Page 2 of The Jasad Crown

“I wanted to know how it would feel,” Arin said. He knotted his fingers into the blanket, ignoring the pull on his arm. “The injury.”

“You’ve been injured by many knives in your training.”

“Never stabbed.” Arin swallowed. “I wanted to see if I could survive it.”

A heavily ringed hand settled on Arin’s throat. His father’s finger ghosted over Arin’s pulse. It beat sickly fast, betraying its owner.

“Do you think if you put yourself in the path of what you fear and let it hurt you, you will somehow be stronger for it? That you will know your limits better?” Rawain’s hand moved to Arin’s arm.

Without hesitation, he dug his thumb into Arin’s bandage.

Pain roared through him, and Arin barely remembered to trap his gasp behind his teeth. He couldn’t risk waking his mother. Rawain did not tolerate her interruptions when he was teaching his Heir a lesson, and Arin hated it when she was punished because of him. “Those who survive longest never put themselves in a position to be hurt. They see the threat coming andthey step aside.”

Red leaked beneath the bandage. His father pressed harder. Arin tasted blood. He had bitten into his own tongue.

“You are my sole Heir. You will inherit my kingdom, my throne, and my enemies. How can I trust you if you cannot command your impulses or quash these infernal curiosities? How, Arin?”

Black dots swam in Arin’s vision, and only then did Rawain withdraw his hand. He wiped his thumb on his robes. “Your lessons resume at dawn.”

His mother woke two hours later and fought with the servants who came to dress Arin for his training. “Can’t you see he’s hurt? He cannot train today. He is only a child! Please, he’s in pain.” The servants moved around her while she wept, ignoring her attempts to hold them off.

And Arin, who still felt the imprint of his father’s thumb, had found himself disgusted by her tears.

She put herself in a position to be hurt, he thought, suddenly and without much emotion.She loves me too much. She will see the threat coming and stand perfectly still, if only to let me live a minute more.

Arin put his hand on the bandage and pressed.

The pain grew, and grew, and grew.

He would become familiar with this pain. He would learn to think through it.

And then he would never see it coming and stand still again.

Rain pattered against the window, obscuring the sight of a sleeping Nizahl from its watchful Heir.

The stormy evening possessed every hallmark of nights his mother calledsieges of the Awaleen. The wind picked up, its mournful howl cutting through the stone walls. Arin could almost hear his mother’s phantom sigh, the tap of her thin fingers against the shaking glass.Sleep is the space between life and death. A space where anything can happen, she would say, in the faraway tone Arin had grown to fear.The Awaleen have dwelled in their dreams for centuries. Look at the sky, Arin, and tell me you cannot see them in the clouds.

In her last few years, she had developed a habit of speaking such nonsense where others could hear. Persistent superstition was a relic she carried over from her village in Nazeef, and his father hated any reminders of Isra’s lowborn origins.

A crackle of lightning washed Arin in shades of blue. If the Awaleen truly slept, down there in their eternal tombs, then their sleep knew only nightmares.

A knock came at the door. Arin smoothed a palm over his vest, dispelling the phantom of his mother. He had plans with the living to oversee.

“Enter.” Arin didn’t move from the window as the door creaked open behind him.

“Your Highness. You summoned?”

“Have a seat, Counselor Rodan.”

Arin turned from the window. The High Counselor bowed deeply, gaze meeting Arin’s for a brief instant before darting away.Rodan moved to the chair nearest to the door and hesitated. The seat would be close to the head of the table—within Arin’s reach. Executing a shuffle unbecoming of anyone above the age of five, the High Counselor instead chose a chair at the center of the table.

As though Arin would ever expend the effort to physically assault him. There weren’t enough gloves in the world. The entire episode had taken less than a minute, but it told Arin what he needed to know.

It didn’t end there. When Arin lowered himself into his chair, the High Counselor flinched.Flinched.

“Peculiar weather tonight.” Rodan picked at his thumb, seemingly indifferent to the blood crusted in the hinges of his nail. The thought of replacing his table because the High Counselor bled on it irritated Arin to distraction.

Arin’s silence only further aggravated the High Counselor. Over the years, Arin had found silence a most effective tool for excavating the inner workings of someone’s mind. To some, silence scraped and clawed and screamed. Others settled in it, content to float on its ebb.

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