Page 98 of The Jasad Crown

The girls embraced one another, knees weakening with relief as we gathered around our fallen guardian. Everyone except Rory. He watched Raya as though she might grow claws and swipe off his head.

“Her wound is gone,” Daleel murmured in wonder. “Dania’s bloody axe, Sylvia, you healed her.”

“No cursing,” Raya admonished.

When she opened silver- and gold-streaked eyes, something inside me relaxed.

Ours, it said.

To avoid spiraling, I did what I knew best—I threw myself into battle.

I twisted in my saddle and sliced into a soldier’s spine just as he yanked his sword from a villager’s chest. The soldier collapsed atop the villager he had slain, and I spared a second to hope someone would pull him off.

Raya and Rory were safe in the keep with the other girls. Rory had tried to speak to me, but the battle still raged. I couldn’t hear what he had to say. I had no answers for him. No explanation for how Raya was not one of the many corpses strewn over Mahair.

Her eyes…

The back of my neck prickled. I froze as a soldier barreled toward me and earned a deep slice into my arm.

“Ihzary!” Namsa. Maia, maybe. I didn’t know. I didn’t care. The warning meant one thing.

I turned to the entrance.

Black-and-violet uniforms swarmed the edge of Mahair and formed even rows along the border. I counted forty-six Nizahl soldiers—far fewer than the Omalian force still battling inside Mahair, but ten times deadlier.

At the front, his arm thrust to the side to halt further forward movement, stood Arin.

The world narrowed, reshaping itself around the Nizahl Commander.

Unbelievably foolish, to lose touch with my surroundings when those surroundings contained soldiers valiantly attempting to run me through. Beyond stupid, to grip the reins of my horse so hard the leather cut into my palms. I couldn’t convince my chest to unfreeze long enough to draw in air.

He found me.

Silver hair brushed his collar, longer than the last time I had seenhim in the flesh. The end of his coat lifted in the wind, setting flight to the ravens embroidered on the hem. Every lace on his vest perfectly tied, every stitch of his black pants neatly trimmed.

No chaos dared lay a finger on Arin of Nizahl. The icy Heir, the untouchable Commander, as pristine on the battlefield as in a royal court.

But when I looked into his eyes, there was nothing cold about them. Arin stared at me as though inches separated us, as though the sea of fighting did not merit a second’s attention. I felt scraped raw and exposed, more aware of myself than I had been in a long time.

My pulse pounded, the frantic thrum drowning out any competing sound. I needed to snap out of this. If he got ahold of me, it was all over. Queen Hanan, the fortress, Nuzret Kamel. Every option would be lost.

Even if Arin had begun to question his father and the truths he had grounded himself in his entire life, it wouldn’t stop him from apprehending me while he searched for the answers.

Arin scanned the flames leaping over the wall, the mudslide, the soldiers hemmed into the front entrance. Piecing together my strategy.

When his gaze met mine again, it glinted with pride.

Someone grabbed my sleeve. I only just managed to slow down in time to avoid ripping Efra’s arm from its socket.

“Do you know what you’re doing?” he hissed. He looked ahead, fixing on Arin with an expression somewhere between bone-deep fright and burning hatred.

My barrel of patience had scraped bottom, but I summoned enough to clasp the hand he had over my arm and say, “He will not enter unless we pass the wall or use magic. Chasing us now would require killing the villagers or the soldiers in their way, and it would be viewed as a declaration of support from Nizahl to the Omal crown. Nizahl absolutely forbids involvement in nonmagical conflicts within and between kingdoms.”

I glanced at Arin. He hadn’t moved, but his eyes had ticked to the spot where my hand covered Efra’s and gone curiously blank. “Arin would allow us to escape before he broke his kingdom’s laws. Unless we give him an opening, we are safe.”

An explosion behind us rattled through our bones, shaking the earth. Efra tackled me off the horse, using his body as a shield as flaming debris rained around us.

I shoved him off, swiping at the wood shavings burning through my clothes. “Damn it to the tombs,” I swore. “Just once, I would like to bewrong.”

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