Page 85 of The Jasad Crown (The Scorched Throne #2)

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

ESSIYA

I opened my eyes to Efra aiming a knife at Arin, who violently shook as he coughed blood onto the carpet.

Scrambling toward Arin, I barely registered the wet slap of my hair or the water soaked into the collar of my tunic. “What happened?” I demanded. I wrapped my arms around Arin’s middle as his back bent over a new round of coughing. Less blood this time, at least.

“He… touched you.” Efra seemed too bewildered to remember his hostility.

“Not even a touch—he barely grazed your cheek with his thumb. I felt your magic recede, and then he just—” Efra gestured.

“He told me to slit his throat if his eyes turned black or he lingered for longer than a second, but he threw himself off of you before I could.”

Aghast, I pressed my forehead to the center of Arin’s shuddering back.

“He also stabbed me, if you consider that of note,” Efra grumbled. “You might have warned him about my visits.”

I laughed against a wing of Arin’s shoulder. How had he managed to hide a knife through multiple searches?

I could only imagine what Arin had thought, waking to find Efra pushing my head into a bucket of water. I shut my eyes in mortification. “When would I have had the chance?” I groaned.

“Whatever magic he pulled from you seems to have accelerated the healer’s magic,” Efra said. “His bruises are gone.”

It was true. He wasn’t struggling when he coughed, which meant his ribs had also healed.

“His body probably stopped draining the magic infused in the bandages because it was busy trying not to drown under the magic he drained from me. How could you let him gamble with his own life like that?”

Efra regarded me as though I had begun to bleat like a goat. “What do I care what the Silver Serpent does with his life?” And then, with no small amount of displeasure, he added, “His strategy worked. It staved off your magic long enough for you to regain control.”

“It doesn’t matter. There are other ways to push my magic back. This will not be one of them. Not ever again.” There wasn’t a point discussing this with Efra, of all people. “Go see to your shoulder, Efra.”

At the door, I stopped him with a reminder. “I am relying on your discretion. Be advised I will not take it kindly if my faith is misplaced.”

He rolled his eyes. “They have been expecting you to stab me since you arrived. Nobody will ask questions.”

The door closed behind him. The coughing had slowed, but Arin’s body was ice cold against mine. What would have happened if he hadn’t been wearing the healer’s bandages? If there hadn’t been magic in place to heal him? Would it have only taken that single touch for my magic to kill him?

Eventually, his body relaxed against mine. I leaned back, arranging his head into my lap. I rolled my sleeve, holding my arm under his nose until a warm puff of air brushed over my skin.

He had saved me—again. I had almost killed him—again.

The Heir came here to die.

We had nine days until Nuzret Kamel. Nine days for me to undo twenty-six years of Supreme Rawain’s poison and prove to Arin that having magic was not the end of his world. All he had ever experienced of it was pain and anguish.

I had nine days to show him it could be so much more.

“To reiterate: You want me to jump?” Arin glanced from the waves crashing against the cliff to me, arching a silver brow.

“Not jump. Slide.” I gestured impatiently. “Just hold on.”

I rubbed my temples, feeling like a premiere fool. I had been trying to summon the Sareekh for the last fifteen minutes. So much for you may call upon me at any hour of need . Even the fish were lying these days.

Arin didn’t know why I had brought him up here, only that I wanted him to see the rest of the mountain. We hadn’t discussed last night.

“If you’re trying to figure out how to push me over the side, I don’t think anyone would stop you,” Arin said.

A joke. He is joking. Don’t react. Do not—

“Including you?” I demanded.

The second brow jumped to join the first, high on his forehead.

I dragged a hand down my face, turning away. I couldn’t stop thinking about what Jeru had implied—the risk Arin had taken by touching me.

Arin caught my arm, spinning me back around. He stared in steadily rising disbelief, holding fast when I tried to wriggle away. “Essiya, I am not going to throw myself off this cliff.”

“No, you would have me do it for you.” I wrenched free. “Is it so horrible, being Jasadi? You would rather die than have magic?”

Arin’s eyes widened. His lips parted, but before he could speak, the ground rumbled beneath us. Salt water misted the air, massive waves slapping against the side of the mountain.

“Took it long enough,” I groused. The sea rippled as water sluiced off the rising island, the Sareekh’s scales shimmering bloodred under the shafts of sun.

You summoned. Loudly.

