Page 189 of The Jasad Crown

A flurry of arrows cleaved into the Hound rearing over Arin. Arin ducked out the path of its flailing paw. The ground shook as it slammed into the ground beside them. Vaida’s eyes moved from the dagger to Arin. Swaying, she grabbed Arin’s arm as he released the hilt.

“If you die, the Hounds die with you.” He caught her as she slumped into him, lowering her gently to the ground. “It was not an option I wanted to exercise.”

Vaida coughed. “Sneaky.”

Blood lined the seam of her lips. Arin didn’t resist when she tugged him close. “Would you really have given me Rawain’s head?”

Arin carefully pulled a blade of grass from Vaida’s hair. “Yes.”

Vaida withdrew the dagger from her chest. Blood flowered beneath the silk over her heart. “Do you think I will meet Baira when I die?”

Arin knelt beside her.

“Lie to me, Arin,” she whispered. “Just this one time. I want to imagine it.”

So while the Hounds from the Ivory Palace to the Citadel began to die, Arin wove Vaida a story of a reunion with her Awala, as vivid and distracting as the stories she would create for him in their secret stairwell. As the Nizahl soldiers surged forward against the Hounds and the flagging Lukubi forces, Arin listened to Vaida’s breathing turn shallow.

“I’m scared,” Vaida whimpered. Crimson tears poured over the ruby studs embedded in her temples. “Arin, I’m scared.”

The ache in Arin’s chest spread through the rest of him. He laid down beside Vaida, his shoulder pressed to hers. “The night before your twenty-fourth birthday, you came to the Citadel and asked me a question.”

“I did?” Soft and lethargic.

“You asked me what I would do if I hadn’t been born Arin of Nizahl. Who I would want to be.”

“I must have been drunk.”

“I told you I couldn’t imagine a reality where I am not who I am.”

She tipped her head to the left, half-lidded gaze unfocused as it settled on him. “A vexing answer, as usual.”

Arin chuckled. “Yes, and I have since reconsidered. Do you remember what you said?”

Her eyes slipped shut. “Mm.”

“You said, ‘I would have been a flower.’”

Vaida’s lips twitched. Arin thought she might have been trying to smile. “Definitely drunk,” she whispered.

“You can still have a life. A good life,” Arin said. “Take my hand before the rest of the magic dies. If there is enough left, drawing it out might heal some of the damage.”

It seemed to take unspeakable effort for Vaida to open her eyes again. Faintly, so faint Arin could barely catch it, she said, “But your options.”

Arin had watched so much end in the last month of his life. So much destruction. What compelled Arin to say what he did next was as much mercy as it was spite. Spite for the forces responsible for leading them to this battlefield, for the control they had tried to wrest away from Arin.

“There is a fourth option, Vaida. A future you choose. A future where no one will ever know if you died on this field or if you were pulled back to the Mirayah, because your body will disappear with the Hounds. A future you get to build in a realm as intelligent as you are, where your power is limited only by what you can imagine.”

A roar of victory swept over the field as the Citadel’s siren finally fell quiet. The Hounds had fallen. A breeze blew Arin’s hair from its tie. The kitmer who had carried him out of Mahair and watched over him in the Gibal circled overhead. Niseeba landed on the ledge of a balcony and waited.

Maybe Arin wouldn’t need Ehal to reach Jasad in time.

The Sultana’s last breaths misted in the air between them.

“Always with your pretty words,” Vaida sighed, slim shoulders melting into the grass. Blood drenched the front of her dress. “Okay, Arin. Take… my hand.”

It might be too late. It was probably too late.

Arin closed his hand around Vaida’s anyway.

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