Page 90 of The Jasad Crown (The Scorched Throne #2)

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

ESSIYA

O h no.

Heat flushed through my body, reducing my caustic remark to a crisp. I became viscerally aware of Arin’s proximity.

Lateef’s gaze bounced between us. He heaved another sigh. “Children.”

Neither of us spoke as the door swung shut behind the elder Jasadi.

I tried to negotiate with my jaw. If it moved and produced speech—any speech—I would give it anything it wanted.

I would stop clenching my teeth before bed.

I would stop sucking the marrow out of beef bones.

I would use my miswak before and after every meal.

“On the cliff, you asked if I would rather die than have magic. If existing as a Jasadi was too abhorrent for me to bear.”

Arin stared straight ahead, the lines of his body coiled tight with a pressure that must have bordered on painful.

“What was too abhorrent to bear was the hypocrisy,” Arin said, eerily flat. “The lies.” His laugh chilled me. “How often I cast you as a liar, when I was nothing more than the custom sword my father forged through magic to fight against the method of its own creation.”

I forced myself to slow down and choose my words with care. “Do you recall what I told you in the tunnels? The night Vaun dragged me into your chambers and you asked me how I could read Nizahl’s old language?”

“Vividly.” Arin cast a wry look my way. “I spent a significant amount of time after the Victor’s Ball reviewing the many missed opportunities to uncover your identity.”

I rolled my eyes. “Then you remember what I said. What I still believe. We build our reality on the foundation our world sets for us. You are not to blame for being planted in poisonous soil, Arin. Our choices come when we realize what we have grown into; when we look at the world around us and recognize our role in it. Only then, when you decide whether you will grow roots or tear yourself free, can you be truly held to account.”

Arin pushed his fingers through his hair, features as impenetrable as stone. “Quite a forgiving perspective. Do you think the Jasadis I drained, imprisoned, and executed would agree?”

“Your death is not a penance. It does not balance the scales,” I said.

“If I told you the same, would you listen?”

Thrown, I took a second to recenter myself. “That is different.”

“You haven’t forgiven yourself, either.”

“For what? Turning my back on Jasad?”

“No.” He glanced over, and I found myself held at the knifepoint of his gaze. “For surviving.”

The air left my chest. Arin’s unvarnished honesty was always an arrow to the throat. A clean and quick kill, leaving no shadows to hide behind.

I released a tremulous laugh. “What a pair we are. The magic-mad Malika and the magic-stripped Heir.”

“You are not mad.”

Yet. It lingered between us, another arrow neither of us was ready to aim.

“Even if I survive, what then? What do you think will happen after the fortress is raised? The Awaleen-damned fortress. The others are so preoccupied with restoring it, I doubt they’ve given much consideration to what happens after.

How will we rebuild Jasad without help from the other kingdoms?

How will we trade if our fortress keeps out merchants?

There are Jasadis like Adel, who have lived in other kingdoms their entire lives.

Started families in Omal or Lukub or Orban or Nizahl.

Jasadis whose great-great-grandparents left the kingdom centuries before the Jasad War, who have almost no magic and even less interest in returning to a scorched land they weren’t born to.

Will they be forced to continue living in hiding, fearful of losing their lives over any innocent act of magic? ”

I shook my head. “We need you. I need you. Just this morning, Namsa asked me about the number of wells around Usr Jasad and if we would need to dig more.”

“Twenty-seven, and yes.”

I groaned, covering my face. “If you have made it your new life’s mission to outdo me at every turn, consider it satisfied.”

Arin’s lips twisted. “You give me too much credit.”

“I give you exactly what you deserve,” I pointed out.

“If you’d like me to list your flaws, I am happy to oblige.

We can start off with your sense of fashion.

Do you own coats without ravens? You could choose to have a new coat specially tailored for you every day for the rest of your life, and it would hardly scrape the surface of your ridiculous wealth. Does every single one need ravens?”

Arin leaned in, bracing himself on the table and pinning me between the borders of his arms. “I didn’t realize you paid such attention to my wardrobe.”

Arin’s gaze traveled over me with aching slowness, trailing heat everywhere it landed. “What else is on your list?”

I swallowed. I had not seen him look like this since the Mirayah.

“Your hair. If I went to sleep with my hair down, I would wake up with half of it stuck together and spend the next bath negotiating each curl apart. You go to sleep with your hair down, and it takes you one lazy swipe of your fingers to tame it again.”

“I see.” My mouth went dry as he twisted one of my curls around his finger, winding it into a spiral. “I can shave my head, if you would like.”

“No!”

Arin’s quiet laugh brushed the side of my neck, raising goose bumps on my skin. I gasped as he gripped my hips and lifted me onto the edge of the table, positioning himself between my knees.

“Is this part of the game?” I asked shakily. “If it is, it is thoroughly unfair. I am at a disadvantage of experience.”

Arin arched a brow. “Did your previous experience leave something to be desired?”

