Page 98 of The Jasad Crown (The Scorched Throne #2)

CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

ESSIYA

D awn striped the sky pink and orange on the last day before Nuzret Kamel.

The sun crawled over the ruins of Janub Aya, fighting the mist for every inch.

Pale flecks of light shimmered over the sleeping Jasadis.

Some stirred, pulling the weapons they’d slept beside closer.

A few roused just enough to sense the bitter cold, their violent shivering as effective an alarm as a kick to the head.

My attention stayed fixed on the outline of Sirauk Bridge. A nameless dread had throttled me throughout the night, and it wasn’t until I filled my chest with freezing air did I realize I couldn’t remember the last time I breathed.

Something terrible was waiting for me on that bridge. Something worse than death. Worse than madness.

Run , my magic whispered, over and over and over again. Leave while they sleep and get away before the mist falls.

I crouched over the basin and splashed cold water on my face. The time for running was over. The kitmers I had sent to spy on the Nizahl recruits were in Ahr il Uboor, which meant it was a matter of hours before the army arrived in Janub Aya.

The water in the basin settled. The reflection of a blue-eyed adolescent girl gazed back at me, her lip curling with contempt.

The hallucinations had been steady and frequent. I could scarcely turn my head without spotting one lurking in the periphery, watching me. They were in every reflection, in every shadow.

My time was running out.

Sefa yawned as she stretched awake. A stripe of sunlight cut a diagonal across her face, melting her bleary brown eyes into a warm honey. She drew herself up into a seated position, sliding Marek’s lolling head to her lap without waking him.

“Did you sleep at all?” Sefa asked. I dipped my fingers into the basin, dissolving the sneering girl.

“Since I was keeping guard, I certainly hope not.”

“When was the last time you slept?”

I didn’t flinch. “The night before.”

She nodded, glancing away. Her jaw tightened, as if her teeth had come down on something bitter and hard.

“Hmm. You know, you and Marek keep saying you don’t understand how I survived in the Ivory Palace.

A place built on duplicity and twisted truths, smoke and mirrors.

The answer is very simple: I decided that even if I had to lie to the entire world, I would not lie to myself.

If the only place I could be true was in my heart, then I would guard that truth fiercely. ”

I sighed. I had forgotten how exhausting Sefa’s unique intuition could be. Didn’t she need breakfast before she launched into a lecture? A sip of water?

“Are you implying I am lying to myself?”

Sefa studied me for a long, disconcerting moment. I tied my hair into a knot at the back of my head and swept the stray strands behind my ears. My attention returned to Sirauk.

“I don’t know,” Sefa said, and the raw note in her voice caught me. “Since you raised the kitmer, there are moments where I cannot tell who I am speaking to. Whether you are Sylvia or Essiya or someone else entirely.”

Thrown, it took me too long to compose myself.

“You have more aliases than I do, Sayali.”

“That is not what I mean and you know it. My identity—my soul—does not shift from name to name.”

Magic singed my palms. “Maybe it should. What is so special about your soul that it must always remain perfectly pristine? Souls are made to be marked. To fracture and break. We spend lifetimes repairing them, and by the time you go to your grave, your soul should look nothing like what you started with.”

“I agree.” The mournful words doused the lit end of my anger. “But the essence of who you are does not change. The essence of who you are is what determines whether you keep repairing your soul or simply leave it in pieces each time it breaks.”

“Ugh,” Marek grumbled, turning his face into Sefa’s thigh. “Can we philosophize about our souls after breakfast?”

The leaf next to Marek shifted. Tiny pebbles danced on the dirt. I flattened my hand on the ground, absorbing the minute trembling.

Something was coming.

“Up! Up!” Efra broke through the trees, the other sentries on his heels. His wild cries lashed the Jasadis into full alert. We were on our feet in seconds. Efra’s shout echoed through the deathly silent camp. “Nizahl soldiers from the woods—several hundred at least—”

Pandemonium.

We had prepared for the possibility of some of them coming from Essam, but Namsa and the others were still pale with terror as they ran between groups, handing out weapons and snapping off instructions.

I watched her shove an axe into the limp grip of the wide-eyed boy who had mouthed off to Lateef last night.

Gazing at the legions of terrified Jasadis, it occurred to me I might very well raise the fortress over a sea of the dead. The border of magic would become nothing more than a shiny headstone to commemorate the corpses stacked behind it.

“You should leave while there is still time,” I told Marek and Sefa distractedly. My veins tightened painfully as I rerouted a kitmer from Orban. We would need every last one of them to hold off the Nizahl soldiers, new recruits or not. “Find somewhere safe to hide.”

“Why would we hide?” Sefa crept closer to me, as though the mere suggestion repelled her.

“This is not your fight.”

“Your fight is our fight,” Sefa said. “We will not leave you.”

“You may have noticed we love you,” Marek added, accepting the bow and arrow hastily thrust in his direction. “Despite your most valiant efforts.”

There it was again. The same nameless, debilitating force I had succumbed to in the Victor’s Ball. Rising, roaring, gathering force. The sheer magnitude of it stole my breath.

No one is meant to be alone for so long.

Dawoud was buried in Silsilit Abeer, but he may as well have been whispering in my ear.

“I—I—”

Sefa squeezed my shoulder, silencing my stammer. “It’s okay. Go—they need you.”

I took her and Marek’s hands. “Don’t make me mourn you,” I said, punctuating it with a hard glare. “If the soldiers overtake us, surrender. Run into the woods. Do anything but die.”

