Page 8 of The Jasad Crown (The Scorched Throne #2)

CHAPTER FOUR

SYLVIA

A s soon as she shoved a platter of food into my hands, Namsa abandoned me in the dining hall.

I watched her depart, resisting the urge to trail after her like a lost child. How bad would it look if I took my meal to my room?

I chanced a look around the tables, shoulders hiked up to my ears.

Rovial’s tainted tomb, what if someone wanted to have a conversation?

Longing for Marek and Sefa weakened my knees. For five years, they had been my safe landing. They had offered a space where I could rest my bones and breathe, and it took me far too long to appreciate how rare a thing it was to simply be .

I could still scarcely comprehend how quickly everything had changed. It felt like minutes had passed since I danced at the Victor’s Ball, not six days.

Maia appeared at my side. She had gathered her formidably long hair into a ponytail.

“Mawlati, would you like to join me outside to finish our supper?” She held a large plate, bouncing from foot to foot.

At my suspicious squint, she tipped her head in the direction of the observers.

“Where we can perhaps enjoy a bit of solitude?”

“Yes,” I said, too quickly. I followed her through a narrow doorway carved into the right side of the dining hall. As soon as we ducked through the opening, a wave of noise hit our backs.

I snorted. At least they waited until I left before unleashing the gossip.

I kept pace with Maia easily, eyeing the uneven stone beneath our feet. “How are we going outside? I thought we were inside a mountain.”

“We are. There are passageways here that open into Essam Woods. But we also have an outdoor area for trainings and celebrations behind the mountain.”

The mountain had passages into Essam Woods.

The temptation hiked again, a battering ram at my feet urging them to leave this place and find Sefa and Marek.

I weathered the hits, wincing, until they faded.

It wouldn’t be the last time the urge to escape swept me, but I had no intention of indulging it unless the Urabi left me no choice.

Still, I made note of the information. Maia shouldn’t have shared it with me.

We rounded the corner, and the ground grew even bumpier. “Couldn’t someone on the other side see us?”

The passage ended at a solid iron door, nearly invisible in the gloom. The familiarity of its design caught me off guard. I had seen the same plaited pattern on the doors in the underground complex where I’d trained for the Alcalah.

Maia pressed her hand to the metal and murmured under her breath. A silver-and-gold glow lit the outline of the door, identical to the colors swirling inside Maia’s eyes.

I watched her longer than I should have.

It would take a while before the sight of magic stopped slamming terror into my bones.

I had not knowingly encountered Jasadis while living in Mahair; the last person who had openly used magic around me was a Mufsid.

Even my own magic had been hidden from me, suppressed by my cuffs.

Learning how to draw it out had been a battle.

The Urabi exercised their magic casually, with as much forethought as they probably gave to breathing, and I couldn’t help but be a little envious.

Maia kicked the door, sending it creaking open.

“After you, Mawlati.”

As a rule, I preferred not to be the first to walk through an unknown entrance. Fortunately for Maia, her bouncing was giving me a headache. Any threat on the other side of the door couldn’t be more frustrating than watching her roll from her heel to her toe again and again.

The smell slapped me as soon as I stepped outside. Salt and fresh rain.

Wind stung my cheeks. I cradled my plate to my chest, shielding it with an arm.

Endless skies moved in shifting colors above us.

Heavy clouds hung close enough to touch, swirling like warm breath exhaled on a winter day.

Streaks of red and orange seared the horizon, glimmering across the rippling surface of the—

No. It couldn’t be.

Pebbles rolled beneath my feet as I lurched forward, my embarrassing gasp stolen out of my mouth by the wind.

“Careful, Mawlati,” Maia murmured, but I ignored her.

The breeze raked freezing fingers through my hair, whipping it away from my neck. My feet carried me to the edge of the cliff, determined to confirm what my mind refused to believe.

Over the side raged the sea of a hundred names; the sea few had dared cross the mountains to explore and fewer still had survived the journey.

I couldn’t believe it. It had been a century since anyone had laid eyes on the sea beyond the mountains.

Even when every kingdom had had its magic, it was widely considered an act of lunacy to undertake the journey to Suhna Sea.

Why bother, when you could access it through any of the wilayahs in southern Jasad?

