Page 77 of The Jasad Crown (The Scorched Throne #2)

CHAPTER FIFTY

ARIN

T here was a spot of blood on Arin’s sleeve when Rawain found him in the study.

That bothered him. Everything else was in place. Everything else had been precisely arranged.

Everything except the spot.

“Arin!” Rawain crossed toward him in five rapid steps.

His father’s grip on his shoulders startled Arin, so much so that he forgot to resist when Rawain yanked him into his arms. The Supreme squeezed Arin tight, the hand holding the scepter digging into Arin’s back.

“Thank the Awaleen. You cannot imagine how worried I have been. When did you return from Lukub?”

Stiff in the Supreme’s embrace, Arin bit back a bitter laugh. Rawain knew something was amiss, so he chose the angle of concerned, loving parent. The approach had successfully disarmed Arin too many times before.

How long had Arin’s father been learning how to fight him?

A not-insignificant part of Arin wanted to relax into his father’s hold. That same instinct had Arin’s arm lifting and stopping just short of hugging his father back.

The future split into two clean paths before him.

In one of them, he allows his arm to settle around Rawain and accepts his father’s embrace. He remembers the many moments of his life where an accomplishment wasn’t real unless Rawain declared it so. How he pushed himself day and night to be a son worthy of being Commander to Rawain’s Supreme.

On this path, Arin realigns his world to match his father’s version of it. He never has to confront what he’s done, because he no longer entertains a world where it matters.

On the other path, Arin drops his arm, and there is only darkness.

He could only see as far as the first step before it plunged into millions of possibilities. It terrified Arin to his core, the depth of the unknown waiting behind that first step.

But on this path waits a girl, and maybe a man who deserves her.

I’ve told you before, my liege—life is not an equation you can calculate over and over again. Every choice won’t be perfect, but you still have to make it.

Arin pulled away from his father and plunged himself into the dark.

“What happened?” Rawain demanded. “When we received word that Nizahl had taken the Ivory Palace, I was sure Vaida had done you some terrible harm. I feared the worst, Arin.”

Arin inclined his head with polite interest. In his pocket, he rolled the edge of the portrait under his thumb. “The worst?”

Rawain frowned, studying Arin closely. “You look unwell. Have you been to the healers? Why did it take you so long to come back from Lukub?”

“I had business to attend to,” Arin said, and flattened the portrait against the table.

Rawain looked at the portrait for a long moment. “Should I know who this is?”

The woman in the portrait had high cheekbones, cut in the same slant as Arin’s.

Midnight dark hair spilled past her shoulders.

She was unsmiling in the portrait, as though the very act of sitting still invited her to violence.

Her eyes… they were a different shade of blue, but they were unmistakably Arin’s.

“I should think you would recognize my mother,” Arin said.

It had been an inordinately challenging portrait to track down.

Understandably so—why would any library or archive keep the portrait of a disgraced and exiled Qayida of the Scorched Lands?

Fortunately, Vaida’s mother had hated Rawain, and in her never-ending quest to spite Nizahl, she kept a portrait of the woman he’d been caught conspiring with as a reminder of his dishonor.

The Supreme sighed, the sound laced with disappointment.

“I see your ill-fated intervention in Mahair gave the Jasadis enough time to sink their claws into you. I would think of anyone, you would be best equipped not to fall prey to their lies. Were you not immune to their magic, I might worry they had extended their influence over you.”

Arin couldn’t help a small smile. Such an elegant threat.

Anything Arin claimed to the council, to the rest of Nizahl, could be instantly cast into doubt at the suggestion of magical manipulation.

After all, to the world, the Nizahl Heir’s resistance to magic remained rooted in rumors and wishful thinking.

“If you would humor me,” Arin said, “I am still settling the last pieces.”

His father adopted a patiently amused mien, as though Arin was a small child trotting out his schoolwork. “What is it, son?”

Arin perched on the desk, bracing his hands on either side of him.

“I understand most of it, you see. The young, ambitious Heir hoping to herald his reign with the destruction of the long-loathed fortress of Jasad and the supposed extermination of magic. Not immediately, of course—something Hanim Werda didn’t understand when she offered to help you.

