Page 11 of The Jasad Crown

“Of course you wouldn’t remember him. Just another servant to you, wasn’t he? He spent his whole life mourning you, and youkilled him.” Rage seemed to build into an inferno within Namsa. The stone features burned away, revealing a depth of pain that froze me in my tracks—and a face that, but for a few adjustments, was unmistakably inspired by someone else’s.

My breath stuttered. “Dawoud.”

“You don’t deserve to speak his name!” Namsa bucked. Shock had loosened my limbs, and I didn’t resist when she hurled me to the side. My head hit the dresser, sending a clay ula tipping to the side. Water splashed over my legs.

I barely noticed. I was standing in the middle of Dar al Mansi, wading through monsters and the bones of my people. Al Anqa’a had its claws in my clothes, beating its powerful wings against the barrier I’d erected in the sky. Below, Dawoud was smiling at me with resigned eyes. He lifted the knife. Turned it toward his chest.

From the sky, I had screamed.

Namsa rolled to her feet. Blood smeared her torn bottom lip. The beginning of a truly terrible bruise bloomed around her right eye, purpling her brown skin.

“I didn’t kill him.” My voice emerged like a burr from a dog’s paw. Painfully, scraping skin along the way. “I swear I didn’t. I wanted to leave Dar al Mansi with him.”

My gaze went to my hands, as though under close examination they would turn red, glistening with the blood of the man who raised me when a dead father couldn’t. When a living grandfatherhandled me at arm’s length. A man who devoted his life and loyalty to Jasad and its Heir.

An Heir he’d believed to be dead after she spent years hiding in an Omalian village, leaving him and the rest of Jasad to rot in a well of unwanted memories.

“Don’t lie to me. You handed his body to a Nizahl guardsman. You called him a trophy,” Namsa hurled out. “He spent years in a Nizahl dungeon because he served your family. Servedyou.”

Frustration sparked beneath the weight pressing onto my chest. Dawoud had been physically weakened, but Nizahl hadn’t stolen his spirit. Namsa described him as one might a newborn calf, stumbling in the direction of its owner’s prod. “He chose to serve the royal family. He chose to turn the dagger on himself in Dar al Mansi. He was one of the bravest men I knew. Dawoud was many things in his life, but he was never some bumbling victim of circumstance.”

Namsa went still. I realized what I’d revealed a second too late. “What do you mean, he turned the dagger on himself?”

I clenched my teeth, the tension ricocheting through my jaw. Would Dawoud have wanted his niece to know the truth?

The truth… another of Arin’s pretty notions. To him, the truth was absolute. A measurable quantity with a beginning and an end. He accepted nothing short of it, and offered the same in return.

I held the notion of truth in little esteem. For my entire life, I had bent and broken it in more ways than I could count. Truth was little more than clay, molded and reshaped in the hands it passed through.

“Please,” Namsa whispered. The Jasadi I’d tossed around the room slid to the floor. “I ask for your honesty. What happened to my uncle?”

I can’t, I almost said.My memories are not to be trusted.

But she had asked for my honesty, not the truth.

“They wanted trophies of our kills.” I rubbed my arms. “Three trophies from three monsters.”

I told her everything about the second trial of the Alcalah. Dar al Mansi and Al Anqa’a, how hard I tried to convince Dawoud to run while he still could. How he had stayed to fight with me, knowing it would get him killed.

“Supreme Rawain sent him to test me. He suspected I might be Jasadi, but I wouldn’t have—I swear on Sirauk, I would never have hurt Dawoud.”

I didn’t mention how I had destroyed my room in the Omalian palace after the trial. Magic ablaze, rare tears dripping from my chin. And I certainly didn’t mention that the person who held me as I wept, who brought me back to reason, was the man whose father sent Dawoud to his death.

“Oh” was all Namsa said. She stared at a spot behind my shoulder. I took the opportunity to study her, searching for Dawoud in more than her appearance. Dawoud’s valiance, his bravery. Those were not traits I associated with someone willing to work under the Urabi. Were they forcing her? Holding some threat over her head?

“You thought I killed your uncle, and you were still willing to serve me.”

Namsa’s eyes snapped back to mine. “Without question.”

Tension feathered along my neck. They knew I had acted as Nizahl’s Champion. They knew I had been helping the Heir lure them into his trap. What could I possibly represent to them to overcome such betrayal? It couldn’t be just a royal name.

Dawoud had died for my family—for me. The least I could do was give his niece a chance to explain before I started swinging again.

I scrubbed my face. “What do you want from me?”

Namsa stood, wiping her cheeks. Blood spatters marred the front of her tunic. “Let me show you.”

Before we’d moved a foot to the door, Namsa raked a disapproving glance over my bedraggled sleeping gown and shook her head. “You need to change first. Our seamstress left you clothes in the wardrobe. She took your measurements while you slept.”

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