Page 87 of The Jasad Crown (The Scorched Throne #2)

I blew out a breath. Across the table, weariness and trepidation marked every face, shoulders stooped like birds tucking their wings against the storm.

Arin met my troubled gaze with his own. The first sign of a battle lost was the belief it was lost.

I clapped my hands together, once again startling Sefa into sloshing her soup.

“Who wants to fight the Nizahl Heir?”

Arin set his feet, waiting.

Even after clearing the tables, the dining hall hadn’t accommodated the influx of people rushing to take turns fighting the Nizahl Heir, so we had moved to the cliffside.

My first set of kitmers circled overhead, chasing the sunlight as it receded over the sparkling surface of Suhna Sea.

Everyone sat cross-legged in the valley between our mountain and the neighboring one, the frozen lake where the Visionists had conjured the attack at Galim’s Bend not far behind us.

Maia’s husband took the sword Lateef handed him and swallowed. He glanced at Arin’s discarded sword and then at Maia, who was rocking on her heels with dizzying velocity.

Maia’s husband set his sword on the ground. “Commander or not, I will not use a weapon against an unarmed man.”

Arin had yet to use the sword I’d handed him. He’d set it behind him and had not reached for it in the last seven challenges. With his coat off and his sleeves rolled to his elbows, there was no difference between him and a man enjoying a moonlit stroll.

“I admire your honor.” The suggestion of a smile touched Arin’s lips. “Perhaps the memory of it will keep your wife warm after you’re dead.”

Arin struck as jarringly fast as he had with the others.

Maia’s husband barely had a chance to react before Arin swept his legs out from under him.

Instead of rolling away from Arin’s boots, the husband rolled in, hurtling his weight against Arin’s legs.

The crowd stirred, curious to see if the Nizahl Heir might finally lose his balance.

So far, no one had been able to knock him down.

Maia’s husband was a man of impressive height and build—if anyone could tangle Arin, it would be him.

So they thought. I leaned against Sefa’s shoulder, scooping a spoonful of sugared pomegranate seeds out of her bowl. On her other side, Marek and Jeru were observing the proceedings with matching looks of consternation.

“How many more is he going to fight?” Sefa sighed. Maia’s husband had gotten back on his feet. We watched him swing at Arin’s head and miss.

“As many as are stupid enough to challenge him.”

Without a vest, only the thin barrier of Arin’s shirt obstructed my view of his chest as it flexed. I drank in his twisting torso, the strip of his back where Maia’s husband had grabbed at Arin’s collar and rucked up his shirt. Rovial’s tainted tomb, Arin without his layers was obscene.

“Please get that look off of your face,” Sefa said, the strained request startling me from my reverie. “I feel an urgent need to throw you into the lake.”

“The lake is frozen.”

“And yet I doubt it’ll be cold enough.” Sefa shuddered. “I thought Marek had exposed me to the full range of human depravity, but Awaleen below, Essiya… unless you want everyone to know you’d like to eat the Heir alive, take a firmer hand with your lust.”

I flashed her a crude smirk. “I’ll tell you who I’d like to take a firmer hand with my lust.”

I erupted into peals of laughter as Sefa started shoving me toward the lake.

Maia’s husband hit the ground a third time, and he raised his hands in defeat. “I surrender. I need my spine in working order to survive the journey to Jasad.”

Arin extended a hand toward Maia’s husband.

I stiffened, jerking away from Sefa. I couldn’t remember Arin extending a hand to anyone other than me.

The Urabi were already paranoid about his abilities, about coming too close to him.

If Maia’s husband rebuffed the gesture, all the goodwill Arin had spent the last hour fighting for would be destroyed.

He had taken a calculated risk, and it proved worthwhile when Maia’s husband clasped Arin’s glove.

I exhaled, belatedly noticing I had crushed the pomegranate seeds in my fist. Ugh. I reached around Jeru to wipe the sticky red mess on the back of Marek’s shirt.

“You’re nervous,” Sefa murmured, soft brown eyes roving over my features as though my emotions had been written in a special ink only she could read. “You want them to trust him. Do you think he can’t take care of himself?”

“It isn’t about capability.” We watched Lateef walk in front of Arin, hand him a glass of water, and promptly put as much distance between himself and the Heir as possible.

A fighter, Lateef was not. “Arin is not willing to defend himself. If they try to kill him, he’ll—” My throat closed, the memory of finding him in a pool of his own blood on the cell floor still fresh. “He will let them.”

