Page 9 of The Jasad Crown (The Scorched Throne #2)

I recoiled, yanking my hand out of the wall. I cradled my fingers to my chest as I gaped.

What were these halls made of? As a matter of fact, what was any of this made of? It must have taken the Urabi years to carve the insides of these mountains into a sanctuary without being discovered.

No wonder Arin hadn’t found them in any of the kingdoms or Essam. The Urabi had chosen to hide in the one place Arin’s plethora of maps could not follow.

I cautiously palpated various points of the wall, massaging the crevasses for any hidden keys. I considered trying to use my magic and instantly discarded the thought. Without my cuffs, I had no idea how far my magic could go or how much control I could wield over it.

A spiderweb caught on my thumb when I crouched, a palm braced against the pockmarked wall for support. I wrinkled my nose and tried to draw my hand back.

My shoulder slammed into the wall. I gasped, pulling away only to discover the web pulling with me. The string had wrapped around my thumb and held it fast.

Oh, absolutely not.

I braced my foot on the wall and heaved. The web stretched, the threads thinning into translucency, but refused to snap. I put my other foot on the wall, yanking with the weight of my entire body.

A hand appeared from my left and stroked the web. In a flash, it released my thumb—and sent me sprawling onto my rear.

I contemplated staying on the ground. Maybe if I hoped hard enough, the floor might also attempt to swallow me whole.

A shadow fell over me, and I drew myself up on my elbows, red-faced with exertion and not an insignificant amount of mortification. At this rate, they would be calling me the Witless Heir before the end of the day.

I lifted my head to offer a mumbled thanks to my rescuer and promptly shut my mouth again.

A man glowered down at me. I had seen him—and that spiteful glare—before. But where?

“You don’t remember me, do you?” He swiped the back of his hand over his nose like the scent of me might stain. “I wish I could say I was surprised. I imagine you betray your own too frequently to keep track of individual faces.”

It hit me like a thunderbolt. The man at the Meridian Pass.

The Urabi had been shooting arrows into the canyon, unaware that Arin had neatly walked them into a deadly trap.

I’d split the canyon of the Pass wider to scatter the Nizahl soldiers and give the Urabi time to escape, but I remembered the shock and betrayal in this man’s eyes when I said I wouldn’t leave with them.

You agreed to help the Silver Serpent lure us to our deaths?

“Erfa,” I said. He watched me trip over the length of my abaya as I climbed to my feet, his scowl defying the limits of facial physics to deepen even further.

Despite the valiant efforts of the worst living barber, the haphazard cut of the man’s thick brown curls took little away from his natural good looks.

His eyes were a mossy green and brewing with disdain.

He was more powerfully built than I’d prefer for a man who despised me, and the only victory was in our matched heights.

“ Erfa means cinnamon. My name is Efra.”

My smile broadened to include too many teeth. Framed by unfairly long lashes or not, his eyeballs would bleed under a knife just like anyone else’s. “My mistake. The sweetness of your disposition must have confused me.”

Kicking the spot I’d been caught against, I asked, “Do the spiderwebs in the Gibal understand the difference between humans and flies?”

“Trespassers will be trapped until someone apprehends them or the web senses an authorized signature. It doesn’t recognize the magic of strangers.” The last word dripped with enough scorn to put even a brat like Felix to shame.

His efforts to get under my skin were adorable.

I’d lived in a cramped underground training complex with four Nizahlan guardsmen who took pleasure in finding new ways to test my willingness to commit murder before breakfast. If Cinnamon wanted to glare a hole through my skull, I certainly wouldn’t stop him, but he’d have to try much harder to provoke a reaction.

“Where is Namsa?”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “At the Aada.”

I pursed my lips. Maybe he wouldn’t have to try too much harder. Aada meant seat in Resar, so unless Namsa had a designated chair I should know about, the answer was as useless as him.

“Where. Is. Namsa.”

“If she wanted you to know, she would have told you,” he said. “Find someone else to cower behind.”

With that last parting shot, Efra walked past me, his shoulder bumping mine and rocking me on my heels.

It should probably bother me more that I had managed to make an enemy out of someone within hours of regaining consciousness, but I understood Efra’s antipathy more than I understood the reverence in some of the Jasadis’ gazes.

I thrived under loathing, whether it was my own or someone else’s.

It slipped over my shoulders like a custom coat, whereas devotion suited me like shoes to a snake.

I pointed at the web. “Next time, I’m bringing a knife.”