Page 188 of The Jasad Crown

Foolish questions, his father would say. The answer was one and the same.

Power.

What Vaida specialized in was an art even Rawain could never master. Comfort wrapped in barbed wire. Luxury and decadence dressing a hollow kingdom, consigning its people to a poverty of any genuine pursuit, any true passion. Gutted by generations of rulers who cared more about presentation than purpose, who suffocated scholarship, led by the whim of the day.

Arin couldn’t deny how masterfully Vaida had turned Lukub into the perfect illusion. No rebellions, no dissent—just quiet disappearances and a Champion striking a bargain for his sister’s life; spies and empty libraries and skinned faces pinned to the inside of the Ivory Palace.

With Nizahl’s armies, there would be nothing she couldn’t conquer. She wouldn’t need to limit her expansions to Essam Woods. She would never be forced to rely on a treatise like the Zinish Accords for support again.

Vaida lowered her gaze when Arin dropped the second glove, still walking toward her at a measured pace. She laughed. “I think this isthe first time I have seen you bare those hands of yours since we were children. Shall I commemorate the occasion by testing how quickly those fingers will snap between my Hound’s teeth?”

“I do not want to do this.” Arin stopped before reaching her. “Baira cursed the Sultanas when she left behind that ring. The Awaleen were capricious and cruel—their gifts have always come with consequences.”

Ruby thorns pushed out from Vaida’s eyebrows, thin and sharp like the obelisk at the front of the Ivory Palace. Red lips stretched into a smile. “No gift comes freely, Arin. Besides, now we can both be cursed. Silver hair for you, ruby eyes for me. It’s exactly what we dreamed about as children, remember?”

Arin did remember. He remembered being ten years old and hiding from Sorn in the servants’ stairwell. He couldn’t tolerate listening to the Orban Heir babble about hunting for one more minute, and Arin had yet to master the art of politely freezing out a conversation. Vaida had tracked him down and spent the next two hours making shadow creatures with her fingers to entertain him, regaling Arin with made-up stories of their adventures. In exchange, he’d taken her for a walk around the Citadel’s gardens and carried the basket while she filled it with her favorite flowers.

He remembered letting her rub a tincture of pomegranate and beetroot into his hair at the brilliant age of eleven because she had cried that he had the hair of an old man and she didn’t want to be stuck with Sorn when Arin died.

He remembered Vaida finding him the hour before his mother’s funeral and forcing him to misbutton his coat.

“You look too prim, darling. The vultures need a spectacle,” she’d whispered. “They want to feed. Give them something obvious to peck at, and they won’t dig much deeper.”

A year later, he had ordered thousands of her favorite blossoms sent to the Ivory Palace after her own mother’s funeral.

Vaida was his first friend, and his very favorite foe.

“Here’s what will happen when I touch you, Vaida.” Arin stepped toward her, folding his hands behind his back. The handle of the dagger tucked into his waistband bumped into his wrist.

“Every ounce of the decayed relic magic Baira infected you with will drain from you and into my father’s scepter. The Hounds will wither and disappear. I will take you into a dungeon beneath the Citadel to await a tribunal for violating the Zinish Accords. You have no friends among the kingdoms. King Murib and the Omal intermediary council will find you guilty. They will sentence you to death, and I will bury you in the gardens of the Ivory Palace. The head of your council or your designated inheritor will be seated on your throne, breaking the chain of Baira’s descendants.”

Another step. Vaida watched him, her hulking Ruby Hound snarling behind her shoulder. A scream rent the air, abruptly silenced with a crunch.

Vaida’s lips pursed in delicate amusement. “All from a single touch? My, my.”

“The alternative is this: you allow me to drain the curse and I allow you to go home,” Arin continued as though she hadn’t spoken. “You will sit on the tribunal sentencing my father. You can be his judge and his executioner through the formal procedures.”

“I want your father’s throneandhis head, Arin.” Vaida beamed. “I will have a tapestry of his robes commissioned to hang over Lukub’s gates.”

“I can give you his head and his robes.”

It earned Arin a pause and a bewildered blink. Vaida knew Arin would not lie to her—not even in a moment like this.

“I want Nizahl.”

Arin’s gaze moved over the torches mounted across the stone walls around the Citadel. The mist circling over the kingdom had dissipated, and the moon hung low over the massacre raging within the Citadel’s borders.

“I cannot give you Nizahl.”

“Make it one of your choices.” She crossed the final steps toward Arin, her Hound’s nostrils flaring. It bared its teeth as Vaida played with Arin’s collar. “The other two don’t suit.”

For all the devastation she had wrought, Vaida was not a fighter. She never learned that it wasn’t the weapon she should fear, but the opponent wielding it. That battles were not won by the number of Ruby Hounds or shiny spears, but by the fate of a single mistake.

When Arin had the swords and arrows forged, he had also requested the sigil be engraved into a single dagger. A dagger he would only be able to use if he stood close enough to the Sultana to share breath.

When it slid into her chest, it seemed to take Vaida an eternity to understand what had happened.

“This wasn’t one of your options,” she said in a small voice. “You tricked me.”

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