Page 79 of The Jasad Crown

Arin didn’t retreat, even when I bridged the gap between us. This close, his beauty hit me like a blow to the gut. The aftershock of it rippled into an unpleasant awareness of my own disheveled appearance.

It made my tone sharper than necessary. “Tell me, Arin of Nizahl. How does it feel to doubt?”

Fury flashed over Arin, splitting his carefully placid features like a clap of lightning through the clear blue sky. “Do you think doubt is new to me?”

I opened my mouth and came up empty. The answer must have been clear on my face, because a muscle in Arin’s jaw clenched.

“For all the horrors you have lived through,Essiya of Jasad, you understand nothing of what it means to lead. All I do is doubt. Myself, others, the very reality we occupy. Every day, I take the facts as I understand them, and I make a choice. When those facts change, I make a different choice. Doubt forces me to confront what I know and reassess it as the circumstances demand. The day I stop doubting, themomentI submit myself to convenience over clarity, I pray my crown rusts in my hands.”

It was the second time I had ever heard Arin speak so much in a single fell swoop. Our gazes collided and held fast. Two swords locked on the battlefield, neither willing to yield.

“You say ‘facts’ as though the word means something. I’ve told you before, my liege—life is not an equation you can calculate over and over again. Every choice won’t be perfect, but you still have to make it.” I shook my head. “If you’ve allowed doubt to become indecision, your crown has already rusted.”

Arin’s eyes narrowed, but I held firm. We’d flung our daggers, and there was little left to do but stand there and bleed.

Unfortunately, I had forgotten that no amount of injury could force Arin still. “Who is Hanim?”

I blinked, breath catching in my lungs. Oh, but it almost worked. Hanim’s name wasalmostsufficient to destroy the trajectory of my thoughts, to leave me off-kilter and bewildered.

It would have worked had I not just witnessed him play the very same tactic against his father.

“What a chatty Mufsid you found.” I leaned back against the tree, the blanket tightening around my body as I crossed my arms over my chest. “I doubt he recalled her very fondly. Hanim was their leader for a time, you know. Before her exile for conspiring with your father against the Jasad crown, though I imagine you haven’t stumbled across those records. Supreme Munqual went to great lengths to cover up Rawain’s misdeeds when he was Commander.”

His silence lengthened. It was another of his tactics, inviting the other person to keep speaking until he had what he needed or they incriminated themselves. Historically, it worked with embarrassing success against me.

Several strands had escaped my braid, curls frizzing near my ears and tickling my neck. I tried to tuck them away and nearly dropped the blanket.

Damn him. “I bet the Mufsid blamed Hanim for the fortress falling. Richly ironic, if you ask me. Hanim didn’t sack Usr Jasad. She might have written the false enchantment, but who read it?” I wondered how much Arin knew about what had happened on the other side of the fortress the day it fell. It wasn’t until Soraya’s vision that I learned Usr Jasad had fallen before the fortress, ravaged at the hands of its own people. “Soraya was working for Hanim, by the way. They were poisoning my mother in Bakir Tower and passing it off as an affliction of her mind.”

At the mention of Soraya’s name, Arin’s face went curiously still. My former attendant was the same woman who had given him thescar on his throat. She had managed the impossible and infiltrated the Citadel under an assumed identity, but instead of targeting Rawain, she had tried to kill his adolescent son. I still didn’t understand why; had I been in her position, I would have shoved Rawain’s scepter through the other side of his skull while I could.

Despite the sumptuous temptation I’d laid before him, Arin didn’t bite. It seemed he had hit his limit of human conversation for the day.

“What I know for certain is that your father expected it to fall. The Blood Summit, the march on Jasad, the fortress—he planned every moment, accounted for every detail. An artist of destruction, that man. I nearly admire it.”

“Is this how you amuse yourself?” My triumph at prodding him out of his pen of silence faded fast. His voice stayed crisp and infuriatingly even, as though my insults were as insubstantial as a raindrop hitting the surface of a river. “You lie awake at night and run in the same circles of suspicion until you tire?”

The same strategy, but applied to much greater success. He wanted to provoke, to fluster. At this rate, he’d probably succeed much faster than I would, so I pressed my tongue to the back of my teeth and reassessed my approach.

There was one method he wouldn’t see coming. One front where our weapons hadn’t previously crossed, where our moves had not yet been charted.

Years of proximity to Marek caught up to me in an instant. I let my head loll against the tree as the blanket slid below my bare shoulders, and I twisted my lips into a taunting smile. “I have nothing better to tire me at night. How would you suggest I amuse myself, Your Highness?” The question emerged low and inviting.

When Arin stared at me, momentarily dumbstruck, my laugh blew a cool breath over the last embers of panic still flickering in my chest. I crossed my legs at the ankle, and the blanket parted aroundmy knees. Arin’s gaze flicked to my calves, and I belatedly remembered the veins. Fortunately, the one on my right leg ran up the back of my calf. Out of sight.

The reminder doused me in cold water. It would be an absolute disaster if Arin discovered the veins. If the exchange I had witnessed between Rawain and Arin was any indication, the Nizahl Heir had stepped over a line and into a territory of unspeakable danger.

Arin had begun to question the Supreme.

Discovering that my magic was manipulating my memories, superseding my will, and leaving traces across my body? There was only one conclusion Arin would come to, and why wouldn’t he? I had no other conclusion to offer. No other explanation for why my magic and I interacted like strangers who had not quite decided whether the other meant them ill.

“So much time you have spent worrying about where we’re hiding,” I said. “Perhaps you should have spent some of it worrying about what your father is hiding right under your nose.”

A distant shout echoed past the throng of trees. “Your Highness!”

I inclined my head toward the sound. “Your men await you, my lord.”

Arin didn’t glance in the direction of his camp. In one of his long-legged strides, the gap between us suddenly closed. Startled, I stumbled away from the tree and tripped over the sword he’d driven into the ground.

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