The Jasad Heir — Chapter no 32

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

I prepared for the Victor’s Ball alone.

They had placed my belongings in a room in the Citadel’s main spire.

My plum-colored gown spilled over the cushioned bench in a whisper of silk while I practiced different expressions in the gilded mirror. Proud, humbled, delighted. My cheeks hurt.

There wasn’t much to be done about my eyes. A dead and pitiless black, they couldn’t be coaxed to mimic any form of life. I lined them in finely powdered blue kohl and glanced away.

A knock sounded at the door. Time to perform one more time.

The mirror reflected Arin’s entrance. He closed the door behind him, and I slipped on my gloves from Rory. “How long do I have to stay?”

He leaned against the door. I could count on one hand the number of times I’d seen Arin lean. The man came out of his mother’s womb stiff and unimpressed. It was a telling sign. “Two hours. Once they’re well and truly inebriated, no one will notice if you take your leave.”

I pinned my hair from my face. The tight curls draped over my back.

“The Victor’s carriages have been readied. Sefa and the boy will meet you there. I’ve assigned a retinue of my most qualified soldiers to accompany you. They will take you wherever you would like to go, and once you have reached your destination, you may select any ten of them to become your permanent guard. Your winnings will be delivered separately and discreetly to a location of your choosing.” Arin spoke without inflection. I wondered if he had practiced his expressions for tonight, too.

I swiveled on the bench. The full sight of him momentarily knocked all other thoughts askew.

A tunic dyed in the most vivid shade of violet framed his broad shoulders and the flat, hard panes of his torso. Stitched over his heart was Nizahl’s symbol. Trim black pants hung from his narrow waist, tucked into clean, light boots. An amethyst circlet rested in a cloud of silver hair. He

had replaced his heavy coat with a form-fitting black tailcoat that tapered behind his knees. Five shiny purple buttons lined the left side of the coat, with tiny ravens on the opposing side.

“Don’t stand anywhere near me,” I managed. “I’ll never be able to slip out with everyone’s eyes on you.”

“I can assure you I will not be the subject of interest tonight,” he said wryly, but a small smile touched the corners of his lips. A shy Arin—now I had seen it all.

I sighed, bracing my elbows on my knees and covering my face. “Any

changes?”

Arin’s pause answered for itself. “No.”

When I woke in the pit, anarchy ran rampant in the arena. Nizahl soldiers had trapped the visitors from the outside, and the soldiers hidden in the crowd captured anyone whose eyes reflected the slightest gold or silver.

Sorn and Arin had rushed from the tunnels the moment the emerald barrier fell.

The sand had nearly submerged the top of an unconscious Diya’s head.

It took the Orban Heir and six khawaga to pull her out of the sand’s grip. I had watched helplessly as Sorn dragged Diya’s limp form into his arms and shook her shoulders, bellowing for a medic. I was significantly taller than Diya and had sunk only halfway when Arin reached me. Once he was assured I was awake and coherent, the Nizahl Heir removed his gloves and opened a single exit for the arena. The guests lined up at the door, and he pressed fingers to the forehead of everyone walking out. Those who resisted were detained.

Fifty Mufsids were seized. Any feelings I might have indulged at their capture had been extinguished by watching the Mufsids slaughter the staff at Usr Jasad and bring down the fortress.

I learned later that Arin had discovered a glamored Soraya slumbering beneath a carriage, an empty vial in her grip. “Her magic was already fading when I touched her,” Arin had said. “In moments, she was dead.”

Avoiding details, I had explained how she chased me through her memories. The magic she infused the elixir with made it possible for me to die within my own dreams, but it also made it possible for her to die in mine. If my memories were mirrors, then Soraya’s were a vengeful void.

Soraya was dead, a band of Mufsids were caught, and I was Victor. The

Orbanian Champion, the casualty of our victory, sank into a slumber from which nothing could rouse her. Sorn had arranged for a carriage to transport her to Orban and scattered messengers to every corner of the kingdoms in search of a cure.

