Page 80 of The Jasad Crown (The Scorched Throne #2)

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

ESSIYA

R ain darkened his hair. Water dripped onto the broad line of his shoulders, soaking into his cloak.

A black blindfold covered Arin’s eyes, another testament to how little his captors knew him.

Arin’s mouth was the real danger. He could persuade a balding bird to give up its last feather, and they had left him without a gag.

His scar looked harsher, cutting his throat and jaw and disappearing into the faint bruises coloring the side of his face. The bruises I had given him in Rory’s shop.

Arin wove his fingers together, entirely unbothered by the ropes encircling his wrists. The corridor, so spacious mere seconds ago, barely seemed able to contain him.

The mighty Nizahl Heir, caught at last.

Efra stamped the rain from his boots behind Arin, squeezing around Lateef to peer at me warily. “How angry is she?” he asked out of the corner of his mouth.

Namsa shook her head. Another blindfolded figure appeared behind Arin. I had seen such a robust mop of curls on one man, and one man only.

“Jeru!” Sefa exclaimed. She rushed toward the guardsman only for Efra to thrust an arm out.

“He is a prisoner of the Malika.” Efra shot Jeru a distasteful glance. “Keep your distance.”

I heard Marek call my name, but I didn’t turn.

I couldn’t focus on anything other than Arin, who stood still as the mountain itself.

Arin, who couldn’t walk into a room without visualizing every potential method of assassination, had been left blindfolded and bound in a corridor with Jasadis.

I expected to see tension. The furrow of his brow as he listened to the voices and counted how many people were in the room.

The careful scuff of his boot on the ground, testing for soil or cement.

He did none of it. Arin simply stood there, and it was one of the eeriest things I had ever seen.

“Enough arguing,” Lateef demanded, and my gaze clicked over to him when he moved behind Arin. “We need to contain the newcomers and convene an Aada about what to do with them. Have they been searched?”

Namsa shook her head. “We didn’t have time.”

Lateef moved toward Jeru. “I’ll take him.”

Before Efra could so much as breathe in Arin’s direction, I stepped forward, cutting him off. “I will search the Commander.”

“Your magic—”

I gestured at my gloves and abaya, then at Arin’s layered uniform. “I won’t come into contact with his bare skin.” I had asked the seamstress to create a pocket in every piece of my clothing specifically designed to fold a pair of gloves.

I thought I heard Efra mutter, “Let’s keep it that way,” before he stepped aside.

The world muted as I stepped closer to Arin. “Raise your arms to the side,” I murmured.

What had he been thinking? What could possibly have compelled him to come to the mountains in search of me now? For months, he’d known I was here. He could have easily tracked me down in Jasad, his armies in tow. It was reckless. Foolish. All the things Arin was not.

Arin raised his arms.

I tried to touch him brusquely, efficiently. Efra would be scanning my emotions with a fine-tooth comb, searching for any evidence of my feelings for the Heir. The Aada would accuse me of partiality. They would decide what to do with Arin without my input if they thought I had been compromised.

My hands moved to his shoulders. I ran them along his chest, over the strong planes of his stomach, circling to the small of his back. It brought us nearly chest-to-chest, close enough for his soft exhale to stir the hair at my ear.

Without forcing me to utter it aloud, Arin pushed his feet apart. Heat crept along my neck, and I didn’t linger as I swept over his thighs and calves.

I straightened and stepped away, staring at the floor. “No weapons.”

Lateef nodded, releasing Jeru.

“What was the compelling evidence the Heir brought with him, Namsa?” I crossed my arms over my chest, jerking my chin toward the weaponless Commander. “Or was that another excuse?”

“It wasn’t, Mawlati! He brought—”

Efra cut her off. “We can discuss what he brought with the Aada. Rest assured, Namsa is telling the truth.”

Rovial’s tainted tomb, how I wanted to strangle Efra. I settled for an acerbic laugh. “I should rest assured, should I? The Commander and his guardsman arriving without a single weapon between them. Almost as though they wanted to ensure they’d be taken alive into the mountain.”

