Page 57 of The Jasad Crown

Ignoring the ache behind my ribs, I reached for his weakness, and I dug my fingers deep.

“Haven’t you asked yourself how it was that the Jasad fortress, which had stood for centuries, fell within hours of the Blood Summit? How four armies were already in place to strike as soon as the fortress fell?” The questions tripped over one another, rushing to liberation. These doubts I had bottled for years, finally shared with the one person who would be as tortured by them as me. “If my grandparents had planned to attack the Blood Summit, why would they bring me? Why would news of Niphran’s death—the daughter they threw to rot in Bakir Tower, whose lover they murdered—affect them so greatly that their magic would react to destroy the entire Summit?”

I took a cautious step toward his motionless form, bottle still raised between us. He tracked me closely, flinty gaze never leaving mine.

He was listening.

“Think of how cleanly it happened,” I urged, and it was reckless to speak like this, drawing unseeingly from a well of my own suspicions. I didn’t dare mention Binyar or his confession, but otherwise, I didn’t know what I would say next. A wrong move, a misstep, and the cage of his curiosity might break. “Magic-madness has been a discredited theory for over a hundred years. Your own kingdom cast it aside as unsubstantiated fearmongering. Your father is patient, I will grant him that. He spent decades slowly shifting Nizahl from the kingdom created by the Awaleen to arbitrate magic to a kingdom galvanized to destroy it.”

Invoking Rawain was risky, and I feared the worst when Arin took a single, precise step forward. The bottom of the bottle pressed against his sternum. He wrapped a hand around the center, but made no move to pull it out of my grasp.

Still silent. Still watching me.

My heart pounded. It would have been less terrifying if he had unsheathed a sword.

My time was running out.

“I met your mother at the Blood Summit,” I said. “Isra knew she was going to die. She walked into that Summit knowing what Rawain planned to do.”

Talwith bottles, one of which I was keeping pressed to Arin’s chest, were crafted to endure rowdy khawaga and treks across trade routes. Dania’s kingdom of warriors had pooled their talent and created a bottle sturdy enough to survive long campaigns through Essam and fearsome battles. A bottle that, for all intents and purposes, could outlast time itself.

Arin’s knuckles turned white around the bottle, and the glass shattered.

I barely had a second to process—he broke a talwith bottle with his bare hand—before he was stepping over the puddle of broken glass toward me. My back hit the wall, and I exhaled with ill-timed amusement. Arin’s repertoire of skills should include a singular ability to corner me against walls.

I raised the bottle’s neck, still clasped in my grip, and pressed the jagged ends to the underside of Arin’s chin before he could take another step.

My voice hardened. “I know he is your father. I know what I ask of you.”

I wished I understood less. I’d torn myself apart from the inside out trying to please Hanim’s ghost. To be the Heir and Jasadi she wanted. I had recoiled from the simplest touch; fought against any tenderness or friendship that might wrap itself around my neck and drag me to the mud. I’d spent a mere five years in Essam, but neither the scars on my back nor the influence she had cast would ever fully heal.

Arin had never known a day in his life without Rawain. The Supreme had drawn the constellations of Arin’s world, dictated the parameters of his universe. Another son would have probably contented himself with living in a predetermined reality. That son wouldn’t have allowed anything so troublesome as doubt to crack the comfortable foundation upon which he rested.

Though Arin had grown up in the world Rawain devised, Arin had a quality—a miraculous, almost spiteful strength—that was a nightmare for those whose bloody hands built our skies and earth.

Arin wondered.

“It took one lie for you to lose faith in me,” I whispered. “Tell me, Your Highness: How many will it take until you lose faith in your father?”

I dropped the bottle’s neck. It landed at our feet, rolling out of sight.

“Will it be before or after one of us dies at the other’s hand?”

The colors in the room began to fade, the surfaces dipping and swirling. Our time had ended.

“Ask him about the fortress.” My stomach churned, and I fervently hoped I hadn’t just committed a fatal error. In Arin’s hands, a thread of information, no matter how thin, could unravel significantly more than intended.

Still, it was my last chance. A final arrow across the stars.

By most estimates, it was a colossal failure. Arin hadn’t softened. He’d spoken only once.

The Commander blurred, disappearing like a stone dropped in a river, but the feeling I carried away was not despair.

Because I did not lie when I said I knew Arin.

And I knew what it looked like when the Heir’s mind began to twist.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

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