“Diya is alive. Sorn is a bullheaded man. If there is a cure, he’ll find it.

She knew the risks the third trial presented. It could have been far worse,”

Arin said.

“How?” I stalked to the wardrobe. “She drank a poisoned elixir. Do you think Sorn trained her for that?”

I stomped on the ember of anger sparking in my chest. Anger opened the doors for everything else to come flooding through.

“You caught your Jasadis,” I murmured. “Our bargain is fulfilled.”

A muscle jumped in Arin’s jaw. “So it is. Freedom is yours.”

My laugh rang hollow to my own ears. The dream of taking over Rory’s shop and funding another keep for Raya’s wards, of buying Yuli’s old carriage for Marek and taking Sefa on adventures. Tainted now, rotted by inescapable, infernal knowledge.

My grandparents had betrayed our people in the most treacherous manner imaginable. Usr Jasad was an illusion, a beautiful story hiding the rotted roots beneath. My magic had driven the Mufsids to inadvertently pave the way for the siege. Everything I thought I knew was a lie.

Somewhere between Soraya and Dawoud, my last illusion of freedom had shattered.

“Here.” Arin held out my cloak. “I didn’t want to leave it in the carriage.”

I took the bundle and flipped it over. To my disbelief, the moth-eaten collar had been repaired. I thumbed along the new stitching. “Thank you.”

“Sylvia.” Arin’s voice was strained. “Don’t do this to yourself.”

“Do what?” There was a lump in the cloak’s right pocket. Odd; my dagger was in my boot.

Arin moved, standing close enough that I nearly dropped the cloak. He slid his index finger under my chin, drawing my reluctant gaze up.

Agitation colored Arin’s voice, drawing out his faint accent. “I want to help you. Tell me what I can say—”

I covered Arin’s mouth with my hand. He gripped my wrist in the blink of an eye. His gaze bored into mine, and when my hand wasn’t thrown off, I

let myself speak.

“Soraya tried to kill me. For years, she led the Mufsids in murdering Jasadis. Diya may never wake because of her. Her death should have left me effervescent with glee.”

My words came out in a burst, as most unpleasant truths tend to, clamoring to be heard. The heaviness burst in its wake. “But all I feel is grief, Arin, because another Jasadi is dead.” My grandparents had as heavy a hand as Hanim in who Soraya had become. In the entitlement that led the Mufsids to turn against their own people.

I had worked so hard to block myself from this pain. To turn guilt into anger, sorrow into scorn. Hanim shamed and burdened me beyond what I could bear, and when killing her didn’t stop the noise, I built barriers taller than the gates of the Citadel. “All I wanted was to exist for myself alone, but I—I don’t really exist, do I?” I whispered, and they were the truest words I had spoken.

I retracted my hand, scrubbing my wet eyes. “What did you call it? An ‘infantile mastery of my emotions’?”

Arin looked at me. Not his calculating, considering glances, or his wary stare. He just looked at me, almost helplessly.

“Anyway.” I coughed, groping in the cloak’s pocket. A stream of inane chatter flowed past the brambles of my discomfort. I had shared too much.

“Unfortunately for you, if I am not brooding, I’m complaining, and I plan to do plenty of both this evening.”

I drew from my pocket the fig necklace I purchased from the Omalian street merchant. Oh. I’d forgotten about this.

Arin’s brow arched. The motion was unfairly attractive. “You’re turning red.”

“I don’t turn red,” I argued, but this might very well have been the exception. Every drop of blood was rushing to my cheeks. I had endured a tainted elixir, poisoned sap, the talons of Al Anqa’a. They paled in comparison with the sheer effort it took to extend the fig necklace in the Nizahl Heir’s direction. “I bought this for you,” I said in a shower of syllables. “You don’t have to wear it, of course, I just thought. If you wanted. The violet color reminded me of the ravens on your coat.” I didn’t say that figs reminded me of safety and comfort. Two things that—in a painfully ironic twist of fate—I had come to associate with Arin.