Namsa ran a tired hand through her hair. “The decision to take the men was a joint one.”

“Then you’re all fools.”

I tapped Arin’s shoulder in warning twice before I put my hands on his blindfold.

Efra grabbed my wrist and wrenched me away. “What do you think you’re doing?”

I didn’t get a chance to respond. At the sound of my pained hiss, Arin—who had remained perfectly still and serene until then—moved. Before I could pull my wrist out of Efra’s grip, Arin kicked out the back of Efra’s knee and slammed his bound hands into the side of the other man’s head.

It took seconds. Efra crumpled to the ground, and I darted in front of Arin, throwing my arms in front of him as Lateef and Namsa pushed toward the Heir.

“He can see!” Efra shouted, clutching his knee.

“He can’t, I am sure of it,” Namsa protested, worrying her lip. “I wrapped the blindfold in three rounds.”

Still groaning, Efra rolled onto his side.

I wanted to weep with frustration. This was precisely why I hadn’t wanted them to bring Arin here.

They had all ignored me, convinced by Efra that my emotions had clouded my judgment, but my emotions had wanted the contrary of what I recommended.

I knew what the man behind me was capable of.

“He is the Commander of the most powerful kingdom in the land. Do you think cutting off one of his senses will deprive him of the others? His hearing is better than all of ours combined. He heard Efra move, noted the position, estimated where to kick based on Efra’s height.

It’s why I wanted to take his blindfold off.

It serves no use. The minute you led him into this mountain, you compromised it forever. ”

“Then it is a relief indeed we do not intend to release him from this mountain alive,” Efra spat, rolling to his feet.

He strode toward Arin, and I spun toward him.

My magic flooded me faster than it had since the battle in Mahair.

My skin stretched beneath my rigid veins, and the bottom of my stomach disappeared.

Behind me, Arin finally tensed.

“Are you going to attack a man while he cannot fight back?” I growled. Ridiculous, given Arin had flattened Efra not one minute ago, but the principle —

“Move aside, Suraira.”

The soft command brushed the top of my hair. I tilted my head back to look at Arin. “You aren’t the one who gives orders here, Commander,” I whispered back.

Jeru stepped forward. “I thought the Urabi had rules about how they treated their hostages,” he said, reasonable in the face of the circulating tension.

“We do.” Eyeing Efra warily, I lowered my arms. “Namsa and I will take them to the cells.”

“Let us go gather the Aada,” Lateef said, taking Efra’s elbow in his firm grip. The older man shepherded a scowling Efra into the corridor.

As soon as Efra and Lateef vanished, a weight shifted off me. “I’m taking his blindfold off,” I told Namsa. “Do the same for Jeru, please.”

Namsa, wisely withholding her comments, stood on her tiptoes to reach for Jeru’s head.

Thumbs gentle on Arin’s cheekbones, I eased the tight blindfold off inch by inch. It slipped right over his hair, dropping to the ground behind him.

Silver lashes lifted. Pale blue eyes ringed in shadow met mine.

“Hello again,” I said.

His gaze roved over me, assessing, then drifted idly over the top of my head.

My brows drew together. Something was wrong. Terribly, terribly wrong. When he didn’t frown at the blindfold heaped on the ground or the giant tear in his coat, my concern tripled.

What happened after the Mirayah?

Namsa cleared her throat. “Essiya, we should go. The Aada will be waiting.”

Right. I had a measly trickle of time left before I needed to explain to the Aada why abducting Arin of Nizahl days before we headed to Jasad for Nuzret Kamel might be highlighted in history as the peak of human stupidity. Though if I did, they would argue for executing Arin on the spot.

I didn’t hold on to Arin like Namsa did to Jeru as we walked. He wouldn’t try to escape. We had already given him what he wanted.

But I was beginning to think what he wanted might not be exactly what I thought.

Darkness enveloped us at the head of the stairs. Dust motes tickled my nose, and I paused with a hand to the wall to sneeze. I shook my head, cursing the general sediment of mountains, and rubbed at my watering eyes.

