Page 159 of The Jasad Crown

She’d followed him to the ground. Arin regarded the ceiling, caught between exasperation and amusement. He challenged anyone to find a more stubborn woman walking the earth. He could rap his knuckles against that hard head of hers and pull away with five broken fingers.

He closed his eyes again, the knife wedging deeper while Arin bled and bled, and never had a man found such peace in the shadow of his death.

The next time Arin woke, he was suffocating.

Shoving himself upright with one arm, Arin assessed his surroundings while he fought to pull air into his body. A lantern burned in the corner of the room. In its dim light, Arin saw Essiya bowed over a bucket, the irksome Urabi man pressing her head beneath the water.

A man who screamed like a newborn when Arin rolled to his feet and drove a dagger into his shoulder.

Arin shoved the man out of the way and crouched beside Essiya, drawing her out of the water. Her eyes were half-lidded, crescent moons of silver and gold flicking wildly beneath them. The veinson her neck had expanded to the bolt of her jaw, curling behind her ear and disappearing into her dripping hair. He lifted her sleeve, only barely remembering to keep his bare hands from skimming her skin.

Veins. They throbbed over her entire arm in a brilliant lattice.

“You need to put her back in the water,” the fool boy behind him growled. “She needs to wake. Her magic controls her when she dreams.”

She was drowning in her magic. So much of it that Arin—across the room and in his sleep—had suffocated under its tide.

“Take the knife out of your shoulder and prepare to use it. If I linger for longer than a second or if my eyes turn black, slit my throat.”

“Slit your—”

“You are not strong enough to stop me if her magic overwhelms me,” Arin snarled with the last of his air. Only she would be strong enough to stop him, and she might not have the chance.

It was a bittersweet decadence, this choice. In the end, Arin picked her cheek.

His bare thumb skated over the ridge of her cheekbone, and fire engulfed him.

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

ESSIYA

Iopened my eyes to Efra aiming a knife at Arin, who violently shook as he coughed blood onto the carpet.

Scrambling toward Arin, I barely registered the wet slap of my hair or the water soaked into the collar of my tunic. “What happened?” I demanded. I wrapped my arms around Arin’s middle as his back bent over a new round of coughing. Less blood this time, at least.

“He… touched you.” Efra seemed too bewildered to remember his hostility. “Not even a touch—he barely grazed your cheek with his thumb. I felt your magic recede, and then he just—” Efra gestured. “He told me to slit his throat if his eyes turned black or he lingered for longer than a second, but he threw himself off of you before I could.”

Aghast, I pressed my forehead to the center of Arin’s shuddering back.

“He also stabbed me, if you consider that of note,” Efra grumbled. “You might have warned him about my visits.”

I laughed against a wing of Arin’s shoulder. How had he managed to hide a knife through multiple searches?

I could only imagine what Arin had thought, waking to find Efra pushing my head into a bucket of water. I shut my eyes in mortification. “When would I have had the chance?” I groaned.

“Whatever magic he pulled from you seems to have accelerated the healer’s magic,” Efra said. “His bruises are gone.”

It was true. He wasn’t struggling when he coughed, which meant his ribs had also healed.

“His body probably stopped draining the magic infused in the bandages because it was busy trying not to drown under the magic he drained from me. How could you let him gamble with his own life like that?”

Efra regarded me as though I had begun to bleat like a goat. “What do I care what the Silver Serpent does with his life?” And then, with no small amount of displeasure, he added, “His strategy worked. It staved off your magic long enough for you to regain control.”

“It doesn’t matter. There are other ways to push my magic back. This will not be one of them. Not ever again.” There wasn’t a point discussing this with Efra, of all people. “Go see to your shoulder, Efra.”

At the door, I stopped him with a reminder. “I am relying on your discretion. Be advised I will not take it kindly if my faith is misplaced.”

He rolled his eyes. “They have been expecting you to stab me since you arrived. Nobody will ask questions.”

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