Page 75 of The Jasad Crown (The Scorched Throne #2)
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
ESSIYA
S efa and I sat on the floor of the kitchen, watching Marek spin around the dining-turned-dance hall as though he’d known these people his entire life instead of six hours.
I had been braced to return to a mountain brimming with disappointed Jasadis.
Not only had I failed to secure the Omalian army, but my decision to divert us to Mahair had cost us Kenzie and Medhat.
Medhat may have survived the battle, but he had refused to leave with the Urabi.
They’d buried Kenzie in Mahair, and Medhat had chosen to stay and help the village rebuild rather than return to the Gibal without her.
I had expected flails to rain down on me, not kisses. But I barely had a chance to bathe before we were dragged to an evening of celebration and twice as much food as last time.
“Many of them wanted the fortress over the army,” Namsa had explained. “Nuzret Kamel is coming, and they can feel change in the air.”
I peeled the sliced almond half from my square of basboosa and passed it to Sefa, who licked off the syrup before popping it into her mouth.
“He really told you to go to the Desert Flats?”
“ Through the Flats,” Sefa corrected. We had had this conversation twice already, but she didn’t display any of the impatience I would have in her position.
“I think he only has a general idea of your location, and he figured you would find us on your way back from the Omal palace if we went through the Flats. Plus, it was the only way to avoid the battles raging across Essam.”
Chewing my lip, I scraped the browned top of the basboosa with the side of my fork. I didn’t look at Sefa. “How is he?”
The silence that followed was somehow louder than the trills of laughter and tubluh competition on the other side of the room.
“Not well,” she said at last. “Don’t tell Marek I told you, but he was sure he and Jeru would die in that cabin. The Heir is… different. Something has come undone within him.”
Binyar Lazur’s confession. Arin knew the truth about the fortress.
I set aside the plate and drew my knees to my chest. The side of me that had scraped her fingers raw trying to loosen a single thread from the perfectly wound Heir rejoiced. The other side, the side who knew how it felt for the pillars supporting your world to suddenly crumble, grieved for Arin.
“Were you aware that he loves you?” Sefa asked, with the airiness of one inquiring after the color of the sky. “Quite irreparably, it seems.”
I turned my head, positive I’d misheard. “What?”
She rolled onto her knees to bring down a bowl of kabab halla, accidentally spilling some of the broth onto her skirt.
She flipped the chunks of slow-cooked beef to check for fat.
“After Jeru and the Nizahl soldiers pulled me out of the Traitors’ Wells, Arin rode to us.
I don’t think the soldiers were expecting him, given the small matter of ongoing insurgency, but he got off his horse and handed me one of his maps.
He told us which routes to avoid on our way to the Desert Flats, and then he said, ‘If she dies for them, they will die with her,’ and strode off. ”
Satisfied her kabab halla had no white strings, Sefa spooned it over her rice. The Ivory Palace had apparently given her nerves of steel, because my stare boring into the side of her head barely seemed to faze her.
“He means they need me to survive, that’s all,” I managed.
“You know what he means.”
“Arin wouldn’t—”
“Kill everyone in the vicinity if you die? Seek revenge on anyone who allowed it to happen? Maybe he wouldn’t have before. But I told you—he is coming apart at the seams. When the world stops making sense, you cling to the only thing that does.”
“And you think he—you think how he feels about me makes sense?” My laugh was strangled.
“Even if we set aside our titles and our histories, it wouldn’t make it any more sensible.
Someone as precise and calculating as Arin—who despises a loose thread on his vest and loses sleep if he has an inefficient day—would despair of me by week’s end.
I can’t count the number of times I’ve walked out of my room in stained clothes or brought someone to tears because I was in a bad mood and they were in my way.
I thrive in chaos; Arin suffocates in it.
” She had offered me the proof herself. In what world would Arin of Nizahl choose revenge over reason?
My death would hurt him—I was not delusional enough to think it wouldn’t.
But Arin would have to be utterly unmoored from himself to sink into the kind of rage you needed to sustain revenge.
“Not if you help him breathe,” Sefa said. “Not if you are his air in the chaos.”
Awaleen below, I had forgotten how hard Sefa’s particular insight could land. I exhaled roughly, dropping my forehead to my knees to block out the revelry taking place on the other side of the kitchen counter.
“How do you do it, Sefa?” I muffled my question against my knees. “You have endured an absolutely harrowing two months. If Marek hadn’t found you in time, you might have died in the Traitors’ Wells. How do you stay so calm through it all?”
Across the room, Marek shouted our names pleadingly. Sweat glistened on his forehead, and his hair had been mussed into a feathery gold nest on top of his head. Our contented isolation baffled him to no end.
Sefa wrinkled her nose at Marek. “Do you remember what Raya would say when I would moan and groan about whether my dresses would sell at market?”
“‘Save some stupid for tomorrow,’” Sefa and I said in unison. We exchanged a grin.
“Today, everyone I love is together and alive. Tomorrow, that might not be the case. I understand how easy it is to dwell in the aftermath of all your worst fears. To spend every day bracing for tomorrow’s pain.
But, Essiya, you can’t survive in the future.
You don’t exist there yet,” Sefa said. “How do I stay calm? Simple. I recognize that I am afraid because I still have something to lose, and if I’m afraid, then it hasn’t been lost yet.
It means I have a chance to change the outcome.
” Sefa’s hand settled over mine and, when I did not pull away, tightened.
She held up our joined hands. “Did Sylvia ever think she’d be sitting here, letting me hold her hand without recoiling? ”
I huffed, avoiding her knowing look. “I am not convinced I’ll keep letting you do it now.”
“Thank you for making the present worth fearing the future.”
Her sincerity would kill me before the night’s end. “Keep your thanks to yourself.”
Sefa’s laugh faded into quiet sobriety. She covered my hand with her other one. “Do not let the future reach you here. Do not let it torture you before its time.”
We watched children laugh as they gave chase through the throng of dancers; drummers’ fingertips, orange with garlic and oil, leave greasy impressions on the surface of their tubluh; Lateef pick up Namsa by her elbows and spin her around the dance floor as her short legs aimed for his knees; Efra eye Marek like all the ills of the world had been birthed alongside him.
And for a wonderful evening, the future failed to reach us.