Page 148 of The Jasad Crown

Water splashed over the side of the bucket as Efra forced my head deeper into the water.

I clutched the edges of the bucket and strained against his hold until my vision dimmed. When he released me, I flopped back onto the carpet, sputtering. Water poured out of my nose and mouth, and I hacked with a force that might’ve broken a rib.

When my demise no longer seemed as imminent, I sat up, wiping my face with the dry parts of my sleeves. Efra crossed his arms over his chest.

“Thank you,” I muttered.

“Don’t thank me,” Efra said. “Holding your head underwater three times a day? The privilege itself is a gift.”

“Then you’re welcome, and get out.” The water was still sloshing inside the bucket. I’d need to refill it again.

It was late, and I did not want to risk anyone seeing Efra leave my chambers at this hour. Bad enough I had had to kick Marek and Sefa into their own room, but how could I explain Efra’s comings and goings? I couldn’t offer an excuse without explaining that thesymptoms of my magic-madness had begun to arise with alarming regularity, and only Efra could sense it in time to burst into my room and dunk my head beneath the water.

“Is it just the visions?” Efra asked, crouching in front of me. There was genuine, if reluctant, interest pooled in his green eyes. “Does it interfere in any other way?”

“I told you about the veins already.” The vulture had caught me at a low point, shaken from another unexplainable vision. Besides, the only reason to hide the veins was to hide the encroaching madness, and Efra was all too aware of that already.

Efra just waited, watching me drip water onto the carpet and attempt not to shiver. He was remarkably bold for someone in the proximity of a woman with seemingly bottomless magic and a tenuous grasp on her mind.

“There are impulses,” I said flatly. What did it matter? Maybe once I was dead, they could use my symptoms as a guide to managing this condition if Arin was wrong and it occurred again. “They don’t feel like mine.”

“Whose do they feel like?”

“Your mother’s,” I snapped. “How should I know?”

To my surprise, Efra remained somber, lips pressed tightly together.

“If your madness consumes you before Nuzret Kamel, we are lost.”

“It won’t.” I hoped. “I can last for ten more days.”

“We won’t be strong enough to kill you if you succumb,” he reminded me, as if I needed reminding. As if half the visions weren’t devoted to the myriad of ways my hands had maimed and murdered in realities I shouldn’t exist in.

“Get out, Efra,” I said tiredly. “Or I might not wait until I’m magic-mad to kill you.”

Still looking thoughtful, Efra left. I squeezed the tunic aroundthe ends of my hair and used the last of my energy to crawl back into bed.

I had been expecting the world to end. Preparing for it, in fact.

I just hadn’t expected it to end the very next morning.

Maia burst into the Aada room where I had absconded after breakfast, her ponytail askew and cheeks flushed.

“Mawlati,” Maia choked out. “There is, uh… Nawar rode ahead to let us know—that is, we need to prepare for an arrival. Two arrivals, in fact.”

Lateef and I glanced at each other, equally mystified. “Arrivals.” I straightened, dropping the missive I had been reading onto the maps laid open across the table. A nebulous dread formed a knot at the base of my spine.

“What arrivals, Maia?” Lateef demanded.

Eyes brimming with guilt and uncertainty found mine, and I went stiff.

No. It wasn’t possible. I had told them hundreds of times they were never to bring him into the mountains. Maia and Lateef startled as the table’s ledge cracked beneath my hands. My veins were rigid inside my skin, glowing with my fury.

I might kill them. I might truly kill them.

“He’s here?” I forced out, my throat raw from the effort of swallowing down the shriek I wanted to unleash. “They brought him here.”

“Nawar only told us he’d been captured at the mountain’s edge with one of his guardsmen. I don’t know any more,” Maia said, and she sounded genuinely sorry for it. “I came to tell you right away.”

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