The Jasad Crown (The Scorched Throne, #2)

by Sara Hashem

“I won’t need my magic to put you on your back.”

I kissed the edge of the sword, feather-light, as gold and silver gleamed in my eyes. The second most dangerous thing I had ever kissed.

Not a single drop of blood was shed, because the truth was the mightiest force between us: the next time we aimed to hurt the other, it would be real.

In a sinuous motion, Arin knelt.

“I swear my loyalty to Jasad’s Malika.” I couldn’t breathe. “Everything I have is hers to command. What she wills, I will create. What she hates, I will destroy. I am the weapon of the Malika, and it is her alone I pledge myself to.”

But he kept my secret, so I kept his.

“Hello,” I said, standing entirely too close. He tilted his chin and studied me for a fraction of a second, as though waiting for bad news. When I continued to just smile like a drunken fool, his face softened. “Hello.”

We. I beamed. Not even Marek’s giant eye roll could ruin the effect that one word had on me.

“I forget you are a mere twenty and one. And you”—he waved at Arin—“twenty and six. The fate of our future rests on the shoulders of children.” Lateef sighed. “Broken and brave children.”

“Friendly? Awaleen below, I would give my left leg for friendly. I would even accept affectionate. Essiya, it is impossible to watch you two and not recognize how deeply in love you are.”

Arin’s lips twisted. “You give me too much credit.” “I give you exactly what you deserve,” I pointed out. “If you’d like me to list your flaws, I am happy to oblige. We can start off with your sense of fashion. Do you own coats without ravens? You could choose to have a new coat specially tailored for you every day for the rest of your life, and it would hardly scrape the surface of your ridiculous wealth. Does every single one need ravens?” Arin leaned in, bracing himself on the table and pinning me between the borders of his arms. “I didn’t realize you paid such attention to my wardrobe.” Arin’s gaze traveled over me with aching slowness, trailing heat everywhere it landed. “What else is on your list?”

“I do not want to disappoint you.” I may as well have slapped him across the face. Arin withdrew, silver lashes ringing thunderous blue eyes. “I beg your pardon?”

“Any advantage of experience I might have evaporates the minute you touch me, Suraira.” His voice was firm. “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.”

“In the evening, I would come home to you.”

Carving her out, pretending that leaving her side did not shatter pieces of him as he walked, was not a viable option. If she weakened him, so be it. Arin would be twice as strong.

I will find you again, Suraira.

The fate of traitors lies in the hands of the betrayed.” “Hand,” Arin said. “What?” “He only has one hand. I took the other.”

He closed his eyes and thought of a shy smile curving against his shoulder. He filled his ears with the sound of her laugh, the way it burst uncontrolled from her chest and smothered itself behind her palm. In the evening, I would come home to you. Arin sat among his ghosts and dreamed of his future.

“I will never sit on the Jasad throne,” Arin said. “The Jasad crown will belong to my wife, and my wife alone.”

When you remember what you lost, come back for me.

“I called your name several times.” Which name?

The answer is very simple: I decided that even if I had to lie to the entire world, I would not lie to myself. If the only place I could be true was in my heart, then I would guard that truth fiercely.”

What is so special about your soul that it must always remain perfectly pristine? Souls are made to be marked. To fracture and break. We spend lifetimes repairing them, and by the time you go to your grave, your soul should look nothing like what you started with.”

“Your fight is our fight,” Sefa said. “We will not leave you.”

Together, the lines connected to form the sigil of Vaida’s ring.

He had died here, and with him he would take half of Maia’s heart. He would take her bouncing feet, her ever-present smile. The dead rarely left this world empty-handed.

He was gone in less than a minute.

And I remembered.

“Ambiguity is not morbid. Ambiguity is a question, and our existence is the answer,” we said. “Yes, Jasad means body. Yes, it also means corpse. What this kingdom becomes—whether it breathes or suffocates, lives or dies—is a question only it can answer.”

Breathe, little date. Breathe, and I will build a world for you.

We are a green-eyed girl in a modest town, the pride of our family’s life. We—

“Have you returned?” The echo of a conversation tucked away in a tunnel, hidden beneath the earth. A single bolt of time. An eternity. Chin trembling, she said, “I never left.” “Yes, you did.” And he would never allow it to happen again. Arin kissed her.

The first time Arin kissed me, I had lost myself. I had wanted nothing more than to abandon my mind, to cast aside my worries and fears and find peace against him. The last time he kissed me, I found myself.

I felt… I felt.

“Wake up. Wake up so you can laugh with me.”

“What life is left? I can’t mourn him longer than I loved him. I am not strong enough for this.” “Nobody is,” Jeru said. “You do it anyway.”

“I love you, Sefa.” I wanted to cry, but I didn’t quite remember how. “I love you, Sayali. I love you, whoever you will be next. You don’t deserve this, but you will survive it.”

“Why should I take orders from someone who nearly killed himself kissing me? You can barely stand, Arin.” “I do not need to stand, Essiya,” Arin snarled. “Do you want me on my knees again? Do you want me to beg?”

Most importantly, Lateef had never forgotten seeing the Supreme fight his way out and tear through every soldier who stood between him and the bridge.

She had never told Lateef what she said to Arin that day in Janub Aya, and Lateef had never asked.

The kitmers sailed parallel to the steps of Usr Jasad, the cheers of a thousand spectators chasing them through the air. The first of Essiya’s festivals, and the first time Sefa’s smile did not carry the ghost of grief behind it.

Why hadn’t they told him that love was not a soft and gentle wind, but a storm determined to rip you apart and build its home in the wreckage? That it brought with it uninvited guests, new fears and worries and paranoias beyond the reach of any reason. How in those early days, before he knew what was happening, he would lose his breath at the thought of a future without her. A future where the guests would be gone, but so would his new home. The home she had carved inside him, where the air smelled like her hair and the bells sounded like her laugh. A place where he could rest until he was old and weary, where he could only sleep with his hand settled over her heart, because even so many years later, that steady pulse was the only pillar Arin would ever lean on.

Maybe nobody warned him because they hoped they would never have to. Maybe they knew Arin’s love, like everything else about him, was made to frighten. Maybe they understood that if it found him and he lost it, what would be left of Arin would not be worth salvaging. You don’t warn an injured horse before you swing the axe. Maybe that was why nobody warned Arin what he might face if love ever found him.

It should have been almost impossible for him to fall in love with a woman who maddened him at every turn.

It had taken Arin too long to recognize that the best parts of his life existed in the almost. They existed here—beyond the reach of certainty, on the outskirts of doubt, swaying over the cliff of catastrophe.

His heart had begun to thump erratically, beating stronger than it had in a decade.