Arin stared at the necklace. Two more seconds and I would pretend to faint, or maybe hurl myself on a wandering soldier’s sword. Anything to keep him from reviving me to this fervor of mortification. What was I thinking? The Commander didn’t wear jewelry, and certainly not a cheap Omalian necklace with fruit on it— A gloved hand closed around the necklace. He tied it around his neck without looking away from me, patting the spot where it settled. “As though I would turn away a gift from Suraira herself,” he mused. A shake of his head, as though the very concept thwarted rationality. “From the Alcalah’s Victor.”

The redness spread from my cheeks to my scalp. I laughed, fumbling with the cloak. “Consider me flattered. The great and mighty Commander accepting my humble offering! The true victory to celebrate.”

Arin’s fingers convulsed around the fig. “Stop.”

Did he think I could control this burgeoning panic? Stem the epiphany that I wanted more of Arin, more of his life, his time, his rare smiles? I wanted to be known by him. To lay my shame and regret in his confidence and trust he would hold them firm.

“Come now, my liege, modesty doesn’t become you.” My limbs had a separate agency from my mind, gesturing at nothing and everything. “I’m only rejoicing in the honor and high dignity of such a gesture from—”

“Enough!” Arin shouted.

I dropped the cloak. He advanced, a complex array of desperation and anger warring across his features.

“I am not immortal, lofty, mighty, or magnificent. I cannot be, because I am just a man.” Every word was bitten off, drawn from a place that simmered in neglect for too long. Ice-blue eyes, eyes that saw too much, saw through my careful pretenses, searched my own. “I am only a man.”

Later, I wouldn’t recall who reached first. Those details faded to make space for the rest.

We met in a collision that should have rocked the very foundations of the Citadel. Arin’s mouth slanted over mine, arms weaving steel bands around my waist to pull me tight against his chest. I buried my hands in his soft hair, dislodging his circlet.

A tightness inside me went slack, and a thousand coils of tension sprung to take its place. Coils of blind need, of pure demand.

Arin tasted like nothing I could name. I had made a vow against intoxication, but I would recant immediately for the chance to savor the decadence of him. I barely registered my back hitting the wardrobe. My legs wrapped around his waist, and I tore one of Rory’s gloves in my hurry to take them off. I traced Arin’s scar, the shadows under his eyes, yanked at his collar. Ravenous to touch him, to spell my name in his skin, leave him as thoroughly and irrevocably marked as he would leave me.

Arin kissed me with the same singular attention and skill he displayed in every facet of his life. He took me apart with each drag of his lips against mine. His clever hands found their way beneath my skirt, the leather press of his fingertips against my thighs hard enough to bruise.

And I wanted it. I wanted to press my fingers against the evidence of him and thrill in the throb of pain.

An echo accompanied every beat of my pounding heart, a hollow sound in the cacophony. We had done something terrible to each other. Unraveled the core of a shared monster.

Cursed knowledge, Raya would say. How could I walk away after knowing how he felt in my arms? My name whispered in his wrecked voice —how could I allow anyone else to say my name after him?

I scrambled at the lacings of Arin’s vest, cursing against his lips. I finally managed to loosen the laces and shove up his tunic. I traced the ridges of his stomach, digging my nails into his hip when he shuddered. Heat spiraled through me at the strangeness of him. This unreadable man, who never reacted to my insults or my temper, yet so responsive under my touch. I needed more of him. More of this. Needed to drive the unshakeable Commander to madness under my fingers and lips and skin. To stop picking through the debris in my head and lose myself in him.

“Do you have the faintest clue how you frustrate me?” His mouth found the pulse jumping at my throat. The solid contours of his body pressed me to the wardrobe, pinning me in place. “How you fascinate me?”

My magic thrilled when leather palms skimmed higher up my thighs, tumbling alongside the heat bolting in my veins. “Bed. Now.”

The feral glint in Arin’s smile sent anticipation shuddering through me. I would never feel fully secure with him. He would never be completely safe with me. “Is that an order, Suraira?”

I tightened my legs around his waist in response.

