Page 62 of The Jasad Crown

The Mufsid shrugged. “You should sit. It can be disorienting the first time.”

“My patience with your games wears thin. If you intend to speak, do so now.”

The Mufsid tilted his head, an eerie mimicry of Arin from moments ago. “Dear Commander, who said anything of speaking?”

Unease pricked along Arin’s neck.

“I kept asking myself why you never demanded to know what we are,” the Mufsid said. “But you did not even know to ask, did you? You don’t know what a Bone Spinner is. You don’t know that we had a Portalist, a Visionist, a Hayagan, a Sahir. Then again, I suppose he never expected his favorite sword to start cutting the hand that forged it.”

Arin’s eyes narrowed. He slid his hand into his coat pocket, closing his fingers around his blade.

Gold and silver erupted in the Mufsid’s eyes.

“Now, now,” the Mufsid said. “We made a deal.”

The cell disappeared.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

ARIN

Adead body stretched out by Arin’s boots.

Body wasn’t the right term. Body implied a semblance of structure still existed. A body was something recognizable—something that had once dwelled among the living.

Shards of crystallized bone tore through skin translucent as glass. Where a face might have been, a caved-in bowl held empty eye sockets and blackened teeth, thin red tendons wrapped around the mash of what might have been a nose. Rib bones pierced his chest, facing different directions like the sterns of sailing ships. Red spikes covered his stomach, drops of blood sharpened into thorns puncturing through his belly.

His legs had splintered from thigh to ankle, the bones of his calf peeled backward like cornhusks. Layers of crystallized flesh and bone overlapped in thin fillets, and a single shard of white bone held the limbs to the rest of his body.

By any definition, Arin was not an easily shaken man. He had spent years crafting the fortifications necessary to withstand the horrors of higher command, to hold firm against any assault.

But he had not accounted for the sight of a magic-mined body lying at his feet.

Brutal, isn’t it? They feel every minute of it, too. They don’t stop screaming untiltheir tongue turns to glass, the Mufsid hummed, the disembodied voice ringing in the back of Arin’s head.

Arin exhaled, tearing his gaze from the mangled body to the wailing girl crouched beside it. Decadence had trailed its fingers across every surface of the room they were in. Billowing ivory drapes hid the gaps in the walls where shutters should have shielded against the wind. Rubies glittered along the crown molding. Tapestries woven with breathtaking detail covered the right side of the room. In them, Arin found his first answer.

He was in the Ivory Palace.

“How did you bring me here?” Arin uttered, low. The girl paid him no heed. “What magic is this?”

Pleased to make your acquaintance, Your Highness. I am Waid Entair, Bone Spinner of Crowns.

Neither the name nor the title held any meaning to Arin. He wasn’t sure which unsettled him more: that the Mufsid had blown a crater into Arin’s understanding of magic in less than two minutes, or that a magic capable of affecting him existed.

Your lack of enthusiasm wounds me. I am the only Bone Spinner in two hundred years. I see the stories of the dead. I divine secrets from the magic left in their bones, and I travel through time while my feet stand still.

Bone Spinner. Arin tucked aside the information for later examination and returned his attention to the problem at hand.

He was in a memory stolen from the dead. Whose bones had Waid used? Whose memory was this?

The door burst open, and two guards spilled into the room. They assessed the space, gazes sweeping straight past Arin.

A woman strolled in behind them, and any doubt about his location disappeared. The type of beauty this woman possessed—a beauty capable of leading men to murder and stopping a battle in its tracks—was reserved for one lineage, and one lineage only.

The lanternlight winked off of her towering crown, crafted in theshape of a rising sun. Rubies crusted the rim, which supported three rays of alternating heights composed of… white quartz? Onyx?

Loose curls gathered around her head like a spring cloud, brushing the collar of an elaborate gown trailing several feet behind her. Intelligent brown eyes stared out of a face that sent a chill of recognition down Arin’s spine. It was a face crafted by a supplicant at the altar of Baira, capable of rending hearts from chests while still beating and bloody. He had seen its likeness in another.

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