The lower wilayahs generated half their income from those visitors.

Pay a fee to pass through the Jasad fortress and visit the sea, or potentially go through the mountains and pay with your life.

Blue stretched as far as the eye could see. Waves dappled in the receding orange of the setting sun crashed against the side of the mountain, spraying foam dozens of feet into the air. An ancient force colliding against an ancient fixture in a rhythm as old as time itself.

“No one can see us here but the skies and the sea,” Maia said. I jerked, nearly upending my plate over the cliff. What kind of shoes did this girl have that she moved without making a single sound?

Oblivious, Maia continued, “I like to come out here at night. Namsa thinks it’s dangerous, but the stars are always bright enough to see the edge. We practice the children’s magic over there. It looks like a hole, but the dark space is a flat canyon between our mountain and the next one.”

I barely heard her. My fingers had gone cold and numb around the plate.

I was in the mountains. Miles and miles away from everything and everyone I knew.

I tasted salt on my lips and knew it was not seawater.

“I will be inside if you need me.” Maia’s voice softened. Without waiting for acknowledgment, she retreated on her ghostly feet.

The door shut behind her, and I released a stuttering breath. The waves splashed noisily below, the reflection of the crescent moon the only point of illumination left in the dark sea.

I lowered myself to a seat, wincing at the damp stone digging into my skin.

For all the weight piling in my chest, my head felt clear for the first time in years.

Clear and eerily quiet. Before the Victor’s Ball, even when Hanim’s voice had been silent, I’d always known it was there.

Lurking in wait, biding its time. But I couldn’t sense it anymore—that throb of her disapproval and loathing creasing my every thought.

I was finally alone. Completely alone, just like I had always wanted.

With the sea as my only witness, I eased my grip around the memories rattling in the back of my mind.

Six days ago, Arin discovered my true identity. The horror on his face… I would never forget how he looked when he saw my cuffs and heard Rawain call me Essiya. In one stroke, hundreds of my lies had imploded between us.

He had covered his face before my magic ruptured, the fig necklace swinging around his neck, the only spot of bright color on the Commander’s stiff and formal ensemble.

Gifting it to him, watching him smile while he slipped it around his neck, had healed one of the many fractures in the tattered thing masquerading as my heart.

To know he would see it as just another lie…

One of my slippers fell from my foot, disappearing into the undulating waves below me.

He was always my enemy. When he turned his horse around in Lukub to heal me after Soraya put her knife in my chest. When he cradled my tearstained face and told me to run. When he kis—

Enough.

I forced myself to think of the many valid reasons the Urabi despised Arin.

He had no friends, no confidants. He handled people like lines on his maps.

Shifting them subtly, strategically, without giving them the chance to feel the ground moving beneath their feet.

His father’s charm was natural; Arin’s was carefully cultivated.

Logic led his life, leaving emotion to fester at the sidelines.

Even to his own people, he was an enigma.

A dangerous one. Supreme Rawain could tear apart kingdoms, but Arin could destroy worlds.

As long as magic was his enemy, so was I.

Water misted across the shore as a wave barreled into the mountain.

How unbearably pathetic that the person whose advice I trusted most, whose counsel I wanted so badly in that moment, was the same one preparing to kill me.

A tear slid from the corner of my unblinking eye. I let it roll to my chin before catching it with my thumb. Raising my hand to blot out the moon, I studied the droplet.

The first and final tear I planned to shed for Arin of Nizahl.

Once I had collected myself and scarfed the cold and seawater-sprayed food on my plate, I went back inside to find Namsa.

Most of the dining hall had emptied out, and I tried to smile at the remaining individuals who openly stared as I walked past. What a reversal of fate, that someone staring at me should be met with a smile when four months ago they would have been met with my swinging blade.

The dining hall failed to turn up Dawoud’s crotchety niece.

I ducked into the hallway again, my irritation brewing rapidly toward anger.

After her grand speech and the dramatics in the dining hall, I thought there would be more planned for the evening.

Thanks to their sim siya arrows, I had slept enough to last me the rest of the year.

I ran my hand over the dips and ridges of the stone wall as I walked, trying to memorize my path. Halfway down the hall, the texture turned spongy, and my fingers disappeared into the wall with a sucking sound.