The world flipped as Arin wrapped an arm around my waist and turned.

I hit the bed with an oomph. Arin braced a knee against the bed. He gazed down at me with hunger and something quieter. A far more dangerous emotion.

The way he looks you at sometimes. Like you are a cliff with a fatal fall, and each day you move him closer to its edge.

I reached for Arin and drew him down to the bed. I cradled his face between my hands. I ensured I had his full attention before brushing my lips over his forehead. He caught my wrists, holding tight. He didn’t pull away.

I wanted to peel him open and memorize him from the inside out. I’d had it so wrong. Arin was not a coil without a spring. Pressure had compressed Arin into the sharpest, coldest parts of himself. The parts most likely to withstand the pressure. Under an identical force, I broke. I tore myself to pieces to avoid it, knowing I might never be able to build myself back the same way again. But I wanted to hope what we’d lost could still be saved. That despite what we’d become, we could learn to be soft again.

I kissed his left eye, then his right. The corner of his mouth. The bolt of his jaw. Arin began to shake. “Sylvia.” It was half plea, half pain.

Vaida’s voice found its way through the fog of want. He withholds his heart out of self-preservation.

“I despise you.” I brushed my fingers over his hair, relishing the weight of his body against mine. He was holding himself carefully, as though he might crush me if he lost focus. Silly man. I kicked his ankle out and huffed a laugh as he caught himself, rolling me on top.

I followed the sharp line of his nose. “I dream of killing you.”

Arin pulled my fingers away. Worry lashed me. Had I gone too far?

Eyes dark with amusement searched mine. He smoothed the furrow forming in my brow with his thumb. “My demented Suraira, we have much to discuss about seduction.”

A knock against the door startled a yelp out of me. Arin covered my mouth.

“Victor Sylvia? Are you in need of any assistance?”

I bit his glove. He withdrew with a smirk. “No, thank you!”

His lips sealed over mine in a sensual slide. I cupped the back of his neck, winding myself around him like a snake trapping its hunt. I hooked my thumb into his waistband, tracing the curve of his hip.

The sudden loss of Arin’s heat whipped me to awareness. He had turned his head to the side, jaw tight.

“I need a moment,” he forced out. “Your magic…”

“What does it feel like?”

“I can’t trust my own hands. It feels like I might reach to caress your lovely neck and snap it instead.”

I should have been afraid. I was, in truth, but I was always afraid. The emotion formed a central cornerstone of our relationship.

He was telling the truth about the musrira—or the truth as he believed it to be. A thwarted curse had rendered him so sensitive to magic that my very touch could pain him. It was as good an explanation as any other.

But I wondered.

I gently, deliberately, rested my palm against Arin’s cheek.

If you want my strongest theory, I suspect touching you while you can fully express your magic would kill me.

He snatched my hand in a tight grip. His gloved fingers flexed around my bare wrist, but he didn’t throw my hand aside.

“Arin.” I laid my cheek on his hair. “Am I hurting you?”

He dropped a feather-light kiss to my chin. “Constantly.” But it was wistful, content.

I stroked the length of his face. The rhapsodies of poets and the lovelorn melodies. I understood them now. I lacked the talent for composition, so I traced the veins at the underside of his wrist, pressed kisses along the hard line of his jaw, memorized the shape of his smile. Maybe it would translate.

“We should go,” Arin murmured against my lips. “They’ll be done with the speeches. Most of the guests are deep into the talwith.”

“Ugh, talwith.” He helped me off the bed. “What if we say the Nizahl Heir was expressing his personal congratulations to his Champion?” I waggled my brows.

Arin adjusted his circlet on his head, mumbling under his breath.

Imploring a higher power for patience, probably. I unpinned my hair, letting it bounce around my heated cheeks.

When I tried to reach for the door, Arin grabbed my wrist. “I can handle one more.” He reeled me back for a hard kiss. He tangled a hand in my freed curls, tilting my head with his thumb on my chin to keep me still. I’d seen him hold lethal weapons similarly, wielding them just so. If Arin was

as fastidious with his lovers as he was with everything else, I didn’t see how anyone could survive him. He had barely touched me, and already I felt wholly charred.

