Page 74 of The Jasad Crown (The Scorched Throne #2)

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

ESSIYA

I held tight to Ingaz as we flew over the Meridian Pass.

The rust-colored crags rose high in the center of the desert, curving like fangs from the cracked yellow mouth of the Flats.

I was tempted to push Ingaz between them and travel over the path we had taken on our way to Orban for the first trial.

Was the relic magic that attacked Arin still there?

Would I see the Urabi’s scattered arrows embedded in the dirt?

Thinking about Arin was a mistake. I closed my eyes against the brutal urge to twist Ingaz to the right, to soar toward Nizahl and crash through Arin’s window so I could demand to know exactly what he was thinking violating the Zinish Accords.

Arin defied prediction in every way but one: he always operated within the confines of his own rules.

Something disastrous must have happened. I felt it in my bones.

The kingdoms were coming apart at the seams. With the Orbanian protection in place, thousands of Jasadis would be moving into the trade routes toward Jasad.

We’d flown over thousands of Nizahl and Lukubi soldiers battling throughout Essam Woods.

Omal would be in shambles as the lower village rebellions grew, as it waited for the council to appoint a new ruler in the next twenty days—a formal procedure for which they had no precedent.

I glanced at Efra. The first time we met had been on top of those crags.

Efra lay flat on his stomach, both arms wrapped around his kitmer’s neck. He hid it well, but I didn’t need his flavor of magic to sense the terror wafting off him. Considering I had ordered my first batch of kitmers to fling him around Suhna Sea, I couldn’t begrudge him his distrust.

I guided Ingaz toward Efra and said, “It won’t drop you.”

Efra forced open an eye to glare at me. “Forgive me if I lack confidence in your promises.”

I fell quiet. Why did I try with him? His opinion about me had formed on those crags, and nothing I did would change it.

“Sorry,” Efra ground out. “I didn’t mean it. You have upheld every promise you’ve made us, and Lateef is right—I am acting like a petulant child.”

I nearly fainted off Ingaz. Was this real, or had the magic-madness finally finished me?

Unleashing his iron grip on the kitmer, Efra slowly sat up on the creature’s back and wrapped his hands around its horns.

“I hate your family. Your mother, her parents, their parents. You come from a lineage that has slowly unraveled our kingdom, and it is… difficult for me to separate you from that history. I keep thinking, any minute now and her blood will show itself. Any minute now and she’ll laugh in our faces and leave us to die, fulfilling her family’s legacy at last.”

“Do you still believe that?”

He glanced over, conflict clear in his expression. “I don’t believe you will leave us.”

“But you still believe I might fulfill my family’s legacy?”

“Essiya,” Efra said, and my grip on Ingaz’s horns tightened.

Not only had Efra never used my given name before, but I had never heard him adopt such a tentative tone.

“We both know I can feel what happens when your magic consumes you. You… you disappear. The only part of you that remains in those moments is your magic, and—it’s so angry.

It doesn’t care about Jasad. It doesn’t care about anything but destruction. ”

I am what remains.

A shiver crawled over me, and I fought to keep my heart from sinking to the bottom of my stomach. Despite the aggravation Efra had caused me, he was the bravest of the Urabi. At least he acknowledged it. At least he said it out loud.

We cleared the Meridian Pass. Namsa and Maia were lagging behind us, but Lateef had shot ahead to dip and weave over the cracked plains of the Desert Flats.

The older man delighted in the act of flying on a kitmer’s back, and had I been in a more pleasant mood, his childlike giggling would have amused me.

“Do they have a plan for what they’ll do if I survive raising the fortress?” I asked quietly.

I did not explain what I meant, and Efra did not ask. We both knew that if I survived Nuzret Kamel, what would be left of me would be far more dangerous than anything that awaited the Jasadis on the other side of the fortress.

They needed to have a plan for how to kill me before I killed them.

He hesitated. “No.”

I smiled grimly. “Now who’s a liar?”

I pulled on Ingaz’s horns, and we dove.

From the sky, the Desert Flats bore a striking similarity to the cracked, stale surface of month-old aish baladi, the thin layer of sand and dust over the plains a near-replica of the flour slapped onto the bread before the baker piled it on top of our wicker trays.

We’d been flying over the lifeless expanse for a full day, and I had yet to see any kind of life.

What creatures might have once called the Flats home had long desiccated, and even the buzzards had vanished for lack of fresh meat.

