Page 150 of The Jasad Crown

“Jeru!” Sefa exclaimed. She rushed toward the guardsman only for Efra to thrust an arm out.

“He is a prisoner of the Malika.” Efra shot Jeru a distasteful glance. “Keep your distance.”

I heard Marek call my name, but I didn’t turn. I couldn’t focus on anything other than Arin, who stood still as the mountain itself. Arin, who couldn’t walk into a room without visualizing every potential method of assassination, had been left blindfolded and bound in a corridor with Jasadis. I expected to see tension. The furrow of his brow as he listened to the voices and counted how many people were in the room. The careful scuff of his boot on the ground, testing for soil or cement.

He did none of it. Arin simply stood there, and it was one of the eeriest things I had ever seen.

“Enough arguing,” Lateef demanded, and my gaze clicked over to him when he moved behind Arin. “We need to contain the newcomers and convene an Aada about what to do with them. Have they been searched?”

Namsa shook her head. “We didn’t have time.”

Lateef moved toward Jeru. “I’ll take him.”

Before Efra could so much as breathe in Arin’s direction, I stepped forward, cutting him off. “I will search the Commander.”

“Your magic—”

I gestured at my gloves and abaya, then at Arin’s layered uniform. “I won’t come into contact with his bare skin.” I had asked the seamstress to create a pocket in every piece of my clothing specifically designed to fold a pair of gloves.

I thought I heard Efra mutter, “Let’s keep it that way,” before he stepped aside.

The world muted as I stepped closer to Arin. “Raise your arms to the side,” I murmured.

What had he been thinking? What could possibly have compelled him to come to the mountains in search of me now? For months, he’d known I was here. He could have easily tracked me down in Jasad, his armies in tow. It was reckless. Foolish. All the things Arin was not.

Arin raised his arms.

I tried to touch him brusquely, efficiently. Efra would be scanning my emotions with a fine-tooth comb, searching for any evidence of my feelings for the Heir. The Aada would accuse me of partiality. They would decide what to do with Arin without my input if they thought I had been compromised.

My hands moved to his shoulders. I ran them along his chest, over the strong planes of his stomach, circling to the small of his back. It brought us nearly chest-to-chest, close enough for his soft exhale to stir the hair at my ear.

Without forcing me to utter it aloud, Arin pushed his feet apart. Heat crept along my neck, and I didn’t linger as I swept over his thighs and calves.

I straightened and stepped away, staring at the floor. “No weapons.”

Lateef nodded, releasing Jeru.

“What was the compelling evidence the Heir brought with him, Namsa?” I crossed my arms over my chest, jerking my chin toward the weaponless Commander. “Or was that another excuse?”

“It wasn’t, Mawlati! He brought—”

Efra cut her off. “We can discuss what he brought with the Aada. Rest assured, Namsa is telling the truth.”

Rovial’s tainted tomb, how I wanted to strangle Efra. I settled for an acerbic laugh. “I should rest assured, should I? The Commander and his guardsman arriving without a single weapon between them. Almost as though they wanted to ensure they’d be taken alive into the mountain.”

Namsa ran a tired hand through her hair. “The decision to take the men was a joint one.”

“Then you’re all fools.”

I tapped Arin’s shoulder in warning twice before I put my hands on his blindfold.

Efra grabbed my wrist and wrenched me away. “What do you think you’re doing?”

I didn’t get a chance to respond. At the sound of my pained hiss, Arin—who had remained perfectly still and serene until then—moved. Before I could pull my wrist out of Efra’s grip, Arin kicked out the back of Efra’s knee and slammed his bound hands into the side of the other man’s head.

It took seconds. Efra crumpled to the ground, and I darted in front of Arin, throwing my arms in front of him as Lateef and Namsa pushed toward the Heir.

“He can see!” Efra shouted, clutching his knee.

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