When Arin drew back, a wicked promise bloomed in his eyes.

“You are not what I was expecting,” he whispered.

“You’ve said that to me before,” I said, embarrassingly breathless.

The narrow hall connecting the spire to the wing hosting the Victor’s Ball clinked with our footsteps. Glass panels ran from the top to the bottom of each wall, and I was poignantly aware of just how high from the ground we were, with only the thin floor supporting us.

The distressing hall ended, and we maneuvered down a spiral staircase.

At the bottom, an archway in the shape of a raven unfurling its wings led into the ballroom. Two swords formed the top of the arch.

Arin pulled aside the curtain. “After you.” Steeling my nerves, I passed the archway into a ballroom of pure splendor. Lanterns hung from vaulted ceilings and lined the walls. A platform was set up in the center and draped in a silky black sheet for the royal tables. Nizahl had certainly not spared any expense. Liquor flowed liberally. The musicians played Omalian instruments in a nod to my home kingdom. Hundreds of well-dressed guests twirled throughout the ballroom, their chatter splashing over me in a wave of sound.

Diya had not been unacknowledged. The banquet table boasted a broad variety of salted meats and thick za’atar bread, sugared pomegranate seeds in carved wooden bowls, sweetened bread soaked and baked in fresh milk.

Three other tables were dedicated to ales and bottles of lavender talwith, the Orbanian specialty.

The royals sat on high-backed cushioned chairs on the platform, watching the buoyant dancers and conversing. One royal remained notably absent from the Orbanian table. Sorn lingered in the shadows, a cup dangling from his fingertips.

“I’ll be back,” I murmured. Arin frowned, but he didn’t attempt to stop me.

The Orban Heir tracked my approach with a mixture of scorn and ennui.

“Well, if it isn’t the Victor. Come to gloat?” Sorn drained his glass. I could barely hear him over all the noise.

Though I figured Sorn’s intelligence was roughly equivalent to that of an

unshelled walnut, he had cared for his Champion. It was more than what could be said for Vaida and Felix. “I’m sorry about what happened to Diya.

She didn’t deserve to lose in such a deceptive and dishonorable manner. I am confident she’ll wake.”

From nowhere, Sorn produced a bottle, upending its remains into his glass. My nose wrinkled at the cloying scent. Talwith. How much had he consumed? “You’re confident? My, the village orphan is confident Diya will wake. Quick, summon the heralds! We must share this marvelous news!”

What else had I expected? I turned on my heel, leaving Sorn to make a further spectacle of himself. I wished Diya was here, if only so I could ask her what on earth endeared the boorish Heir to the caustic, quick-witted warrior.

Traditionally, the Victor took a coveted seat at the royal platform.

Supreme Rawain lounged in his chair, his scepter tucked under his arm as he rolled a grape between his fingers. He wore Nizahl’s traditional black robes and a violet cape pinned at his collar. Sitting in a bucket of broken glass was preferable to sitting anywhere near Rawain.

Arin offered his hand. “I believe we have an agreement.”

“Have you learned your steps?”

Arin swept me in a turn, hooking me under his arm and spinning me out.

A few people around us clapped. He reeled me in with a grin that I wanted to pocket. “At the age of nine.”

“Liar.” I shook my head with mock outrage. Arin was pulling significantly more attention than I was. “Everyone and their uncle is staring at you.”

He hummed. “I don’t typically participate in these affairs. They’re surprised.”

I scanned the gathered royals. “Which one is the High Counselor?”

“He went after a servant a few moments ago,” Arin said. “Why?”

“Sharing a room with the abusive milksop is grating on my nerves.” I leaned in, sliding my hand higher up his shoulder.

Arin’s eyes narrowed. “Abusive?”

I debated whether or not to share Sefa’s story. I had withheld it this long because it wasn’t mine to tell, and knowing the real reason Sefa and Marek were wanted by the High Counselor was unlikely to have altered Arin’s

original threat against them. Sefa had shared the truth with me the day after Marek did, but she hadn’t spoken of it since then.

