Page 77 of The Jasad Crown

I tried to fight past the roaring in my ears. Supreme Rawain—Queen Hanan, King Murib, Sultana Bisai—they had all traded in the magic my grandparents mined from the lower wilayahs? They had been participants of the very practice they torched our kingdom for?

Any illusions I had held of my grandparents had been most effectively shattered over the course of the Alcalah, but this was another level entirely. Not only did Gedo Niyar and Teta Palia murder our own people and redistribute their magic to the already-wealthy upper wilayahs, but to hand it over to Omal, Orban, Lukub, and Nizahl? To trade it like jewels or land?

And what did Arin mean, this was an old practice? An oldpractice of Jasad or of all the kingdoms? Sweet Sirauk, how far back did this go?

I was not in a state to think through this revelation, and I could already feel my insides squeezing, the bottomless void of my panic roiling. The earlier lull must have been a false calm. I pressed my knuckles to my mouth before Arin heard me gasping like a land-stranded fish.

Arin looked at his guardsman for a long moment. “When my father leaves, I want you to follow him.”

The reason for Arin’s solemnity eluded me a minute longer than it did Wes. Comprehension settled over the older man. The lines in his forehead smoothed.

Entirely too calm for someone who had just been asked to accept a death sentence.

If Wes was lucky, spying on the Supreme would see him thrown in prison and executed as a traitor. If he were less lucky—if Arin was right and Rawain planned to leave the Citadel’s grounds to determine the security of highly illegal magic mines—then getting caught meant Wes would never return to Nizahl. The guardsman would not be permitted to live long enough to send word back to his Commander.

Wes knelt before Arin and folded his hands over his bent knee. “I serve you, Arin of Nizahl, freely and of my own will. It is my honor and my duty, to whatever end.”

Arin caught Wes’s arm, hauling him back to his feet. They stood like that, arms clasped, a lifetime hanging between them.

“Do not get caught,” Arin said.

Wes grinned, briefly. “I won’t.”

“Thank you, Wes.”

They separated, and Wes reminded Arin of his regiment’s readiness to depart before taking his own leave. We watched him go.

I rested my forehead against the tree, grimacing at the scrape ofsap dried into the bark. Part of me wanted to follow Arin to the soldiers’ encampment, but what was the point? I knew where they were going, and I could hazard a guess how many were accompanying him. In many ways, this visit was an enormous boon—if Arin was headed to Orban to persuade Murib to open the trade routes, then I could predict his path and ensure ours would not cross it.

I should feel glad. I should feel anything other than the horrible pit in my stomach. The molten panic in my chest, steadily burning through me.

I needed to get a handle on myself before Namsa came to collect me for the journey. They couldn’t see me like this. I had barely begun to find a place with them, to feel like a real leader. Falling apart because of a couple of veins? Because there was a small,tinychance that when the cuffs fell away, the sudden resurgence of magic in my body after a lifetime of suppression had accelerated symptoms of magic-madness?

One second I was alone, and the next, my shoulders stiffened beneath the sharp point of a sword.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

SYLVIA

Ididn’t flinch, the tree and its dried sap the only witnesses to my tired smile. “What gave me away?”

“Turn around.”

I rolled my eyes. At least he had graced me with speech this time. I wasn’t sure I could tolerate another wordlessly spiteful interaction. “Care to remove your sword? I will not rotate at the end of it like a pig on a spit.”

After a second, the pinch between my shoulders disappeared. I took a breath meant to fortify me, but it landed awkwardly behind my ribs, refusing to dissipate. I was still in the throes of the panic that had brought me here, and any air I tried to draw floated in my chest like oil poured over water.

Gathering the blanket closer, I faced the grim Commander, raising a sardonic brow. “Did they not teach you greeting etiquette in little Heir school? Perhaps instead of pinning me to walls or introducing me to your plethora of blades, you could try saying hello.”

I would have had more satisfying results taunting a rock. The sword still raised between us, Arin studied me, eyes raking over my exposed legs and the red-and-black wool blanket strung around my bare body. Winter-blue eyes met mine and held them fast. My heart, already operating at an accelerated rhythm, began to pound. Arin had always possessed an uncanny ability to see straight through me,no matter how practiced the lie or polished the performance. I was not in the mood to be known today.

I returned the attention in kind. Silver hair was tied back behind his head, the fine strands sliding from their captivity to curve like crescent moons around his cheekbones. The bruise on his temple had gone from blue and black to a mild yellow, and my gaze drifted over the perfectly laced column of his vest to where the gashes I’d dug my fingers into had bled. Had those healed enough for him to ride a horse to Orban?

He wore his infamous black coat, the tiny ravens stitched in violet embroidered on the sleeves and the hem skimming near the top of his boots.

The very image of power and self-assuredness. Every detail crafted to immaculate perfection. The kind of leader that lived in legends.

My hands curled into the blanket. Maybe my magic hadn’t brought me here to listen in on Arin’s conversation with Rawain. Maybe it wanted to prove to me how low my measure fell against the Nizahl Heir; his lifetime of standing straight beneath his responsibilities held up like a mirror to reflect my own bent back.

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