Page 89 of The Jasad Crown (The Scorched Throne #2)

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

ESSIYA

T he following three days were the best I had spent in the Gibal.

Sefa fussed over me in ways I would never allow from anyone else.

How much I ate, what I wore, how long I had slept.

The attention from Namsa or Maia would have fallen falsely, even if its roots were true.

My purpose to the Urabi was first and foremost a weapon.

You might clean your blade and sheathe it lovingly for years, but once it cracked, you would be a fool to do anything other than melt it down and forge a new one.

Sefa asked because she’d been burdened with the unfortunate defect of caring about me. Cracks and all.

In the evenings, Marek and Sefa joined me on the cliffside while the Urabi prepared for our departure from the Gibal.

I enjoyed watching my kitmers circle the sun as it set over Suhna Sea, their silver wings dappling the horizon with the fiery colors of Jasad.

Marek regaled us with tales of his time in Nizahl’s Ravening compound.

Zane, the kind giant who rescued Marek from a nisnas, possessed a love of beans that had resulted in gratuitous amounts of flatulence; he also prevented Marek from throwing himself on the Lukubi guards who arrested Sefa.

Almerour, whose real name he had forgotten, wouldn’t know how to aim a spear if you brought the target to the end of his nose, but he could apparently talk about the history of the kingdoms until everyone in the bunks fell asleep.

Sefa spoke about Lukub only once. Quiet and subdued, she told us about saving the Sultana, about realizing her options were to either die looking for us or to finish what she and I had started during the Alcalah.

When she spoke of Vaida, her tone tightened with discomfort, as though she knew what Marek and I were thinking.

As though we might hold her in judgment for showing kindness to a woman who manipulated her; think less of her for enjoying an adventure with someone who threatened to cut out her tongue and had her thrown in the Traitors’ Wells.

When it was my turn to close the gaps of my time since the Victor’s Ball, the seams of my story were loose and uneven.

I couldn’t tell them about standing in the waterfall while hallucinations danced around me.

Nor about Raya’s glowing eyes, swirling with Jasadi magic.

Killing Felix and signing my death sentence in the same motion.

The constant cacophony of my magic, an ever-growing pressure within my veins.

Neither I nor Arin had forgotten what awaited me when I left these mountains.

Since the moment he had declared himself to my service, Arin had been a force of unrelenting, unstoppable action.

Every Jasadi with unusual magic had been accounted for, and Arin had divided the Urabi into groups.

Half of them pursued tasks aimed at preventing the war, and the other half prepared to win it.

The only task he had assigned both sides was the scepter.

“He thinks using it to raise the fortress will keep me from using my magic,” I explained to Sefa and Marek.

“Do you disagree?” Marek watched me closely.

“I have less faith in Rawain’s sense of moderation. I suspect he used the magic in his possession frequently and generously, and there will not be much waiting for us inside his ugly scepter.”

Every order Arin issued, he did so under my name.

He taught the Urabi how to swing a sword or dispatch an armed opponent.

He advised what kinds of food would survive a long campaign toward Jasad and what would perish.

No details evaded his inspection, and no question chafed him into irritation.

We were more organized, more purposeful, than we had been since my first day at the Gibal, and he attributed it all to me.

An outright lie, of course. Leadership exhausted me.

I was a performer on a stage, and I had memorized my steps, but I took no joy in the motions.

The rhythm of it did not flow naturally through me.

And more and more frequently, I simply wanted to sit down and catch my breath.

Wipe the sweat from my brow and rub my aching feet.

What drained me, revitalized him.

On my worse days, I wondered whether Arin was right, and I had resigned myself to death to hide the fact that I was still Sylvia.

I was still the girl who wanted to run, who would watch this mountain burn and turn her back on the flames.

Death meant I would atone for my past, but it also meant I could never fail in the future.

I would not need to sit on a throne I hated or break beneath a crown I could not carry.

This escape—this one permanent escape—was the only place I could run where failure would not trail behind me like a chain around my ankle.

There were moments when I thought Arin knew.

When he entered our chambers after I had just settled into sleep, the brush of leather as he moved my hair from my cheek.

He would sit at my side, motionless for the first time since his burst of activity in the morning, and I wondered if even in the dark he could see right through me.

Do you think surrendering to your magic is bravery? Do you think it will atone for your past?