But if Arin could possibly rid Nizahl of the High Counselor’s influence, it was worth telling him. I relayed the tale as succinctly as possible, including Marek’s involvement in their escape. When I finished, the shoulders beneath my palms were strung tighter than a bow.

“Cease your self-flagellation,” I murmured. “You couldn’t have known.”

Disbelief twinged at how easily he had believed me. Since when did Arin take anyone’s word at face value?

“I would have offered Sefa to a tribunal of the High Counselor’s allies.

Brought her to justice,” Arin snapped. “He’s lingering near the banquet table to harass the servants.”

A cursory glance found an average-size man drifting purposely into the young serving girl’s space. He had a small mouth and a long forehead.

Utterly ordinary. Nothing to indicate he nurtured an appetite for helpless young girls.

Arin’s gaze skidded past me. He swore, missing a step and bumping against the couple behind us.

Nothing alarmed me faster than a visibly alarmed Arin.

“The guards are dragging in a man and a woman wearing a glamor.”

I whirled around. Sure enough, Sefa in the glamor of an old woman and Marek glamored to resemble a black-haired laborer struggled between two Nizahl soldiers. One of them broke off to whisper in Supreme Rawain’s ear.

I tried to rush forward, but Arin’s grip on my elbow was crushing.

“Wait.”

On the platform, Supreme Rawain heaved a sigh. “Arin?” He inclined his head toward Sefa and Marek. Arin nodded, cutting through the crowd.

He did not release his hold on my arm.

Relief flooded Sefa’s face at the sight of me. “You’re all right,” she exhaled. “Sylvia, someone raided the Victor’s carriages. The soldiers think it was us. We told them we were waiting to travel back to Omal with you, that the carriages had been ransacked before our arrival.”

“They do not believe us,” Marek growled, resistant in the soldier’s grasp.

I winced as pain bloomed where Arin still held me. Urgency underscored the Heir’s brusque voice. “Release them. Alert the soldiers to

close the gates. I want my personal guardsmen at the carriages. Every soldier on the Citadel’s grounds needs to comb for the raiders, so wake the recruits.”

Marek and Sefa were freed as the soldiers scattered to obey. I covered Arin’s hand on my elbow with my own, and he finally glanced at me.

“The Urabi,” he explained, stony. “We didn’t catch any of them leaving the trial, and I assumed they had not taken the bait. They must have snuck onto the Citadel’s grounds while the soldiers were detaining the crowd. The third trial is not the end of the Alcalah: the Victor’s Ball is.”

I didn’t have a chance to react. The High Counselor, who had forgotten the serving girl in favor of squinting at Sefa while she spoke, suddenly reared back. “Sayali,” he gasped. “It’s you.”

Sefa spat at his feet.

Three guards surged forward to hold Marek down as he lunged. “Your Highness!” the High Counselor yelled. He went ruddy, his spilled drink trickling down the front of his tunic. More guards converged, swarming them. “These are the animals who robbed me and left me for dead.”

Supreme Rawain glanced over again, almost reluctantly, and roamed over the mayhem. He stood, gesturing with his scepter. “Arrest them,” he called, as one might absently call for a glass of water. “They can await trial

in the dungeons.”

My heart stopped.

“Sylvia!” Sefa gasped as the soldiers bent her arms behind her back.

They forced Marek’s head to the ground.

I was on a frozen lake as my mother burned. Collecting frogs while the world screamed around me. I was at the Blood Summit, and Niyar was shouting, “Run!”

Arin stopped the guards from dragging Sefa and Marek from the ballroom, but only his father could order them released. Pulse pounding in my neck, I ran through the possibilities. Even if I bided my time and devised a brilliant plan to rescue them from Nizahl’s highly secure prisons, I could fail. The minute Sefa and Marek were taken from this ballroom, their fate would be out of my hands.

I couldn’t lose anyone else. I wouldn’t.

