Namsa affirmed. She shot an apologetic glance when I grimaced.

The man put a hand to his slim chest. “My name is Lateef, Mawlati. We are so grateful to have you here.”

Lateef knelt. My hand went to a dagger that wasn’t there, but he didn’t swipe my feet out from under me or stab at my tendons. He simply knelt.

One by one, the others joined him on the ground. I balked at the sea of bowed heads, my stomach churning. After a minute, Kawsar huffed and joined the others.

Every bone in my body screamed at me to run. Blow a hole through the side of this mountain and crawl to freedom through the debris. I didn’t deserve reverence. I was not a leader of kingdoms. I was barely a leader of me .

Namsa knelt last. My chest contracted, and I struggled to draw air. Rovial’s tainted tomb, I was about to throw up on all their bowed heads.

“Welcome home, Malika Essiya,” Namsa said.

I wasn’t home. I didn’t know these people, and they didn’t know me.

My heart beat faster, faster, diverting the route of every drop of blood in my body to sustain its speed. My airways constricted, forcing me to breathe in shallow sips. Heat gathered at the back of my neck, the most damning warning signal.

I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t breathe, and they wouldn’t let me go, and they were looking at me like I was the answer to their problems, like fate had finally paid them a favor.

My grandparents betrayed the Urabi. I had little doubt most of the people before me were farmers and merchants from the southern wilayahs, Jasadis whose magic had been secretly mined for decades to satisfy the greed of the northern wilayahs.

The Mufsids had reaped the reward of my grandparents’ atrocities— their desire to restore me to the throne, I understood.

I couldn’t fathom why the Urabi wanted to place a crown in my hands.

I didn’t need Hanim’s voice to remind me of the colossal failure I represented to these people. The failure I had made of myself.

The thought of proving Hanim right sobered me.

The exiled and disgraced Qayida of Jasad had tried to mold a warrior, a woman fit to fight for a throne.

For five years, I had endured her expectations.

Her punishments when I fell short. Killing her had freed me of her physical presence, but I had carried the rot of her voice, her insidious influence, for years.

I knotted my hand above my heart. Sweat damped the fabric clutched in my palm.

Malika Essiya.

I was not a natural leader. I would have to fight my instincts every step of the way.

I would fail again and again, and the cost of my failure wouldn’t be more scars on my back.

The cost of my failure would be the lives kneeling before me.

The lives waiting in other kingdoms, their magic hidden and their destiny unknown.

I had understood the consequence of my decision the night of the Victor’s Ball.

When I gave Rawain my true name, I chose Jasad. I chose to give everything I could, no matter how imperfect the offering or how shaky the hands holding it.

There was nowhere left to run. Either Jasad would rise in victory, or we would all burn with it.

“Thank you.” Though I barely spoke above a murmur, it echoed across the vast room. “Thank you for letting me come home.”