Page 153 of The Jasad Crown

Sinking to the ground, Arin leaned his head back against the wall. “The letters you left with me were useful. Perhaps more useful than you expected.”

“You mean Binyar Lazur’s confession?” Essiya stepped toward the bars, wrapping her hand around a silver one. “What does that have to do with the portrait of Hanim?”

“You once asked me if my hair was black when I was child.”

Essiya rubbed the heel of her hand into her eye. “Yes, you said it was black until the musrira cursed you.”

“No, not because of the musrira.” The cold seeped into him from the floor. He barely felt it. As long as he didn’t look at her, he didn’t feel much at all. “Because I wouldn’t have survived if he waited until I was four.”

She stayed silent, clearly waiting for him to elaborate. When he did not, she released an aggravated sigh. “Arin, I am occasionally fond of your winding way of speaking, but today is not one of those days.”

He flinched at the sound of his name. It was a terrible power she held—the power to make Arin real. Yank him from his head and anchor him into being, skin and bones and the horrors in between.

He could see her shaping his name once more. It couldn’t be allowed to fall from her lips.

“I don’t look much like her now, but I took after my mother until I was two years old. My real mother.” Arin’s gaze flicked down to the crumpled portrait.

She did not react—not at first. The Jasad Malika squinted at Arin as though waiting for something. When it never came, Essiya stumbled away from the bars. Watching the truth detonate through her, shattering pieces of her along the way, threatened the void once more.

He was in no condition to speak to her. Anything he said would only bring her pain.

“Hanim couldn’t have been your mother. She was a Jasadi. Rawain wouldn’t have… he hated…” Dust flooded the air as she sank to her knees, her legs folding beneath her. The pieces he’d put together were slotting into place for her, too.

She shook her head, speaking in a daze. “In the third trial, Soraya showed me a vision of the fall of the fortress. Soraya asked one of the Mufsids why Hanim would ever think Rawain would allow her to take Jasad’s throne. Why she would risk bringing down the fortress for Nizahl’s armies.”

She pressed her hands to her stomach, tears gathering in her eyes. “It was you. Her son. She believed Rawain would give her Jasad’s throne because they shared an Heir. She gave Soraya the wrong enchantment on purpose.”

Essiya raised her head to stare at Arin, and he forced himself not to look away. She was owed more than the void. She could have whatever she wanted of Arin while he still had it to give, and he would not deny her.

“Hanim’s son.” She made a sound between a gasp and a giggle. “No wonder she hated me so much. Rawain tookyou, and she was stuck with me. She was watching you rise to command scores of men by sixteen, and I was an Heir with no throne, no magic, and a broken mind. I could never have pleased her, because she was measuring me against you. Rawain took her son. He had her future, and she only had her monster.”

She brushed her hair behind her ear. Thin gold and silver veins snaked up the side of her neck, disappearing into her tunic.

“I’m going to die raising the fortress Hanim brought down. I killed her, and she’ll kill me. She wanted our line off the throne, and the line burns with me.”

Arin’s gaze jerked from the veins on her neck. “Raising the fortress?”

“Mawlati!” The call echoed from the other side of the cells.

“Don’t worry.” Essiya climbed to her feet, the bottom half of her abaya covered in a layer of beige dust. “It is a good plan. You will like the symmetry of it. I’ll die, but so will my magic.”

She laughed again, her fingers braced on the wall as she wandered toward the other woman’s voice.

I am afraid that I will have to choose—my mind or my people.

Arin stared after her, unmoving. Unmoored.

And when seven sneering men sauntered into his cell some time later, Arin did not put up a fight.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

ESSIYA

The sight of Rawain’s scepter tossed on a cushion in the middle of the floor, Rawain’s severed hand still attached, had done wonders to improve my mood.

I huffed, darkly amused. Well, at least I understood how Arin had managed to persuade them to bring him into the mountain. Stealing the Supreme’s scepter was a convincing argument on its own, but paired with his hand still in its cuff?

“He lies about having Jasadi blood. We would have known. Someone would have seen him perform magic as a child,” Efra argued. They’d been going in circles for hours. I’d told them what Arin said about Hanim and watched the implosion from afar.

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