Essiya, don’t be foolish. You have everything you want, Hanim purred.

All the wealth you will ever need. Safety from Nizahl persecution. Your

precious Heir. Why lose it all for a pair of foolish Nizahlans?

But it wasn’t Hanim’s voice speaking anymore. It was mine. My own voice whispering in my head, haunting me more effectively than Hanim’s memory ever could.

And for the first time, I answered. I snatched the voice and shoved it somewhere leagues deeper than the hole I’d used for Hanim’s mortal body.

I am not yours to plague anymore, I snarled. Love was not submission.

It was not testing how far I could bend before I broke. Love was Sefa’s hand finding mine in the dark to reassure herself of my presence. Love was Marek entering the kingdom of his nightmares to help me. Raya’s squash soup on my birthday, Rory’s gruff smile when I named an herb correctly, Fairel’s giddy laugh. Dawoud turning the dagger onto himself. A table exploding in the Blood Summit. Love was Arin cradling my face in a burning room and telling me to run.

I looked at Marek and Sefa, and I made my choice.

“Your Highness.” I climbed the platform to Supreme Rawain. The steps groaned beneath me. “I am here to plead for their lives.”

Rawain tilted his head. I’d piqued his curiosity.

“Who are a pair of thieves to the Victor?” Rawain asked. Arin appeared at Rawain’s shoulder, muscles coiled with apprehension. I couldn’t look at

him.

He would never forgive me.

“They are my companions. They are innocent of this crime.”

The scepter thudded against the floor. He looked bored again. “The trial will decide their innocence. I’m afraid I cannot grant you this request, dear Sylvia.”

I thought of a wink across an ancient oak table. A serene smile as the sky crashed around us, raining ruin onto the Blood Summit. He wouldn’t be satisfied until he took everything from me.

When you choose who you are willing to fight for, you choose who you

are.

I knelt at the Supreme’s feet.

Every line in Arin’s body went taut. I gathered fistfuls of my dress, bowing my head. “Please, Your Majesty. I beg you to spare them.”

Supreme Rawain had the same thoughtful calculation I adored in his son. In the former, it sent revulsion pulsing in my gut. “Why should I?”

A bargain would have to be struck. Nothing less would ensure Sefa and

Marek’s safety.

“I offer myself in their place.”

Sefa and Marek weren’t Jasadis, but there wasn’t a doubt in my body they were mine. I would not suppress them. I would not let myself forget everything good to safeguard myself from the bad.

My magic cascaded, gathering hungrily at my cuffs.

Rawain laughed. He shared a commiserative glance with a puzzled King Murib. “I don’t want to punish my own Champion. Especially one who’s given us so much pride!” he exclaimed, drawing a few nervous chuckles.

He wouldn’t embarrass Nizahl by arresting his own Champion. Not for a few common thieves. Supreme Rawain was no different than Hanim. One thing joined them together years before my birth. One immutable, depraved need, and it was what I called upon now.

I allowed myself to look up at Arin. Like a dying woman at an oasis, I drank my fill of the beautiful Heir. Horror twisted across his features. As hard as he tried to plan every conceivable outcome, even the Nizahl Heir could not prepare for the hidden shadows of a broken mind—nor what might happen if light was turned upon them.

In the measure of monster or man, what tips the scales?

I rose to my feet. “You knew me before I was your Champion.” My voice rang loud and clear. My magic howled for release. There was no tightness. No pain.

If it was power he wanted, it was power he would get.

“We met across a sacred oak table many years ago. At a site of peace and prosperity. You knew me by another name. Look closely, Rawain.

Don’t you remember me?” I leaned over the table between me and the Supreme. “I certainly remember you.”

I gazed into pale, reptilian eyes, and I winked.

Shock swept Supreme Rawain’s expression clean. “Niphran’s daughter.”

His grip on the scepter convulsed. “It cannot be. You’re dead.”

My smile brightened. “Not anymore.”

