Page 93 of The Jasad Crown (The Scorched Throne #2)

CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

ARIN

T hey arrested him and Jeru ten miles from the Citadel.

Arin’s cooperation as they tied him and Jeru to the back of the wagon only furthered the soldiers’ unease, and by the time they arrived on the Citadel’s grounds, the soldiers had been engaged in three hours of furtive whispers.

From them, Arin learned his father had not disappointed Arin’s predictions.

Experienced soldiers had been sent to secure the territory between Nizahl and Lukub as well as hold the Ivory Palace.

Layers upon layers of protection stood between the Citadel and Lukub, whereas every recruit in every compound had been pulled out of training and ordered to march south.

Toward Jasad.

Jeru had looked faintly ill at the news, but Arin was unmoved. Two days had passed since he escaped the Gibal, and Arin had no illusions of the kind of chaos he had left behind him. The Jasadis would not have wanted to heed the advice he had written to Essiya. They would have fought her on it.

She probably wanted him dead more than everyone in that mountain. She would be incandescent with fury, or worse—she would cut off her pain with the sharp end of her magic.

In either case, she would have taken Arin’s advice. It was good advice, and Sylvia of Mahair had never turned her back on a tool that might keep her alive, no matter whose hand offered it. The recruits would need to march to the lowest of the southern wilayahs for the war.

All Arin needed to do was reach Janub Aya before his soldiers.

The first gate parted for their wagon. Rows of recruits watched Arin and Jeru pass with varying degrees of shock. The news of Arin’s arrival would reach the Citadel long before he did, and sure enough, Bayoum was waiting on the Citadel’s grounds when the wagon stopped.

The soldiers helped Arin and Jeru out of the cart. Bayoum’s face soured at their overly solicitous behavior.

“You came back,” Bayoum sneered. “Why? Do you think you have a chance at a trial after you brutalized the Supreme? Plead your case in our courts? The fate of traitors lies in the hands of the betrayed.”

“Hand,” Arin said.

“What?”

“He only has one hand. I took the other.”

Bayoum turned the color of a beet. He spun to the soldiers. “Take the traitor to the Capsule and throw his guardsman in one of the cells beneath the tower. If the traitor escapes—if you allow him to talk his way out of his restraints—I will execute you and everyone you have ever met.”

Jeru glanced at Arin as he was led away and nodded, a resolute set to his hard features.

In that moment, Arin forgave him every lie, every duplicity.

Of course, Jeru had tried to save Marek.

Of course, Jeru had used Marek to bring a corrupt compound leader abusing his power in the lower villages to justice.

Unlike Vaun, who had followed Arin’s orders to the very last syllable, Jeru obeyed the principles of the Commander Arin aimed to be.

And when Arin deviated, Jeru stayed the line. He held firm.

Even if it meant following Arin to his death.

Low clouds veiled the top of the Citadel’s tower. The wings of the Citadel curved around the tower in steel crescents, the glass halls connecting them to the tower frosted from the cold. Black stones gleamed around windows washed gold with candlelight.

Arin knew the Citadel was not particularly warm. Visitors from other kingdoms, even other parts of Nizahl, often joked the Citadel had been built to inspire foreboding in all who gazed upon it.

But then, Arin was not particularly warm, either. The Citadel had always been a part of Arin—the steel in his spine, the stone around his heart. The axis around which his world spun.

As Arin had taken the shape of the Citadel, so too was it time for the Citadel to mirror its master.

Stone for stone. Steel for steel.

Ruin for ruin.

The soldiers handed him off to two of his father’s guardsmen, who were markedly less shaken about transporting Arin like a common prisoner. They were also familiar with the Capsule, having escorted Arin to and from his punishments as a child.

“Rauf. Zach.” Arin inclined his head. “This must feel all too familiar for you.”

Rauf cleared his throat, opening his mouth only to cut himself off at Zach’s sharp look. Rauf had always had a slightly softer touch than the rest of his father’s guardsmen, and age seemed to have exacerbated the problem.

After climbing for five floors, they stopped halfway up the next set of steps. Zach swung his elbow at the uneven blocks of gray stone. Instead of cracking his bones, the block beneath his elbow exploded in plumes of dirt. Zach pushed his arm through the empty space and reached down.

The stones shifted, heaving inward to reveal a dark passageway clouded with dust. The passage was too narrow for more than one person to walk at a time, so Rauf stepped in front of Arin while Zach trailed behind.

The passage ended in a pocket of darkness carved into the wall. It ended in the Capsule, in nothingness—a black hole where neither light nor shadow could reach.

Arin’s teeth ground together. He had underestimated how strongly his body might react to the Capsule, regardless of the years.

Without prompting, Arin stepped over the foot-high threshold and into the hole. The guards watched him for a minute, perhaps waiting for the facade of cooperation to snap.

Arin settled at the back of the hole and stretched his legs in front of him, crossing them at the ankle.

Eventually, their footsteps faded, leaving Arin to contend with his old nemesis.

The void.

The Capsule only existed thanks to the forces of paranoia that had governed Supreme Ghashli, Nizahl’s ruler five generations after Fareed.

Supreme Ghashli had been convinced his enemies were in the walls coming to kill him.

He hired dozens of Laeyim from Omal to build passageways throughout the Citadel in an effort to find the voices.

Laeyim were excellent builders, but their magic came with an unfortunate side effect: the passageways were hidden from everyone, including Supreme Ghashli.

Not only was he convinced there were enemies waiting for him behind the walls, but now he had granted them passageways that led directly into various wings of the Citadel.

Supreme Ghashli disappeared shortly after the Laeyim finished construction.

It took them years to find his body. One of the passageways to the Capsule had mysteriously opened for the Supreme, and it seemed he had never found his way out again.

They discovered his corpse in the exact spot where Arin was sitting, a grotesque smile fixed on what flesh remained on his skeleton.

Arin leaned his head back, the wisp of white air leaving his lips the only evidence of life in the nothingness. The only difference between Arin and the lingering ghosts of his childhood, all of whom had died a strange sort of death in this hole.

Arin breathed. He waited.

He closed his eyes and thought of a shy smile curving against his shoulder. He filled his ears with the sound of her laugh, the way it burst uncontrolled from her chest and smothered itself behind her palm.

In the evening, I would come home to you.

Arin sat among his ghosts and dreamed of his future.