Page 174 of The Jasad Crown

I laugh. “What darkness do you wrestle?”

A third figure grips the teary-eyed woman’s arm, holding her back. “We are too late. Resign yourself to apathy, and atrocity will surely follow. You cannot wring sympathy out of stone.”

“You wound me,” I drawl. “Allow me to return the favor.”

Our magic ruptures.

Eight colors stripe the sky, mingling with the dusk.

When I blinked back to my body, I was outside, teetering on the edge of the cliff.

You remember.

I took a shaky step back from the edge and shook my head. None of it was real. It couldn’t be.

I see.

I took a deep breath, focusing on the unbroken horizon of blue stretching far beyond the Sareekh. The sun shone through the hazy clouds, diamonds sparkling over the waves lapping around the Sareekh. A beautiful panorama by any standards. How unfortunate the only person present for it could not be warmed by beauty.

“There are eight hundred of us in this mountain. How many trips would it take you to transport us to Jasad, and how long would it take?”

It will take twenty trips to transport eight hundred. Two revolutions of the sun to finish.

I ran through the calculations. Twenty trips, eight hundred people, two days. Each trip would take a few hours. A speck compared to our other options.

“The first set leaves tonight.”

I will be here.

“Thank you,” I said. “For everything.”

I found Maia and Namsa and asked them to assemble as many of the Jasadis to the cliffside as they could. “I would like them to see one last thing before we go.”

Twenty minutes later, I once again stood at the edge, half the Jasadis in the mountain milling before me. Maia and Namsa stood on either side of me, a silent support.

I faced the crowd. Power threaded through my voice, amplifying it across the mountainside. “When many of us think of war, we imagine the battlefield. Swords singing through the air, horses galloping over burning terrain. War is known only for its physical violence.” I gazed out across the sea of Jasadis, anchoring myself in their attention. “But there is a consequence of war worse than any sword. More violent than any bloodshed.”

I spread my fingers and dragged them across each of my eyes. Gold and silver threads followed my fingers, connected to the pulsing points at my temples. I twisted my hands, wrapping the threads around my wrists like gossamer bracelets.

“The first fatal consequence of war is our voice.”

The magic encircled my arms, looping around my neck and torso in steadily winding ropes.

“I spent my life frightened by the sound of my own name. I folded the parts of me the world did not want into as small a piece as I could manage, and I hoped time would take it away. Magic is not all we are, but it is all they were willing to see. Their fear tore us apart, and our fear destroyed what remained.”

The threads wove through my hair, rippling along my curls. The sky darkened as my kitmers circled overhead, their cries echoing between the silent mountains.

“Today, we turn their fear against them. We reclaim what wastaken, and we do it loudly. We will not shrink. We will not hide. Hear me well, and hear me true: this will not be another Jasad War.”

My boots left the ground. The threads spun faster, twirling around me by the thousands. The light brightened, searing hotter than the sun. My magic howled, its joy pulsing in each thread around me. I was the heart of magic. The axis of power.

“This is our siege.”

I spread my arms wide. The threads expanded behind me, spinning together a golden shadow with me as the spindle.

I laughed, golden tears dripping from the corners of my eyes, as agony cleaved through my body. Enormous silver wings burst from the shadow. The cliffside shook as the Jasadis screamed.

Gleaming horns punctured the air as the kitmer raised its head, black eyes moving with mine. Torso, legs, spine—the threads tightened around the kitmer until it tore away in a mighty flap of its wings. The kitmer shrieked, the sound thundering across the horizon, and I knew they would hear it for miles.

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