But he never mentioned atonement again, and I avoided discussing anything that might summon that hollow emptiness back to his eyes. It had vanished after his first night in the Gibal, but I doubted it had disappeared entirely.

Arin’s mind was a maze with no beginning or end.

The scepter, the preparations—they were merely passages toward his ultimate plan.

The scepter would not be enough to raise the fortress.

The Urabi would never be trained to the same level as an army of Nizahl soldiers, not even new recruits.

He had a destination at the end of this maze, and for whatever reason, he didn’t want me to know where it led.

But he kept my secret, so I kept his.

Arin paced around the table, his brow furrowed nearly to his nose. He shuffled four documents to the right. A pause. Two documents returned to the left.

“Is he going to talk anytime soon?” Namsa mumbled, draining the last of her yansoon. “I would ideally like to sleep before sunrise.”

“No one is holding you here,” I said, not unkindly. “There’s more than enough of us already.” Lateef had taken a seat after twenty minutes of uncertain hovering near the maps, and now he joined the rest of us, nibbling at his atayef and watching the Nizahl Heir circle the table.

Legs outstretched beside mine on the ground, Maia offered me a handful of sunflower seeds. I shook my head, and she hesitated before extending her arm past me, holding out the seeds to Marek.

Marek beamed. “Oh, you beautiful, wondrous thing,” he said, scooping half the seeds from Maia’s palm. His fingers lingered on hers a beat too long, casually scanning the woman on the other side of the seeds. “Thank you.”

“I can go fetch more, if you’d like,” Maia said, blissfully unaware she had fallen straight into Marek’s crosshairs.

“These are perfect, Maia. Just… perfect.” The last part emerged so lascivious and heated, it was a surprise the seeds didn’t roast right then. It also sailed past Maia, who flashed him a smile and turned back around.

I sighed. Marek’s inability to accept kindness without trying to offer his body in return needed to be part of a longer conversation—ideally one he had with Sefa and not me.

Pointing out Maia’s current marital status wouldn’t help.

Marek had invited many a wedded woman into his bed, regardless of how many times their husbands tried to murder him.

I placed my chin on Marek’s shoulder as though I were about to kiss him on the cheek. “She’s a lahwa. The Urabi’s executioner.”

Marek blinked, turning slightly to meet my gaze. His attention dropped to my mouth. “Hmm?”

Awaleen below. He was hopeless.

A mean-spirited idea came to me. One I would have normally cast aside as pure pettiness, if I hadn’t already had my fill of stubborn Nizahlan men to last a lifetime.

I brought my mouth closer to Marek and whispered, “A lahwa kills bloodlessly. Elegantly. All she has to do is reach into your mind and draw out your greatest nightmare. Submerse you in your terror until it stops your heart and ends your life.”

I doubted he heard a word. The intrigue had fled from Marek’s features, replaced with a cross between unease and confusion. He regarded my lips like they were coated in poison.

My attempt to move closer met with resistance. Marek planted his hand over my face and pushed my head back. “Not funny.”

I swatted his sweaty hand away, wrinkling my nose. “Avoid gambling on a prize you don’t want to win.”

Rolling his eyes, he cracked a seed between his front teeth. “Too much has passed between us. Too many occasions where I watched you sniff the end of your braid and pick dirt out of your nails with a knife. My nightmares echo the sound of you clearing the phlegm from your throat in the morning.”

My jaw dropped. How dare—oh, he was a dead man. We would see whose morning sounds were more disgusting when I shaved off all his nice, shiny hair and stuffed it down his throat.

“Besides,” Marek said wryly, inclining his head toward the table, “I might take my chances with average husbands, but even I am not fool enough to bed the Commander’s… whatever you are.”

I followed Marek’s amused gaze to the table, where Arin had stopped scrutinizing the maps to stare at us. At my sheepish grin, he shook his head and returned to his task.

“See?” Marek said, altogether too pleased with himself.

“I see nothing. Eat your sunflower seeds.”

“He still calls me ‘the boy,’” Marek griped.

“It’s affectionate.”

“It’s patronizing. Might I remind you, he and I are only three years apart.”

“Wrong. You are an infant,” Jeru snapped. “Pay attention.”

We startled. I’d forgotten Jeru was on Marek’s other side. The guardsman hadn’t uttered a word all day.

