Page 18 of The Jasad Crown

The waterfalls are the mountains weeping for the Awaleen, Soraya would say.All along Orban, Nizahl, and Jasad, they shed their tears into Suhna Sea to mourn the magic that has left this earth.

I climbed lower, digging the toes of my boots into the crumbling side of the mountain in lieu of a stable foothold. Considering Soraya had poisoned my mother for years in Bakir Tower, helped the Mufsids sack Usr Jasad, and accidentally brought down the Jasad fortress, I wasn’t inclined to place much weight onto a single word out of her duplicitous mouth. Not to mention the absurdity of believing Hirun River flowed beneath Orban—beneath the Desert Flats.

But Soraya had spoken about the waterfalls with such genuine emotion. The longing in her voice… it couldn’t hurt to check, could it?

I huffed a laugh, pressing my forehead to the inside of my arm to catch my breath. Even now, alone in my head, I couldn’t resist hiding from the truth.

Waterfalls sounded wonderful, but I wasn’t clinging to a sea-slicked mountainside in the dead of night because I craved a pretty view. The other part of Soraya’s story brought me out here. Specifically, the part about adventurers sneaking across the mountains into Suhna Sea by sailing through Hirun, which poured into the waterfalls and became the tears the mountains shed.

And if someone could find their way into the mountains through Hirun, maybe they could find their way out.

I wasnotplanning to escape. Not just because I had nowhere to go, but because I had made a vow.

Still… time was the enemy of intention, and it couldn’t hurt to know what my options were.

It would be so much easier if the clouds would justpartand let the moonlight through. I had always been a good climber—the trees in Usr Jasad’s courtyards had seen me dangling from their branches more than any leaf. A tiny, little bit of light would change everything.

Slowly, I scaled my way down the side of the cliff, the memory of Ayume Forest too near for comfort. But my hands were not raw and bloody from poisoned sap, and the stones were less punishing than the rope I had used to climb out of the forest and over the cliff.

I gritted my teeth. The climb in Ayume hadn’t just wreaked havoc on my body. My magic had been pounding against my cuffs, fighting for release, and managed to conjure a childhood version of myself to taunt and scold me.

I think even if your magic was free, and you had every advantage to reclaim our kingdom, you still wouldn’t save Jasad.

I flexed my fingers, holding tight as my boot found the flat of a protruding stone.

Power is a choice. When you choose who you are willing to fight for, you choose who you are.

Absurdly, just the memory of that snide little Essiya sparked my indignation. Ihadchosen. In the heart of Nizahl, I had declared my true name to every royal in the land and exposed my magic. I knew choosing just one time would not suffice; one time would not make up for the thousands of times I hadn’t chosen Jasad. But did it mean I could only choose to fight for Jasad for the rest of my life? Did it mean I could never choose myself again?

My ears caught a sound sweeter than any harmony, slightly louder than the cacophony in my head.

Rushing water.

The mountains curved along the sea, the night sky draped over their silhouette like a velvet shroud. If not for the dull roar of waves smashing into the mountainside, the darkness beneath me might have been the doorway to another world, waiting to catch me as I tumbled off the side of the cliff and into an entirely different realm.

Swallowing, I forced myself to focus on my climbing without contemplating the impossible vastness of these mountains. The strange sense that I was disturbing something sacred—something better left unseen.

Droplets of water clung to my eyelashes, cold against my lips. I was getting close.

I considered releasing one of my hands to wipe the moisture from my eyes and thought better of it. The rocks had grown too slippery to risk leaving even an inch of air between myself and the surface.

Besides, I didn’t want to see the vein on my palm again.

I’d toyed with the idea of asking Namsa about it before she frolicked off to the “Aada” but thought better of it.

More likely than not, the vein was merely a remnant of the cuffs. Nothing worth drawing attention to, and certainly not worth alarming Namsa. She might consider it an ill tiding of my newly freed magic, and I wouldn’t know how to prove her wrong. I knew my cuffs as well as I knew my right arm, but my magic?

I caught my breath as I shuffled from stone to stone, heading in the direction of the rushing water.

Hanim had tried to draw out my magic and failed, thanks to the cuffs.

Arin had drawn out my magic in limited amounts only, thanks to the cuffs.

My cuffs had protected me from the very worst of what I could do, and without them…

In the wrong hands, I could become a weapon turned against Jasad. I wasn’t like Dawoud, able to withstand years and years of torture without breaking. I wasn’t like my grandparents, knowledgeable in every way magic could be stolen, restrained, and withheld.

History had shown that I could be broken. I could be used. That, in fact, I seemed to accept my place most readily in circumstances where I lost the illusion of control. When I surrendered my choices to someone else to make on my behalf.

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