Page 138 of The Jasad Crown

Sorn took Diya’s hand between both of his. She glanced at me with a bemused shake of her head, and I tossed her a quick smile.

For both their sakes, I hoped Sorn was careful with Diya’s heart. If he toyed with it, she’d gut him and any woman within arm’s length. Awaleen help the fool who interfered.

With a rueful laugh, I closed the door behind me.

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

ESSIYA

Iheld tight to Ingaz as we flew over the Meridian Pass. The rust-colored crags rose high in the center of the desert, curving like fangs from the cracked yellow mouth of the Flats. I was tempted to push Ingaz between them and travel over the path we had taken on our way to Orban for the first trial. Was the relic magic that attacked Arin still there? Would I see the Urabi’s scattered arrows embedded in the dirt?

Thinking about Arin was a mistake. I closed my eyes against the brutal urge to twist Ingaz to the right, to soar toward Nizahl and crash through Arin’s window so I could demand to know exactly what he was thinking violating the Zinish Accords. Arin defied prediction in every way but one: he always operated within the confines of his own rules.

Something disastrous must have happened. I felt it in my bones.

The kingdoms were coming apart at the seams. With the Orbanian protection in place, thousands of Jasadis would be moving into the trade routes toward Jasad. We’d flown over thousands of Nizahl and Lukubi soldiers battling throughout Essam Woods. Omal would be in shambles as the lower village rebellions grew, as it waited for the council to appoint a new ruler in the next twenty days—a formal procedure for which they had no precedent.

I glanced at Efra. The first time we met had been on top of those crags.

Efra lay flat on his stomach, both arms wrapped around his kitmer’s neck. He hid it well, but I didn’t need his flavor of magic to sense the terror wafting off him. Considering I had ordered my first batch of kitmers to fling him around Suhna Sea, I couldn’t begrudge him his distrust.

I guided Ingaz toward Efra and said, “It won’t drop you.”

Efra forced open an eye to glare at me. “Forgive me if I lack confidence in your promises.”

I fell quiet. Why did I try with him? His opinion about me had formed on those crags, and nothing I did would change it.

“Sorry,” Efra ground out. “I didn’t mean it. You have upheld every promise you’ve made us, and Lateef is right—I am acting like a petulant child.”

I nearly fainted off Ingaz. Was this real, or had the magic-madness finally finished me?

Unleashing his iron grip on the kitmer, Efra slowly sat up on the creature’s back and wrapped his hands around its horns. “I hate your family. Your mother, her parents, their parents. You come from a lineage that has slowly unraveled our kingdom, and it is… difficult for me to separate you from that history. I keep thinking, any minute now and her blood will show itself. Any minute now and she’ll laugh in our faces and leave us to die, fulfilling her family’s legacy at last.”

“Do you still believe that?”

He glanced over, conflict clear in his expression. “I don’t believe you will leave us.”

“But you still believe I might fulfill my family’s legacy?”

“Essiya,” Efra said, and my grip on Ingaz’s horns tightened. Not only had Efra never used my given name before, but I had never heard him adopt such a tentative tone. “We both know I can feel what happens when your magic consumes you. You… you disappear. The only part of you that remains in those moments is yourmagic, and—it’s so angry. It doesn’t care about Jasad. It doesn’t care about anything but destruction.”

I am what remains.

A shiver crawled over me, and I fought to keep my heart from sinking to the bottom of my stomach. Despite the aggravation Efra had caused me, he was the bravest of the Urabi. At least he acknowledged it. At least he said it out loud.

We cleared the Meridian Pass. Namsa and Maia were lagging behind us, but Lateef had shot ahead to dip and weave over the cracked plains of the Desert Flats. The older man delighted in the act of flying on a kitmer’s back, and had I been in a more pleasant mood, his childlike giggling would have amused me.

“Do they have a plan for what they’ll do if I survive raising the fortress?” I asked quietly.

I did not explain what I meant, and Efra did not ask. We both knew that if I survived Nuzret Kamel, what would be left of me would be far more dangerous than anything that awaited the Jasadis on the other side of the fortress.

They needed to have a plan for how to kill me before I killed them.

He hesitated. “No.”

I smiled grimly. “Now who’s a liar?”

I pulled on Ingaz’s horns, and we dove.

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