I shoved his shoulder, cheeks flaming. “You know what I mean. I don’t want…” I’d rather strangle myself with a serrated chain than reveal the extent of this gnawing insecurity. “I do not want to disappoint you.”

I may as well have slapped him across the face. Arin withdrew, silver lashes ringing thunderous blue eyes. “I beg your pardon?”

Coherency evaded me, slipping like water between my sifting fingers. “I just mean, I know you have had others. I—I enjoyed myself, uh, greatly, but for you it might not have been as—what I mean to say is—”

The ripple in Arin’s mouth sealed mine shut. Mirth had lit through him like stars in a dusky sky. I hid my face in his shoulder, groaning softly.

A heavy hand came to rest on my neck. His thumb slipped into the collar of my tunic, soothing a circle against the hilt of my spine.

“Any advantage of experience I might have evaporates the minute you touch me, Suraira.” His voice was firm.

“Since it seems I have been less than clear: the advantage is yours. You unravel me utterly.”

Molten fire flooded me, more than if he had uttered barroom filth. I could have handled that better. A thousand tiny tremors worked through me. “How cruel of you to say such things to a dead woman.”

His grip on my neck tightened painfully for a fraction of a second, then relaxed. “If you live—if we both do—what life do you see for yourself?”

“I haven’t envisioned anything,” I said. Strange, how ardently I had once fought to ensure I could exist for another day, another week, another year. I had rarely looked to the future, because I didn’t need to. The details might change, but I wouldn’t. I would be there.

Now, the future burst with colors and potential, but none of the possibilities included me.

“Lazy,” he chided.

I blinked, struggling to focus on something other than the trail of his fingers along my hips. “I do not see the point of giving myself over to fanciful musings of a future I won’t experience.”

Again, Arin reacted with unsettling calm. “Indulge me, then.” His eyes went hazy as I carded my gloved fingers through his hair, succumbing to the impulse I’d been pushing off for days.

Arin slid an arm under my legs and another behind my back. He carried me to the sleeping pallets on the other end of the room, left over from an overnight meeting the Aada held a few weeks ago.

He settled me onto a pallet and dragged a quilt over us, covering my shoulders. “There are other ways to keep me warm,” I pointed out.

In a second, I was soundly enfolded against him, tucked away from the world and all its horrors. I pressed my cheek to his vest. I was convinced he had brokered a deal with the seamstresses to produce an endless supply of vests for him in the mountain.

“Answer my question.”

I sighed. Once Arin caught on a question, he would not budge until he’d untangled a satisfactory answer.

Knowing he wouldn’t drop the matter, I seriously considered it. What would my life look like if I survived raising the fortress?

“Once Jasad is safe, and my best utility is not in front of an army or beneath a crown, I think I would want to travel,” I said, surprising myself.

“I thought about it often as a child. Exploring. I would beg Dawoud and Soraya to take me to their wilayahs. Usr Jasad felt enormous to many who passed through its doors, but it always felt so limited to me. I climbed the trees in the gardens every day, looking down at the world and wishing I could be part of it.” I chuckled.

“I practically screamed myself hoarse until Gedo Niyar and Teta Palia agreed to take me to the Summit with them. I think they only said yes because they worried I might use their absence to spend more time with my mother.”

I cleared my throat, turning my cheek into his arm.

“And if you were in Nizahl, I would come visit. You could show me your favorite places, and I would pretend to understand why they are an architectural marvel.” I shut my eyes tight.

His breath stirred the top of my head. He sounded worn. “Suraira, I cannot fathom how to make you believe me. Anywhere you are is my favorite place.”

I winced, rolling away from him. I tried for a lighter note. “In that case, I hope you are fond of graves.”

“It is no bravery to pretend life is cheap to you,” Arin said. “It is no bravery to push out all the things that make it worthwhile.”

It had been ages since I remembered that my death was not a tragic inevitability, but a choice I was making. A necessary choice, but a choice nonetheless. Of course, Arin would be upset.

The choices I made always left him alone.

After a strained minute, he said, “Go on. Tell me of the rest of your life.”

Lying on my back, I subjected the ceiling to intense and unwarranted scrutiny.

“Eventually, when the world was safe again, I would want to settle. Probably in Jasad, but… there is a blue cottage in Mahair, not far from the keep. It has a garden and space for Marek and Sefa. I would replant my fig tree, and Marek would probably keep it alive for me, because plants seem to like him better. I would open an apothecary, or maybe a keep like Raya’s.

I’d teach young girls the best way to gut a man and how to braid your hair without looking in a mirror. Fairel has yet to master the latter.”

My restraint reached its limit, and I burrowed into Arin’s shoulder once more, eyes drifting shut. Sleep had been crawling over me, and its weight swiftly became too strong to resist—though I tried. What could it offer me when my waking hours had already woven me the sweetest of dreams?

“In the evening, I would come home to you.”

When sleep finally stole me away, it whispered its apology.