Page 17 of The Jasad Crown

A shadow fell over me, and I drew myself up on my elbows, red-faced with exertion and not an insignificant amount of mortification. At this rate, they would be calling me the Witless Heir before the end of the day.

I lifted my head to offer a mumbled thanks to my rescuer and promptly shut my mouth again.

A man glowered down at me. I had seen him—and that spiteful glare—before. But where?

“You don’t remember me, do you?” He swiped the back of his hand over his nose like the scent of me might stain. “I wish I could say I was surprised. I imagine you betray your own too frequently to keep track of individual faces.”

It hit me like a thunderbolt. The man at the Meridian Pass. The Urabi had been shooting arrows into the canyon, unaware that Arinhad neatly walked them into a deadly trap. I’d split the canyon of the Pass wider to scatter the Nizahl soldiers and give the Urabi time to escape, but I remembered the shock and betrayal in this man’s eyes when I said I wouldn’t leave with them.

You agreed to help the Silver Serpent lure us to our deaths?

“Erfa,” I said. He watched me trip over the length of my abaya as I climbed to my feet, his scowl defying the limits of facial physics to deepen even further. Despite the valiant efforts of the worst living barber, the haphazard cut of the man’s thick brown curls took little away from his natural good looks. His eyes were a mossy green and brewing with disdain. He was more powerfully built than I’d prefer for a man who despised me, and the only victory was in our matched heights.

“Erfameans cinnamon. My name is Efra.”

My smile broadened to include too many teeth. Framed by unfairly long lashes or not, his eyeballs would bleed under a knife just like anyone else’s. “My mistake. The sweetness of your disposition must have confused me.”

Kicking the spot I’d been caught against, I asked, “Do the spiderwebs in the Gibal understand the difference between humans and flies?”

“Trespassers will be trapped until someone apprehends them or the web senses an authorized signature. It doesn’t recognize the magic of strangers.” The last word dripped with enough scorn to put even a brat like Felix to shame.

His efforts to get under my skin were adorable. I’d lived in a cramped underground training complex with four Nizahlan guardsmen who took pleasure in finding new ways to test my willingness to commit murder before breakfast. If Cinnamon wanted to glare a hole through my skull, I certainly wouldn’t stop him, but he’d have to try much harder to provoke a reaction.

“Where is Namsa?”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “At the Aada.”

I pursed my lips. Maybe he wouldn’t have to try too much harder.Aadameant seat in Resar, so unless Namsa had a designated chair I should know about, the answer was as useless as him.

“Where. Is. Namsa.”

“If she wanted you to know, she would have told you,” he said. “Find someone else to cower behind.”

With that last parting shot, Efra walked past me, his shoulder bumping mine and rocking me on my heels.

It should probably bother me more that I had managed to make an enemy out of someone within hours of regaining consciousness, but I understood Efra’s antipathy more than I understood the reverence in some of the Jasadis’ gazes. I thrived under loathing, whether it was my own or someone else’s. It slipped over my shoulders like a custom coat, whereas devotion suited me like shoes to a snake.

I pointed at the web. “Next time, I’m bringing a knife.”

CHAPTER FIVE

SYLVIA

Three days had passed with sleep failing to find me in the Gibal, and tonight, I did not bother giving chase.

Like most Jasadis, the Urabi seemed to be largely nocturnal, which meant I couldn’t pace the inside of the mountain without running into someone around every corner. The last time I had lived under the same roof as so many people was at Usr Jasad, and I’d had the benefit of my own wing. Here, every covert stare and whisper pricked at the back of my neck, leaving me twitchy and increasingly on edge.

So, engaging in the perfectly rational actions of a woman missing two nights of sleep, I snuck back onto the pitch-black cliffside to explore the outside of the mountain.

The mountain quickly made its opinion of my presence known. In the last twenty minutes, I had swallowed a bug and fallen face-first onto the frozen surface of a lake. The ice hadn’t broken, thankfully, leaving me with only a bruised cheekbone and saving me from drowning under the most idiotic circumstances imaginable.

Despite the mountain’s passionate efforts to repel me, I seemed to have developed an appetite for near-death experiences, because I took one look at the edge of the cliffside and decided a bruised cheekbone was merely the introductory soup in my supper for fools.

Swearing under my breath, I tightened my grip on the rocksslipping beneath the frozen flesh formerly known as my fingers. The gloves I’d had the presence of mind to wear before leaving my room had already saved me three times over. I swept my boot across the rocks, groping for a solid place to land as I dangled over open air.

The lake hadn’t just gifted me with a giant, throbbing bruise. It had knocked loose a tale Soraya would read to me on nights as dark and overcast as this one. A tale of adventure and perilous journeys, of magic-rich waterfalls on the other side of the mountains that spilled into Suhna Sea.

Waterfalls flowing from Hirun River.

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