Page 96 of The Jasad Crown

A soldier rode directly for me, his sword swinging toward my neck. I ducked, the tip of my dagger slicing through the ropes of his saddle. He pitched to the side as his own momentum betrayed him, and I dragged him the rest of the way to the ground and rammed my knife through his throat. I had left the axes and spears—anything with a longer range—to the less experienced among the villagers, which meant the deaths I delivered today would be nice and close.

I yanked the sword from the soldier’s slack grip and stepped over him. Grabbing a handful of his horse’s mane, I pulled myself onto its back. Rovial’s tainted tomb, but I had missed riding astride an animal without scales.

Most of the fighting had concentrated close to the entrance. Mud churned beneath racing feet. Cries shot through the fighting, their origins lost in the crush of swords and horses. My heart thumped painfully, and I checked to ensure Fairel hadn’t left her post on the building. She had wanted to join us on the ground, but I told her we needed someone to raise the alarm and shoot if the soldiers found the other entrance to Mahair, since they would come up behind us.

I steered the horse toward the fray and held tight to the reins with one hand as it galloped. Wind brushed my neck, frosted my lashes, but I felt none of the cold. I blocked blows with my stolen sword and sliced through the fools who came close. Exhilaration carried away my earthly worries, drowning them beneath the beat of my heart and my coursing blood.

No Emre, no Palia or Niyar, no twisted magic. Just the ache in my muscles, the soreness of my thighs gripping the horse’s sliding flank, the tackiness of the blood soaking in my clothes.

My magic heated me from the inside, eager to join the fight, but I didn’t need it. Not for this.

My sword clashed with the one swinging toward Lateef’s head. I lunged forward, yanking the soldier from his horse onto mine and plunging the dagger strapped to my waist into his chest.

I threw the body to the ground as Raya called my name, but as I slashed and shouted warnings, I was Essiya and I was Sylvia. I was both and none, the perfect Heir and the brutal orphan, the living and the dead. I was two imperfect wholes melding into one.

Soaked in blood, brimming with magic, the severity of the disservice I had done myself dawned. How terribly I had minimized the enormity of all I contained. How much I had feared everything I could become.

You have the potential and power to be worse than any who have come before you.

I wasn’t bound to be the person Soraya feared. Her fears would not be my fate. What if that potential and power meant I could bebetterthan those who came before me?

A bloodcurdling scream rent the air, raising the hair on the back of my neck.

I turned the horse, knuckles white around the reins. Daleel and three other girls from the keep were lowering Raya to the ground as she gasped for air, clutching her chest. I leapt off my horse, casting my sword aside as I ran.

Why was she outside the keep? I had told her to stay put!

I hurled to my knees beside Raya, shoving aside the other girls. The seamstress’s skin had taken on a grayish cast. White lines traced the ridges of her colorless lips, parted for her shallow breathing. Her eyes were half-lidded, flickering with movement.

“Is she going to die?” wailed one of the girls. I didn’t know this one. She must have arrived recently.

“Get Rory,” I ordered. “Go!”

A wide gash stretched over Raya’s right shoulder, slanting over her collarbone and chest. Blood had soaked into her undershirt.

My body went cold. I had seen these kinds of injuries.

I knew what they meant.

“You can’t die,” I gasped. “Who will take in these girls if you die? Nobody else will tolerate them. Nobody else knows how to love difficult girls. They’ll be vagrants. They will all become vagrants because you couldn’t listen to me foronceand just stay inside the keep!”

I was in Dar al Mansi, and Dawoud was dying in my arms.

A cane tapped my shoulder. “Move aside, child,” Rory murmured. “Let me see.”

Daleel helped lower Rory into a kneel beside Raya. He examined the wound, palpating the bloated edges. Two fingers went under her chin, finding her pulse.

For all the years I had known him, Rory’s hands had always kept busy. Swinging his cane, shaking his fist, or assassinating the frogs I brought him for his potions and ointments. Even when he fell asleep over his table, his fingers would twitch toward an invisible target.

When he withdrew from Raya, his hands lying still in his lap, I shook my head before he could say a word. “No.”

“Essiya—”

“No!” Who did he think he was speaking to? I could fix her—

—I couldn’t save them—

I could make her whole.

---