Page 89 of The Jasad Crown

Rory reached into the hole and withdrew a package coated in dust and specks of hardened clay.

Sweat glistened on the chemist’s forehead. “I found this while we were preparing to evacuate. If I had known I still had it—if I had even suspected—” Rory cut himself off and thrust the package toward me. “Here.”

I evaluated Rory as I tore the wrapping. What if he was legitimately ill? He distrusted healers—an irony that flew straight over his head—and I wagered he would rather dwindle into death than allow those “ham-fisted crooks” to treat him.

The wrapping finally fell away. “A book?” Leather-bound and thick, it had the semblance of a journal kept by a politician obsessed with the sound of their own opinions or a poet with more whimsy than talent.

I had read through plenty of the first under Hanim’s tutelage.

“It may be an unfamiliar concept to you, but you do this remarkable trick with books where youopen them.”

I snorted. He was in perfect health. I would probably die before he did.

I flipped the cover. The script was slanted, written with a balanced hand.

After many years of research and reflection, I have found only one absolute truth to share: time is the enemy of knowledge.

A poet, then. Great. I paused to raise a brow at Rory. “I think we should discuss reading preferences.”

Rory beseeched the skies for patience.

It is important to understand that when I undertook the study of magic, my interest was of a purely scholarly nature. I had little inclination toward its political relevance, nor was I in possession of any overruling opinion as to the merit of its existence. All I wanted was to learn.

But the pursuit of knowledge never takes the straight path, and I could not have predicted what waited around the bend.

Reader, I urge you to read these records thoroughly and with an open mind. Discard your preconceived notions. Fight your instincts to deny a narrative that does not suit the world you know.

For the truly enlightened among us are those who understand that the realities we build were already built for us.

I dropped the book with a strangled gasp. It landed at my feet, still open to the same page. The same sentence. Theimpossiblesentence.

Shivers raced up and down my arms, connecting at the peak of my stiff spine.

Those words were nearly identical to the ones I had said to Arin in the training tunnels. They were too specific, too exact.

Pressure built behind my temples. Whose mouth had I stolen these words from? What memory had I suppressed this time?

I crouched in front of the book and tried to focus my burning gaze on the page.

At the bottom, in tiny script, was the author’s name.

Emre Faluk, Heir of Omal.

My father.

I lifted my head. I looked at Rory as if seeing him for the first time.

“You never answered me,” I whispered. “When I asked you how you recognized me. You didn’t say.”

“I wanted to find the right time. A fool’s excuse, I know. The time is always right, and it is the rest of us who are wrong.” The sigh Rory released shrank him in half, seeming to rattle his very bones. “The name I held before Mahair was Rusheed Osman. Royal healer and personal physician of the Faluk family.”

My head spun. Physician to the Omal royal family?Rory?

I wiped my features clean. He could be lying. I had no way to verify the account. “You knew my father?”

“Knew him?” Rory stared off at a point beyond my shoulder, the scar of an old grief bleeding behind his eyes. “I held your father the day he was born, and I held him the day he died. I loved that boy.” A choked laugh. “He was permanently confined to his books, determined to chase the most obscure and pointless pieces of knowledge the world had to offer. His father despaired of him, but his mother doted on him. Queen Hanan was happy if Emre was happy, and it did not take much to make your father happy.”

I was afraid to breathe and miss a word. If he was lying—if Rory was leading me by my nose on some merry tale—

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