Which was why I drew Ingaz to a halt when two tiny shadows moved, interrupting the miles upon miles of nothing we’d put behind us.

“Is everything all right?” Namsa yawned, maneuvering her kitmer into a standstill beside me. Lateef, Maia, and Efra struggled to control their kitmers, looping around us in helpless circles.

I pointed out the shadows. “I think there are people down there.”

Namsa followed my finger. “Probably just a couple of rock formations.”

“Rock formations wouldn’t move.” My magic juddered like a wheel caught in mud, fixating on the figures. There was something there.

I swooped lower, searching the ground. No rock formations. The shadows belonged to a man and a woman. Blond and black heads of hair that, even if I couldn’t have recognized them separately, were unmistakable when bent together.

I pressed Ingaz’s horns down, and we shot toward the ground. I heard Namsa and the others shout behind me, but I didn’t slow. It could be a hallucination. Another vision.

The figures swiveled at the sudden whoosh of Ingaz’s wings, and the choked noise I released barely registered as human. I cut through the sky like a falling star, heedless of my trajectory.

Ingaz landed hard, and in my stupefaction, I forgot to tighten my hold. I tumbled off her back in an inelegant sprawl, limbs cascading into the hard dirt.

Two faces appeared above me, blotting out the darkening sky.

“Until you landed, that was the most impressive thing I had ever seen,” Marek said breathlessly.

“Is it really you?” Sefa’s teary brown eyes, warm as a blanket on a winter’s day, roamed over me.

The grin spreading over my face couldn’t have been stopped by any earthly means. Maybe I had fallen asleep on Ingaz’s back, and this was just a dream. A wonderful, wonderful dream.

Awaleen below, I hoped I never woke up.

A dry sob heaved through Sefa. “I never thought I would see you again.” She moved to cup my face and paused. “Can I touch you?”

It was that question—so benign, so gentle, so Sefa —that finally convinced me.

I sat up too fast, tackling her to the ground with the force of my hug. Sefa started weeping immediately, clinging to me as though I might change my mind and throw her off.

A lightly muscled set of arms wrapped around the both of us. Marek laid his cheek on top of my hair. We stayed on the ground, wrapped in a spine-stretching embrace, until someone cleared their throat.

I peered around Marek to see Lateef, Namsa, Maia, and Efra observing us from a safe distance. Efra appeared vaguely constipated, which wouldn’t have been worth noting given his general demeanor, except the expression was mirrored on Lateef and Namsa.

I drew away from Marek and Sefa. I took my first proper look at the pair.

“Marek… why are you in a Nizahl soldier’s uniform?”

Before he could answer, Sefa pushed her hair behind her shoulder, exposing a row of ruby studs along the shoulders of her clothes.

No, not clothes. Livery.

No one knows where Vaida vanished off to after her attendant cut off her finger and tried to steal her ring… She also managed to escape the Traitors’ Wells with a Nizahl soldier.

At the look on my face, Sefa winced. “We have much to discuss.”

Lateef stepped forward, casting a nervous glance to the darkness spreading over the Desert Flats like spilled ink. “Perhaps those discussions are best conducted at another location.”

“We can’t take them with us.” Efra pinned Marek with a hostile glare and received a wide grin in return. “They aren’t Jasadi. One of them is a Nizahl soldier .”

“Fake soldier,” Marek corrected good-naturedly, not seeming the least bit put off by Efra’s attitude.

“They’re coming,” I said. “Namsa, Maia, do you mind sharing your kitmers? They’re a little larger than the others and should support the added weight. It’ll take us another few hours to get to the mountain, but we should land by dawn.”

Efra tried again. “We can’t—”

Five kitmers turned their heads toward Efra, pitch-black eyes fixing on him in the gloom.

“To be clear, Cinnamon,” I said affably, “I was not proposing a debate. If you have trouble with the order, feel free to surrender your kitmer and hike your way through the Desert Flats on foot.”

Efra’s teeth clicked together, his jaw working with poorly concealed fury. He glanced away.

“Friends of the Malika are most welcome,” Maia said. She smiled at Marek, who beamed at her with an enthusiasm bordering on deranged.

Once Maia helped Marek onto the back of her kitmer, he released a bitter laugh and said, with no small amount of devastation, “No one is ever going to believe me.”

Together, we climbed into the air and flew home.