Page 146 of The Jasad Crown

Rawain’s grip on the scepter refused to budge, no matter how hard Arin pulled or how tightly Jeru held.

“Wait.” Arin gestured at Rawain’s robe. “Lift his sleeve.”

Looking faintly ill, Jeru drew back Rawain’s billowing sleeve.

At the sight of a thick metal cuff around Rawain’s wrist, welding him to the scepter, Arin laughed. “Clever.”

“There is no clasp or latch of any kind,” Jeru said, distressed. “It cannot be removed.”

“Of course it can,” Arin said. “Take out your sword.”

The scepter went taut as Rawain began struggling in earnest. Jeru strained to hold on to the Supreme.

Arin dragged the scepter forward, drawing his father’s hand flat to the desk. The cuff around his wrist scraped the wood.

The moment Rawain registered Arin’s intent, it happened.

A spark lit in the glass orb behind the raven. The ember swirled faster, growing into streaks of gold and silver. Rings of light spun around the head of the scepter, the brightness forcing Jeru to look away.

Arin was transfixed. There it was—the truth. The root of every darkness that had scourged the kingdoms over the last twenty-three years.

Arin’s magic.

Arin laid his hand atop Jeru’s flagging grip on his father’s arm, pinning it down. As the scepter’s magic expanded to a searing peak, Arin swung.

Blood landed on Jeru in thick splatters, spraying across the desk. His father screamed behind the gag. A touch dramatically, in Arin’s opinion. It was a conservative cut; he’d only taken Rawain’s hand.

Arin steadied his shaking fingers over the scepter. It was his father who had lost a hand, yet Arin’s heart reacted as though he had given up something, too.

The Supreme staggered back, grasping the desk for balance. He’d lost all color, and his wild eyes weren’t on his missing limb, but on the scepter. He tore the gag from his mouth. “It can’t be reversed,” Rawain spat. “You will never regain your magic.”

Arin lifted the scepter, the Supreme’s hand still clenched within the cuff. “Regain?” How painfully predictable for his father to assume Arin wanted the scepter to bolster his own power. “I have no use for this magic, my liege. But I know someone who might.”

A fist pounded against the desk as soon as Arin turned around.

“Do you think your precious Jasad Heir is any different from those who came before her?” Rawain snarled. “Do you honestly believe she won’t resume magic miningas soonas she reestablishes her kingdom? And what will happen to us if she does, Arin? She won’t trade with us, and without my scepter, without the magic you draw, we will have nothing!”

Arin thought of the girl he’d met crouched over a dead Jasadi’s body, mumbling death rites with a vexed expression. The girl who’d exposed her magic to him by throwing a dagger at Felix’s thigh after he hurt the little orphan girl. The magic she’d spilled every time Sefa or the boy were in danger. The same girl and the same magic that had stopped the Ruby Hound before it could shred Arin apart.

“She is nothing like them.” Arin glanced at the blood coatinghis gloves. He couldn’t tell if it belonged to Vaun or to his father. “Nothing like us.”

“You would choose her over your own kingdom? Over your own family?” Rawain sounded stunned.

Jeru opened the door, and Arin spared his father one last look before he walked through it. Blood slicked the surface of the desk, dripping onto the carpet. Rawain had wrapped the end of his robe around his bleeding limb, but his eyes were glassy, his skin the color of wax.

“Yes,” Arin said. “I choose her.”

One last task.

The oars slipped into the water. Night had deepened, and the moon hid its face behind the trees. Essam Woods bordered the river, trailing branches skimming the surface of Hirun as the trees shivered with the rising wind. Hirun wound through the woods like a dark ribbon, its current gently rocking their boat.

They had been rowing for close to three hours before Jeru finally spoke.

“What happens now, my lord?”

Arin set his knees apart as he leaned forward, the ends of the oars tucked under his arms. The long bundle between his and Jeru’s feet seemed more ominous than the shadows flitting between the trees.

“I am not your lord anymore,” Arin said. “I will be stripped of my titles under guilt of treason. My armies will become my father’s.”

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