The Jasad Crown (The Scorched Throne, #2)

by Sara Hashem

I wished I could look away, but in a room of beautiful things, Arin of Nizahl outshined them all.

The day I stop doubting, the moment I submit myself to convenience over clarity, I pray my crown rusts in my hands.”

Life does not allow you opportunities to travel down every path, to see the outcome of every choice. You can spend your entire existence frozen in one spot, squinting into the future, or you can decide to move. Pick a path and never look back.”

This close, Arin could see every fleck of brown in her velvet dark eyes, read every emotion like it was written in a language he was born to speak.

Malika of Jasad or not, she still had the temperament of a deranged goose.

A thrill tumbled through Arin. He had forgotten this feeling, this reckless abandon only she engendered—as though the rest of the world was nothing more than noise at the back of his head and true reality began and ended in the space she occupied.

All of me is written in your name, he wanted to say.

They do not get to take her from me.

“I wish I had a good reason for saving you. I wish it was logical or rational, informed by any semblance of reason. I wish more than anything my first thought when I emerged from the water was not of you, that I hadn’t been prepared to tear through every grain of sand and burn every tree in this damned place until I found you.”

“If your magic takes you, I will drag you back. It cannot have you.”

“Should I put a knife in your hand to calm you down?” he murmured, the amused rumble reverberating in the broad chest beneath my palms. I scowled. “For someone so fond of insulting my sense of humor, you certainly seem to have developed a terrible one of your own.”

If I learned how it felt to touch the untouchable Heir, how could I return to a world where this knowledge would only serve to haunt me?

I could go anywhere I wanted, but my destination would always be him.

I can’t promise to always stay, I said to his skin. But I can promise to never stop trying to come back.

The foreshadowing 😭

“Were you aware that he loves you?” Sefa asked, with the airiness of one inquiring after the color of the sky. “Quite irreparably, it seems.”

‘If she dies for them, they will die with her,’

I thrive in chaos; Arin suffocates in it.”

“Not if you help him breathe,” Sefa said. “Not if you are his air in the chaos.”

I recognize that I am afraid because I still have something to lose, and if I’m afraid, then it hasn’t been lost yet.

“Thank you for making the present worth fearing the future.”

“Yes,” Arin said. “I choose her.”

“You should not spend your tears on me.” “They are yours anyway, you idiot,” I sobbed.

“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.”

“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.”

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

“Killing the moon is easier than killing Essiya of Jasad.”