“Guards!” Rawain bellowed. He leveled the crystalline head of his scepter at my chest as soldiers poured into the ballroom. Sefa and Marek were forgotten in the fray. “An abomination masquerading as our Champion. You will pay for what you’ve done, Sylvia of Mahair.”

I tutted. “Let me refresh your memory.” My wrists ached with the pressure on my cuffs. “My name is Essiya. Malika of Jasad.”

Arin saw them first. “Cuffs,” he said, in a dawn of wonder.

The cuffs glowed, alight with molten magic. Except, this time, it didn’t stop. This time, the glow flooded every corner.

You should beware symbols of power, Diya had said. Like the power of a true name suppressed for too long.

Essiya went beyond queen, beyond Jasad. Essiya was a symbol, and she had taken a life of her own. Who we are is where we come from. Who we were.

My silver cuffs clattered to the floor. Iridescent cracks raced across my body, the glowing streaks breaking open over my skin. I saw my reflection in Queen Hanan’s chalice just as silver and gold rolled over my eyes.

“Retreat!” Arin roared. He shoved his father away from me and twisted, throwing his arm over his head.

My magic ruptured in a tidal wave of gold and silver. Screams filled the ballroom as the ceiling exploded. My magic whipped the raining glass in every direction. The guests stampeded through the archway, knocking the Nizahl crest into the wall. A kitmer took shape in the center of the ballroom.

The feline rose from its haunches, gold feathered head glimmering. Golden wings fanned out, crashing into the walls penning it in. Its roar shook the ground as the roof caved around its head.

Lanterns smashed between me and the rest of the royals, the flames catching on the spilled tablecloths. Dust floated from the falling stones, swirling lazily above the chaos.

I stumbled past the kitmer’s paws to where Sefa and Marek hid behind a shaking pillar. The guards converged around the royals, scuttling them from the ballroom rapidly collapsing around us.

“Run!” I shouted. Stones crashed into the tables. “I cannot control it!”

Sylvia— Sefa mouthed. She squinted, struggling against the wind’s tide.

Dust sprayed into her hair, seconds before a boulder tumbled from the wall to our right. She reached for me.

I snapped my fingers. Sefa and Marek disappeared, and the boulder smashed into her vacated spot.

The kitmer’s wings broke against the Citadel’s walls, and I laughed, spinning in the destruction.

This was freedom. I finally understood why Rawain tried so hard to wipe magic from the lands. Imagine never knowing this kind of euphoria.

Never feeling magic streaming through you, whistling through the air at your command. A purity of power, purging away the hurt and mischief of mortality.

I understood why my grandparents would kill for this.

Something sharp lodged into my shoulder. Then another and another.

Arrows flew through the storming kitmer and into me, dozens of them, covering my body in pinpricks of pain. The wind shrieked, and the platform flattened under the collapsing ceiling.

Normal arrows could not fly in these conditions.

I stumbled into a table and yanked an arrow out from my thigh. The tip dissolved into sepia specks.

Sim siya. A Jasadi paralyzing agent. I seized, crumpling onto the spilled pomegranate rubies. Fog descended over my mind.

A circle formed around me. Hands linked over my body, and voices chanted in melodic Resar. Though my vision swam, I could distinguish one face above the rest.

“I know you,” I slurred. The man at the Meridian Pass. Efra.

The Urabi had found their moment to strike.

The woman next to the grim Efra smiled. “This will only hurt for a moment, Mawlati.”

The chanting accelerated as the wing of the Citadel imploded. The kitmer soared above the destruction, wings painting the night sky in the blazing colors of Jasad. A renewal. A deadly vow.

My hand had fallen over my heart. I counted the slowing beats as the Urabi’s chants grew louder and the world lost its colors.

One, two. I was alive. Three, four. I would never be safe again.

Somewhere, Arin would be reeling at my betrayal. His eyes would go icy and unforgiving, and a scar to match the one on his jaw would gouge into his soul. Perhaps he’d hunt me as he hunted Soraya.

Five, six. “I choose her,” he’d said.

In a different life, I thought, I would have chosen you, too.

The hands separated, and we disappeared.

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