She had no idea how patient you are; how willingly you will wait for the seeds you plant to bloom.

Eighteen years, in this case—from the time you met Hanim until the moment you orchestrated the Blood Summit. ”

At the last part, Rawain’s expression finally wavered. “Arin, you cannot possibly think I had anything to do with Isra—”

“Stay with me, my liege,” Arin said pleasantly.

“What I struggled to understand was how. You couldn’t have used mined magic to cause the carnage at the Blood Summit—you were all there to beg for more magic from Palia and Niyar, and even if you had some saved, it wouldn’t have been nearly enough to inflict devastation on such a scale.

Besides, you would never have eliminated Palia and Niyar if you still needed them.

But you didn’t need them anymore, did you?

You had created your own source of magic. ”

Rawain arched a thick brow. “Please, don’t stop. It has been too long since I heard proper fiction. What was my new source of magic?”

The same question Arin had nearly broken his mind trying to answer. How could Arin, born half-Jasadi, not possess a trace of magic?

The answer hadn’t been in Lukub this time, but in the Citadel’s own library. Arin had walked past the answer thousands of times, openly admired its statue carved over the council room.

“Me.” Arin tilted his head, matching his father’s patronizing patience with a smile.

“You did to me what the Awaleen did to Fareed. You used every drop of mined magic Nizahl had traded over the years to make me your conduit. I imagine Hanim helped—turning an infant into a conduit is a procedure that requires incredibly delicate magic, after all. At least, if you don’t want to kill the child right away. ”

If Arin had known what he was looking for sooner, it would have been painfully obvious.

The only recorded conduit in history was Fareed—he’d had his magic stripped out of him by the Awaleen and anchored to his two favorite swords, which had later become part of Nizahl’s symbol.

Ironically, it was impossible to be a conduit without being born with magic yourself.

Your body never stopped seeking what was taken from it; it drained every magic it touched in hopes of filling the gaping void left behind.

And for every conduit, there was an anchor. The place where Arin’s magic had been tied, where the magic he drained flowed.

“Which brings me to my first question. Did you intend to get her with child, or was it an accident?”

Arin posed the question with only slight interest, as though it hadn’t haunted him every night since he discovered the truth.

Many sleepless hours later, and Arin still didn’t know which was worse: that his father had planned to sire a half-Jasadi child with the intention of subjecting them to a near-fatal procedure to strip their magic and turn them into a conduit, or the alternative—Rawain had seen Arin, held him, and decided he would rather watch him die than raise this half-Jasadi son.

Rawain’s mask of confusion and concern disintegrated. A bone-chilling blankness replaced them, and Arin knew his time was running out.

The discovery had proceeded much like the unveiling of an exquisite painting.

Attention not only for the whole of what it was, but for the individual brushstrokes bringing each detail to life.

Details like Nizahl’s prisons, always bursting with Jasadis awaiting their trials.

Prisons Arin routinely visited to drain the magic from the detained.

Arin had thought his father merciful for prolonging the fate of the sentenced Jasadis.

For allowing them to live on for years after capture.

Have you considered, in that infinite mind of yours, that the truly brilliant people are the ones who understand the realities we build were already built for us?

“I tried so hard with you, Arin.” Rawain shifted his weight onto his scepter, leaning heavily against it.

“Even when you questioned, when you pushed back, I reminded myself you were a child. You were learning. When you became Commander and undid half of my policies, I told myself it was a sign of great leadership. You had a strategy, and as long as I held on to the assurance that we shared a vision for our world, it did not matter to me how you sought to achieve it. At every step, I trusted you. And at every step, you doubted me.”

The Supreme swung, so quickly Arin only saw the blur of the scepter before it collided with the side of his head. The force knocked Arin off the desk. He caught himself on the wall, teeth coming together in time to prevent a hiss from slipping out.

“I raised you better than this.”

The sparks hadn’t faded from Arin’s vision when the next blow came to the back of his head, taking him to his knees.