Marek pressed a kiss to my knuckles. “You first.”

I stood alone at the front of the crowd, facing Hirun. Behind me, hundreds of small kitmers darkened the sky.

Fog shrouded the river, coasting over the water in timid plumes. This close to Sirauk, the current churned and wept onto the shores.

Reality had split neatly in two. On one side, I flew with my last kitmer, the trees of Essam spread beneath us, the bony branches of its trees locked together, as though Essam couldn’t help but shield its ugly innards. The river wound between the trees like a flicking tongue.

On the other side, I watched the bridge while I waited for the soldiers to dock their boats. For annihilation or salvation or a savage marriage of the two.

A presence at my elbow ticked into the second reality. Maia rolled on her heels, restless. “Take a knife, at least. This one is so small.”

She offered me a dagger with a blade roughly the length of my wrist. The silver and gold roiling in my eyes glittered off the blade’s edge.

“I won’t need it.”

“Nevertheless.” Maia nudged it toward me, a silent plea.

I took the knife and tucked it into my boot. “Go back to the tree line. Your magic is useless against so many soldiers. Climb to a high vantage point and do what you can to warn the others.”

Maia’s mouth puckered around a protest, but she left without freeing it.

A low, long whistle pierced the quiet.

The soldiers had landed.

My instructions to the Jasadis had been clear, but I couldn’t resist raising my hand as a reminder. Their obedience was vital. They needed to trust me, however sour it might taste, or suffer the consequences.

In one reality, the boats knifed through the fog, sharp-nosed and austere as they butted into the shore. Soldiers in black and violet splashed into Hirun as they climbed onto the western perimeter of Janub Aya. Arrows stretched in taut string. Swords hissed free of their sheaths.

In the other, my largest kitmer folded its wings and dove.

The initial wave of soldiers multiplied, wet boots leaving mud tracks in the dirt as hundreds marched forward.

More than anything—their boats or their uniforms or their useless weapons—those mud tracks scraped at an infected wound inside me. We stood in the mouth of Janub Aya’s destruction, and ten years later, they came to track mud in a wilayah they weren’t fit to lick the dust off of?

I started to walk.

The soldiers at the front exchanged unsettled glances. Whatever they had expected, it hadn’t been this. A lone woman walking over a rocky plain, an armed audience unmoving in the background. A flurry of kitmers circling patiently in the sky.

What their pathetic mortal eyes couldn’t see were the veins rich in color on my face. Pulsing, twisting beneath the hollows of my eyes, tangling at my temples.

By the time they realized they were looking in the wrong direction, it was too late.

A great shadow blotted the clouds. An ear-splitting shriek pierced across the wilayah. Trees bent and snapped beneath the gales forming beneath my last kitmer’s beating wings.

I broke into a run, a giddy laugh whipped from my lips as the wind raced and the air thinned behind the kitmer.

It flew above me, keeping pace as I ran faster than I ever had.

Faster than the night I killed the Nizahl soldier.

Faster than when Arin chased me to the edge of the river.

Faster, even, than I had in the Alcalah’s first trial, with a pack of rabid dogs and the Lukub Champion at my heels.

They tried to turn back, to escape, but their own numbers worked against them. Pathetic little ants, bumping and jostling one another, swords greasy in their grips. Seventy or so men in the rear were clever enough to turn around and dive into the river.

My two realities blended into one. I crossed my arms over my chest, and the kitmer flattened its wings. I slid to my knees in a long skid, and the kitmer dove ahead, its torso nearly skimming the top of my head.

The kitmer unfolded its wings, and I threw my arms wide as it collided with the front of the Nizahl incursion.

Jasad’s symbol roared one last time.

Together, we burst into flames.

The lucky soldiers were thrown in the blast—hurled into trees and Hirun, but spared the fate of those directly beneath the kitmer.

Then again, the ones directly under the kitmer had the benefit of dying quickly, spared the scent of their flesh burning as they desperately crawled toward the river.

Bloodcurdling howls joined the stampede of flaming bodies careening toward Hirun.

When the last of the kitmer’s magic burned off, the flames dancing over my body died with it. The earth quaked under me as the Jasadis surged toward the remaining soldiers.

Someone dropped to the ground beside me, grabbing my face with frantic hands. “Oh, thank the Awaleen!” Sefa choked out.

“I told you she was all right,” Marek said from somewhere behind me, suspiciously hoarse. He cleared his throat. “Killing the moon is easier than killing Essiya of Jasad.”

Sefa shook me. “You neglected to mention that when the kitmer burned, you would burn with it!”

I looked at her unblinkingly. “Of course. It is of my magic, and my magic is of me.”

A volley of screams came from the north. The regiment of soldiers traveling through Ahr il Uboor had arrived.

I pried Sefa’s hands off and stood. “Both of you get back. Now.”

Magic sang in the air as the Jasadis threw everything they had against the soldiers.

Hayagan whipped their magic toward the horses, sending riders flying off their backs.

The Sahirs handed out weapons as fast as they could fashion them.

Four had already collapsed and been dragged back to safety.

Those with generalized magic were more subtle.

Their movements were just a little faster.

Their artless swings, a dash more graceful.

I spun toward the next wave of soldiers from the north, and my magic laughed as I did.

The cloud of kitmers above me flattened their wings as they barreled toward the swarm of black-and-violet uniforms, the tips of their wings catching on fire. My fingers burned as their feathers became ash, the flames traveling over me and my creatures in tandem.

Being Essiya did not make me hard to kill.

Being of Jasad did.