At the table, Arin stopped pacing. He braced his palms wide across the table and bowed over the maps. Marek and I exchanged meaningful glances, and I pushed to my feet.

Standing at Arin’s shoulder while he loomed over a table covered in maps stirred a bittersweet nostalgia.

The first time we’d been in this position, it had been over a map with the words Scorched Lands over Jasad’s former territory.

It had never crossed my mind that months later, Arin of Nizahl would be bent over another map—only this time, on behalf of the rebels he had spent years chasing.

“Hello,” I said, standing entirely too close.

He tilted his chin and studied me for a fraction of a second, as though waiting for bad news. When I continued to just smile like a drunken fool, his face softened. “Hello.”

“What do you think of our maps?”

He gestured at the spots he’d marked. “Not nearly sufficient for what we are attempting. I could draw better maps from scratch.”

We. I beamed. Not even Marek’s giant eye roll could ruin the effect that one word had on me.

Arin raised a palm before Lateef could speak, anticipating the elder’s indignance. “I do not mean it as a slight. In fact, you should consider it a compliment. I had maps much more sophisticated than these, and yet I continuously failed to capture you.”

“Hmm.” Appeased, Lateef reclined in his chair once more, legs crossed and a bowl of yellow tirmis in his lap. He squeezed a slice of lemon over the beans. “I’ll consider it as such, then.”

Arin had crossed out three of the major routes we had originally planned to take to Jasad. “Without Orban’s protection, these roads will be compromised at every major juncture.”

“What about Tareek il Hadi?” I tapped the sliver of road at the hills of the Blood Summit, its path cutting across Orban, the south of Lukub, and winding through Essam to Jasad. “My grandparents took this when we rode for the Summit.”

“Your grandparents also took a retinue of trained Jasadi soldiers. Tareek il Hadi hasn’t been safe for anyone since 1500 A.E. It is saturated in old magic.”

“Then it is only fresh magic you prefer to siphon?” Efra asked, leaning against the other wall.

Gold and silver flicked into my eyes.

Under the table, Arin stamped on my foot. Hard.

I yanked my incensed glare away from Efra. Arin pointedly lowered his gaze to the veins glowing over my skin, pulsing in tune to my heart.

Arin’s ability to see the veins could not be more inconvenient. The one person capable of speaking reason to my rage, even when I did not want to be reasoned with.

“As I was saying,” Arin continued, as though he hadn’t just saved Efra from an evening coughing up his fingernails, “Tareek il Hadi is not ideal, but it may be the only choice. None of the kingdoms can spare the resources to send more than a handful of soldiers to patrol it.”

“Thank you for the insight, Your Highness.” With a stern glance at Efra, Lateef dropped another translucent tirmis peel onto the pile by his foot. “We can reconvene tomorrow and finalize a course of action. It has been a long day, and any further work we put forth tonight will not be our best.”

As soon as the dismissal left Lateef’s mouth, everyone stampeded for the doors. Marek grabbed Jeru’s arm and dragged him from the room, muttering some joke about Heirs being left to their affairs.

Lateef stood slowly, working a piece of tirmis between his teeth. The bean shot out and hit Namsa square in the forehead. “Off you go,” he told her, passing over the bowl.

She wiped her forehead with a scowl. “You could have used your words.”

“I did,” he said. “The second time, I use my tirmis.”

She stomped out, leaving me, Lateef, and Arin by the table.

Lateef’s air of geniality vanished as soon as Namsa did. “Essiya, are you trying to discredit yourself?”

I balked. “What?”

Lateef rubbed his forehead. “I forget you are a mere twenty and one. And you”—he waved at Arin—“twenty and six. The fate of our future rests on the shoulders of children.” Lateef sighed. “Broken and brave children.”

Arin and I slid each other glances, mutually baffled.

“You must exercise greater care when you interact with each other,” Lateef said. “Do not make it impossible to ignore what is already glaringly obvious.”

I crossed my arms. “I do not interact with the Heir any differently than the others do. If you mean they will think I am too friendly, that I should be calling him Silver Serpent or sauntering around like Efra—”

“Friendly? Awaleen below, I would give my left leg for friendly. I would even accept affectionate. Essiya, it is impossible to watch you two and not recognize how deeply in love you are.”