I pointed at the Nizahl Heir and thought, I want to show him magic can be beautiful. He knows little of what it can do besides kill and cause chaos. Help me.

I am not your personal amusement.

Please? I channeled it as pathetically as I could. I did not call upon you frivolously. He matters to me.

A long, sullen vibration. I glanced back at Arin.

The Nizahl Heir had slid onto his haunches, watching the Sareekh with open-mouthed awe.

“This is Sareekh il Ma’a,” he said. Wonder colored his voice.

“I read about it when I was a child. The stories… did not do it justice.” He glanced up at me, and I would have dealt with the Sareekh’s attitude a million times over if it meant seeing more of the pure astonishment in his eyes. “Did you summon it?”

I rocked on my feet, strangely shy all of a sudden. “It likes me. I am theoretically allowed to call upon it when I am in need, but we’re having a debate about the circumstances of such need.”

Oh, fine.

Two spindles shot through the air. The cages closed around my and Arin’s middles like bony corsets, hoisting us into the air.

A credit to Arin’s ironclad control—he didn’t shout. He didn’t wrestle. The Sareekh reeled us over the side of the cliff, and Arin’s single admission of stress was in gritting his teeth.

My hair whipped in the wind, and I kicked my legs with childlike glee. The Sareekh’s parted spinal column revealed the bundles of spiky bones, curled into buds beneath a gelatinous layer. They sealed as it drew Arin and I down, leaving only the two extended sets of bone cages.

“Don’t be frightened!” I shouted over the whistling wind.

Arin’s glare intensified under my maniacal grin. His hair blew around him like a wrathful cloud, and it only entertained me further.

The Sareekh sank beneath the waves. The first glimmer of unease cracked through Arin as we raced toward the churning waters. I should have warned him what I intended to do. Surprises were not the way to endear magic to Arin.

I heaved myself to the right and grabbed his hand, resenting the gloves more than ever. I wanted to feel his skin. Trace the light veins on his hand with a soothing thumb. He weaved his fingers through mine and held on tight.

Brace yourselves.

We crashed into the water. Our hands flew apart as we submerged, sinking at dizzying speed. The shock of cold faded faster than the disorientation, and I struggled to adjust to the darkness.

Your magic. The purpose of this lovely excursion, no?

Right. The veins lit one by one as magic flooded my body.

I opened my mouth. Gold and silver bubbles floated from my lips.

The first of them found Arin and quadrupled in size, merging to form a translucent barrier around him.

The rest did the same to me. Our chests lifted with air at the same time, and I laughed, the sound swallowed by the still water around us.

But Arin didn’t look excited. The opposite, in fact.

On reflex, I glanced down at myself. Silver and gold veins blazed over my body, wrapping around every inch of exposed skin. I had grown so accustomed to the sight, it barely registered how much they had spread.

He just needed to see. If he understood what magic could do, the wonder it might create, he wouldn’t be so unsettled by the veins. He wouldn’t have the words magic-madness swimming in loops around his mind.

He just needed to see.

I wrapped my arms around myself. I shaped the silent intent, viscerally aware of Arin’s attention. My magic heated, hungry for more. Always hungry.

I threw my arms wide. Light poured over us, searing as an implosion of the sun.

The rays pierced across the water, lighting distances and depths I couldn’t begin to comprehend.

They rotated around us, illuminating, exposing the life waiting mere inches away.

Schools of fish swam beneath our legs, their scales casting glittering shadows as they passed.

A silver creature with a fin on its back chased the smaller fish, its tail cutting naturally through the water.

I did not point out the monsters hovering behind Arin.

They were the same ones that appeared my first time underwater, crowded curiously behind the Sareekh’s head.

They will not come closer.

They are already too close.

As a single force, the creatures wriggled back, putting space between them and Arin.

They obey me, and I obey you. They will not harm what is yours.

Bewilderment cut through my relief. I hadn’t dwelled on it too much the first time, but now, the Sareekh’s proclamation puzzled me. It sounded so certain, so assured.

But why? Why would a creature like you obey me?

It is what I was created to do.

You were not created to obey some random Heir to a throne that doesn’t exist anymore.

The Sareekh hummed, but did not reply.

I moved closer to Arin, careful not to reach him too quickly. I didn’t want to consider how it would feel if he recoiled from my magic.

“Look behind you,” I murmured.

A muscle jumped in Arin’s jaw. “A most comforting sentence,” he muttered. Holding tight to the Sareekh’s ribs around him, he turned.