The Jasad Crown (The Scorched Throne, #2)

by Sara Hashem

How unbearably pathetic that the person whose advice I trusted most, whose counsel I wanted so badly in that moment, was the same one preparing to kill me. A tear slid from the corner of my unblinking eye. I let it roll to my chin before catching it with my thumb. Raising my hand to blot out the moon, I studied the droplet. The first and final tear I planned to shed for Arin of Nizahl.

There was nothing I loved more in this life than being proven right.

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.”

“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.”

“There is no if you survive. There is no future where it is my hand that ends your life.” This close, I could make out the austere lines of anguish twining around his rage. “If your magic takes you, I will drag you back. It cannot have you.”

“Thrones fall. Magic fades.” Arin’s level voice cut through the din. “I will swear my loyalty, but not to Jasad’s throne, nor to its magic.” A black gloved hand pressed against the tip of the sword, lowering it to aim at his heart. “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.”

We build our reality on the foundation our world sets for us. You are not to blame for being planted in poisonous soil, Arin. Our choices come when we realize what we have grown into; when we look at the world around us and recognize our role in it. Only then, when you decide whether you will grow roots or tear yourself free, can you be truly held to account.”

His father’s gaze remained steady as Arin approached. “How strange is love,” Rawain mused. “You betray me, you manipulate my council into stealing my throne, and yet my anger is rivaled by my pride. Within a year, you accomplished what your mother and I failed to do in our entire lifetimes. The Nizahl crown and the Jasad Malika—yours. Both thrones under your name.”

The dead rarely left this world empty-handed.