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I will feed you your death in doses and enjoy watching it rot you from the inside.
Power hoarded where it doesn’t belong is power borrowed, and I intend to collect on the debt.”
He would give anything to reach inside his chest and tear out the rot of her. To close his eyes without seeing her face.
If Cinnamon wanted to glare a hole through my skull, I certainly wouldn’t stop him, but he’d have to try much harder to provoke a reaction.
I thrived under loathing, whether it was my own or someone else’s. It slipped over my shoulders like a custom coat, whereas devotion suited me like shoes to a snake.
I looked at Efra for a long moment. “Consider your next words to me carefully, Cinnamon. I do not take kindly to being manipulated to suit someone’s ends, regardless of how noble those ends might be.”
“In the next life, be more wary of us traitorous whores. Especially, sweet Cinnamon, when we’re the ones wearing the crown.”
“Have I gone mad?” Arin asked. She smiled. “The world will fall to ruins long before your mind does.”
If Arin was stone, then she was a river. Always moving, always flowing, no matter how fast the tide or how frequently she broke against its shores.
Namsa’s laugh floated, disembodied, over the dark mountains. “Arin of Nizahl created his own worst enemy.”
I took solace in my putrid smell. In this coffin of a room, they were probably choking on it.
A crown can sit on an empty head just as easily as any other, girl.”
“Be Essiya with your Jasadis, be powerful and fearless for them. Tonight you are Sylvia, and you are home, and you are allowed to be afraid.”
All of me is written in your name, he wanted to say.
They do not get to take her from me.
She was a flame sparking on the kindling of his doubt and breathing small suspicions into an incoherent blaze.
“As the mighty immortal man wishes,” I muttered.
“You torment of my soul,” Arin growled. “I am afraid I will win.”
“Do not toy with me. This—this is the last piece of my heart I have left, do you understand? I don’t know how to protect it once it is outside my body. If I trust you and then you cast it into the dirt, it will be the death of both of us. What is left of me will kill what is left of you.”
“Spell it out for me.” I stiffened at the coiled wrath in his eyes. “Say it.” “If my magic overtakes my mind, you are the only one who will be able to stop me.”
“There is no if you survive. There is no future where it is my hand that ends your life.”
“If your magic takes you, I will drag you back. It cannot have you.”
He was the single most beautiful thing I had ever laid hands upon, and I was not good at treating the beautiful things in my life gently.
The fig necklace sat beneath the hollow of his throat, framed by collarbones I could crack my skull against.
His scars were a reminder of a lesson learned; mine were a haunting, a tapestry of failure.
I knew my days of running were coming to a close. I could go anywhere I wanted, but my destination would always be him. He had made himself the threshold to a world where it might finally be safe to land. To stay.
But a chance was mercy, and mercy was not for those with blood on their hands. For us, there were only choices.
When the dust settled, I would always be the one left standing. Survival was not the story of my success. It was my eternal punishment.
If Efra opened his mouth one more time, I would pull his lower lip over his head and kick him through the nearest window.
No mines. The scepter.
“What a pair we are. The magic-mad Malika and the magic-stripped Heir.” “You are not mad.”
“I see.” My mouth went dry as he twisted one of my curls around his finger, winding it into a spiral. “I can shave my head, if you would like.”
“Any advantage of experience I might have evaporates the minute you touch me, Suraira.”
“Since it seems I have been less than clear: the advantage is yours. You unravel me utterly.”
“Suraira, I cannot fathom how to make you believe me. Anywhere you are is my favorite place.”
“Murder is only treason if left unfinished,” Arin said. He tucked his hands into his pockets and turned to the door. “When I am done, they will call it succession.”
The fate of traitors lies in the hands of the betrayed.” “Hand,” Arin said. “What?” “He only has one hand. I took the other.”
“I will never sit on the Jasad throne,” Arin said. “The Jasad crown will belong to my wife, and my wife alone.”
“Welcome home, Suraira.”
