Page 158 of The Jasad Crown

Arin didn’t just distrust magic—he despised it. He had led a life premised around magic creating unspeakable horrors wherever it went.

I wanted to cover my ears as Jeru opened his mouth. I wanted to knock his teeth down his throat. I wanted to do anything but sit still, frozen, racked with horror.

“The Heir came here to die.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

ARIN

He opened his eyes to darkness.

Had it not been for the pain radiating through his body, he might have mistaken the serenity for death.

Arin flexed his fingers, testing the extent of the damage. He vaguely recalled a healer attempting to fix him by steeping bandages in her magic instead of pouring it straight through him. It had worked to some extent—his broken arm was fixed, sore but not agonizing. He drew in air, and his ribs barely complained. The healer must have used every drop of magic at her disposal.

What awaste.

The bulk of the healer’s magic had gone straight to Rawain’s scepter.

A light snore came from Arin’s right. He wasn’t alone in the bed.

Her hair coiled in a bun above her head, hands tucked under her cheek, Essiya slept facing Arin. Her oversize sleeping gown was rucked around her knees, revealing gauzy white pants. She had gone to sleep with gloves on and a scarf tied around her neck, neither of which Arin imagined were comfortable.

Her furious tears were the last sight he recalled. She hadn’t understood why he did not fight back. Why, when Arin could have disassembled each of those men and stacked their limbs in a corner like firewood.

He had considered it. When the blows kept coming, when the taunts began to cut their way through the void, Arin had wanted to react. But their one advantage was stolen, their magic gone as soon as they touched Arin’s skin, and Arin was the Commander. It was not fair. It was notjust. His magic had tipped the scales.

Essiya stirred, her lashes fluttering with restless movement. Part of him wanted to strangle the fools who had allowed her to be alone in a room with him. Even if she believed he wouldn’t hurt her, the rest of them had no reason to share the sentiment. Leaving her here, unguarded… how carelessly they treated the woman poised to risk everything for them.

How carelessly she treatedherself, sleeping next to him. Utterly, ridiculously confident in her safety.

No number of nightmares would ever terrify Arin as much as the sight of her standing in the middle of the cell, drenched in gold and silver light from hundreds of veins crisscrossing her body, glowing eyes mottled with fury. Essiya had killed before. More than once. But she had never done so with absolute disregard for the weight of the action. If he hadn’t interceded, she may very well have commanded the third man to eat his friend and watched in elation while it happened.

If my magic overtakes my mind, you are the only one who will be able to stop me.

In slow and steady slices, Essiya’s magic was consuming her humanity.

Arin watched her sleep for a long time. He counted the black eyelashes resting above her cheeks. Drew a map between the hasanas dotting her throat and chin. In the tunnels, he had memorized her as one might the mechanics of a particularly dangerous weapon: understanding it solely in the event it was ever turned against you. He hadn’t lingered on the pulse feathering in her throat. The slight unevenness of her brows where they arched at the ends. The way six strands of her hair hung a little shorter than the rest.

At that moment, without matches and without moving, Arin set fire to every map he had ever created. He watched the world he’d built—the world he’d believed—burn to ashes, and a new one rise to take its place. One that began with a girl sleeping at his side and ended with her alive. It was the only world he cared to participate in. The only world he would die to secure.

Arin slid his legs over the side of the bed. The carpet brushed his feet, startling him.

As odd as it sounded to admit even in the privacy of his own head, he had forgotten what sensation felt like. The warmth of the bed, the prickliness of the carpet. The sore twinge in the muscles of his stomach. Since the cabin in Lukub, everything had been muted. He had moved through the hours only under absolute necessity, and had it not been for that necessity, Arin was not certain he would still be here.

Arin allowed himself a moment to appreciate the irony. He had come to the mountains to give the Jasadis the scepter and to do the same thing Essiya aimed to accomplish by raising the fortress: use his death to undo some of the damage he’d done while he lived. Killing him would absolve her in her people’s eyes. It would bolster Jasadis across the kingdoms. Their lost Malika, slaying the enemy of magic. Dealing Nizahl a debilitating blow. Death would find him anyway, in a poisoned chalice or a prison cell, and Arin wanted his to count for more.

So it was, in Arin’s opinion, cruel of his mind to decide it could feel carpets again.

The bed shifted. Essiya wriggled into the spot where he’d lain, relaxing into the leftover warmth.

Arin stretched out on the carpet, staring at the shifting shadows on the ceiling.

This war would not end with her life. It would not cost her sanity.

A weight lifted from his chest as Arin began to plan. If his deathwould not save her, then what he had left of his life would. She would not raise the fortress. Rawain would not ruin Nizahl in his supposed war against magic, even knowing that if Essiya did raise the fortress, Nizahl didn’t have a hope of overcoming it. Rawain would gladly leave the Jasadis trapped within their kingdom while Nizahl lost more and more of its children to the maw of Rawain’s wars.

Eventually, Arin lapsed into a restless sleep. At some point, he roused to find Essiya curled beside him on the carpet, her head pillowed on his sleeve. Fast asleep again.

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