“He certainly does not seem to be letting them now.”

She was right. When Arin entered the mountains, the emptiness had leeched the life from every glance, every word.

Arin’s entire identity had been cast to the flames; the order of his world obliterated into formless chaos.

I knew better than to think my display with the Sareekh had convinced the Commander of Nizahl of the wonders of magic, but it was clear a shift had taken place.

“He is hiding something.” I studied him and did not flinch when he glanced over his shoulder, meeting my gaze with a piercing one of his own. “He has a plan.”

“Doesn’t he always?”

When Arin had dropped seventeen Jasadis to the ground, I stepped forward.

Amusement warmed the eyes fastened to my face. “Do you never tire of trying to spill my blood, Suraira?”

I quirked a brow. “Everyone needs a hobby.”

Picking up the sword, I raked a quick glance over the crowd. They had risen to their feet, conversations faltering into a thick silence across the cliffside.

“I hope you fare better than you did in Mahair,” I said.

“Play without cheating and I might.” Arin finally picked up the sword he’d left to collect dust, and I grinned.

“I won’t need my magic to put you on your back.”

Catching Sefa’s knowing stare over Arin’s shoulder, I flushed a shade similar to the pomegranate on the back of Marek’s shirt. Arin could have easily replied that he hadn’t needed magic to put me on my back, but then again, he probably knew how to take a firmer hand with his lust.

Arin twirled his sword once and beckoned me. Ah. He wanted to give them a show.

I pretended to crouch to tie my boot and scooped a pile of dirt and rocks. Springing to my feet, I flung it at him and took the opening of his momentary distraction to ram into him at a dead run.

However, I had done this twice previously, and Arin was prepared. The bastard managed to twist us around at the last second. In a flash, our positions were reversed, my back against his chest, the sword pressing into the skin beneath my chin.

The scent of rain and ink tickled my nose, achingly Arin, before his breath brushed against the side of my head. “Is this all you have to offer me?” Tight against him, I could count every beat of his heart, pounding inside his chest.

I kissed the edge of the sword, feather-light, as gold and silver gleamed in my eyes. The second most dangerous thing I had ever kissed. The first tightened his hold behind me.

The ground beneath Arin quaked.

The Commander pitched forward, momentarily unsteady as the cliffside shook. I slipped under the sword and grabbed Arin’s collar, yanking him to me.

“Cheating again,” Arin murmured, but there was laughter in his voice. I was using my magic, and for the first time, it did not draw a veil of dread over him.

We fought for years. Centuries. Reality passed around us, but it could not penetrate through us.

In a space separate from time, our swords clashed with the music of a ballad.

Our bodies moved around each other like stars voyaging across the night, permanently aligned.

Not a single drop of blood was shed, because the truth was the mightiest force between us: the next time we aimed to hurt the other, it would be real.

It would be his sword at my neck if magic-madness swept me where no one could reach; it would be my dagger in his heart if he betrayed me.

Arin maneuvered me against the side of the mountain, his sword inches away from the soft side of my belly. He braced his elbow by my head, the curve of his arm hiding my face from the other Jasadis. “You are out of training,” he said. “Use your magic.”

I tried to catch my breath, determined to spew a variety of outraged denials. I may not have been able to train in the mountains, but I hadn’t needed to. I was a better fighter than everyone here, and according to the Alcalah, better than the best of the other kingdoms.

My chest deflated. Out of training, I might still be better than everyone, but I wasn’t better than him.

He didn’t want me to lose in front of the Urabi, but they would know if he threw the fight. Both scenarios reflected poorly on their Malika.

“This does not count as cheating,” I warned. I flicked my gold-and-silver gaze to his, elated when Arin didn’t flinch. If anything, he drew closer, as if caught in the tide of the colors swirling in my eyes.

Too caught to notice the weight of my fist—tripled under my magic—slamming into the side of his head.

Arin shook his hair out, arching a taunting brow as he flipped his sword.

I hid my grin, vigilant of the attention on us.

I still had a limited range of what I could do with my magic; I lacked the intuitive connection most Jasadis developed in their adolescence.

I hadn’t learned any tricks in classes or studied magical strategies with my tutors.

Hanim’s focus had been entirely devoted to releasing my magic, not teaching me how to use it once freed.

Still, I learned quickly, and my time in the Gibal had not been without its lessons.