Naturally, I did so while descending the next step, and my heel skidded straight off the edge of the stair.

I collided into a solid wall of muscle, saved from tilting right off the edge of the banister-less stairs. The scent of ink and rain flooded my nose. I tipped my head back—to thank him, or maybe to gauge his thoughts about the inefficiency of mountain architecture.

But as soon as he had steadied me, Arin stepped back, putting distance between us. Again, he stared clear over my head.

The spark of concern became a flame. I glanced at Jeru, hoping for an answer, but the guardsman kept his head down.

We continued to the cells without further incident. We placed Jeru in a normal cell, and Namsa insisted on putting Arin in the cell at the far right. “The bars are warded. It is our most secure cell.”

“Take Jeru’s restraints off. I will deliver the Heir to his cell.”

Namsa glanced at Jeru uncertainly. I sighed. “Jeru, will you attack Namsa if she releases you?”

He blinked. “No.”

“There we are. Namsa, you have magic, and he’s beaten and exhausted. If he manages to best you, then you deserve to lose.”

With a chuckle, Namsa waved me off and withdrew a knife for Jeru’s ropes.

Arin and I rounded the corner. No sooner had we disappeared from Namsa’s view than I spun around and grabbed his coat, hauling him into the wall. He didn’t resist, bone-chillingly pliant against me.

“What are you doing here?” I hissed. “I have to walk into a room and spend a good portion of my day convincing them not to kill you. Do you know how long it will take to persuade a mountain full of Jasadis that their worst enemy should be spared?”

Arin shrugged. I thought his shoulder was falling off for a second, so off guard did the lazy motion catch me. “Then spare yourself the trouble and let them do as they please.”

I scoured his face, utterly baffled. What was he doing? I thought I understood the rules of our game, but this—I didn’t see the purpose, the objective.

My tone shifted to take on a plaintive note. “Arin, what’s wrong?”

It was the wrong question. Breathtaking grief fractured in the eyes he rapidly shut. He twisted out of my grip like a tiger shaking off a fly. “Just take me to the cell. Please.”

I stared at him, hurt swelling in my chest. Namsa appeared in the next instant, preventing me from coming up with more sensible questions than what happened to you, who did it, and where can I find them?

“The cell is just up there,” she said, once again exercising wisdom by ignoring the obvious tension. “Shall we?”

Arin followed her without so much as a glance my way. As I scowled at his wide back, my attention snagged on the ground. A folded rectangle lay where I had slammed Arin into the wall. It must have slipped from his coat.

Awaleen below, I had done a detestable job searching him.

I picked it up, unrolling it carefully as I caught up with Namsa and Arin. As soon as he stepped between the three walls, alternating silver and gold bars slammed down, the wards radiating heat.

“Excellent.” Namsa wiped her hands on her hips. “We should hurry.”

I didn’t hear her. I wouldn’t have heard if she had yanked me down and shrieked it directly into my ear. Noise filled my head, a loud buzzing growing louder and louder the longer I stared at the portrait.

“Namsa,” I said, surprisingly even toned. “I have stretched your goodwill thin. Know that I appreciate your patience. I will put one last demand upon it and ask you to wait for me at the top of the stairs. I’ll just be a minute.”

“Please make haste,” Namsa sighed. “A minute, Essiya.”

She glanced at the portrait in my hands disinterestedly and departed.

The eyes were just as I remembered them. A chilling blue, the color of frost creeping over rushing water. Her black hair was long and silky in this photo, wavy instead of frayed and short. She looked regal. Queenly. The woman she might have become if I hadn’t ruined her.

I crumpled the portrait, fighting the urge to tear it into pieces. A sum of paint strokes and dabbled water. All it took to bring a nightmare to life.

I took a deep breath, trying to still my trembling hands. Perhaps he had a rational explanation. What was I thinking? Of course he did. They were his specialty.

“Why do you have a painting of Hanim in your coat?”