Page 201 of The Jasad Crown

They were, in a word, displeased.

“You could have done alittlemore killing while you were up there,” Kapastra complained. “Nobody would have mourned a tin-brained buffoon like Felix.”

“I killed him eventually,” I reassured her.

Even as I spoke about my life, I could feel it receding, drawing away like a tide recalled to sea.

It would have scared me more had I not just recovered an ocean’s worth of lost memories. The tide would always return.

I told them about the Alcalah and Dawoud. About Arin and the kitmer. Speaking of him was like chewing glass, and I quickly skipped to waking up in the mountains.

“Fareed was handsome,” Kapastra said at one point. “If his descendant looks anything like him, I wouldn’t mind my magic sending him into minor catatonia for a kiss.”

Baira threw a handful of torn grass into Kapastra’s face. “Stop. It is obvious thinking of her lost lover hurts her.”

Dania and I wrinkled our noses in unison.Lover, she mouthed, and I shoved her shoulder, the two of us exchanging a grin.

“I suppose there’s no way we can ever go back?” I asked mildly. “Dania, the last time I saw you, you were talking to Kapastra about a prophecy.”

My sisters glanced at one another. A delicate wariness descended over them.

“We came down here to protect our kingdoms from the dangers of what unchecked power could create.” Dania’s speech was too measured to be anything other than rehearsed, and I wondered how frequently they had recited it to one another. “While we ruled, we plunged our kingdoms into war after war. We cannot die, nor can we be killed. The people in our care mattered less and less, because eventually they would die. Their lifetime of misery was a blink of an eye for us. At the time, entombing ourselves seemed to be the only solution.”

My chest constricted. “But not now?”

“Our kingdoms don’t have magic anymore,” Baira said softly. “They are barren in the one resource we carry in excess.”

“The only way we can rejoin their world is if our magic is equal to theirs and not greater,” Kapastra said.

The frog on my knee leapt off with an offended huff as I curled my legs into my chest. “What do you mean?”

“We would drain our magic—”

“Absolutely not.” I barely recognized the chilling rage in my voice. “You will not separate me from my magic again. It’smine.”

Baira raised placating hands. “We aren’t taking away your magic. We would just… give it a boundary. Right now, our magic knows no limits. It is a fountain with no basin.”

“A well without a bottom,” I mused.

Kapastra jumped in. “But Dania thinks we can pump magic back into our kingdoms. Drain the excess out of ourselves and funnel it back into our people.”

“You mean transferring our magic?” The fortress. Raya.

“Exactly.”

“Overspending magic is what devoured my humanity the first time,” I pointed out.

“We do not intend to spend it. Consider it… repurposing. It won’t regenerate. In either case, if it proves a flawed strategy, it isn’t as though we are in a position to harm anyone.”

“How long would it take?” I asked. “I want—I don’t want to emerge when everyone I love is dead.”

Too many already are, I almost added.

At the hurt look on Baira’s face, I quickly amended, “Everyone mortal, I mean.”

“I cannot offer you a definitive date,” Dania said. “But we have no other demands on our time here. We can easily devote the whole of our days toward accomplishing this.”

“It is only a theory,” Kapastra said.

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