The Jasad Heir (The Scorched Throne #1)

by Sara Hashem

“The way most men love is so boring. It is frequent and fickle and altogether unextraordinary. Arin would love to obsession. To madness. But do you want to know the real reason he would never allow himself to love another?” Vaida stepped close, her floral scent tickling my nose. “Arin is consumed by what he loves. If asked, he would get on his knees and let it kill him. He withholds his heart out of self-preservation.”

He was the most achingly beautiful threat I’d ever seen.

“You maddening Jasadi girl, I cherish your tongue too much to see it cut out of your head. Never speak those words to me or anyone else again. Do you understand?”

“No, I don’t wish I was alone with my maps and my talwith. I am where I want to be.”

I fluttered my hand, infusing my voice with a confidence I didn’t feel. “Save me a dance at the Victor’s Ball, Your Highness.” His smile was small and fleeting. “I would have to learn first.” I gasped, clutching my heart. “Have I stumbled across a fault? In the magnificent Commander, the lofty Nizahl Heir? Impossible. I cannot believe it.” Arin sighed. “That’s quite enough.”

I wanted to stay there. I wanted to tell him that I had not easily embraced anyone since Soraya bid me farewell the morning of the Blood Summit. That with him, every aversion was a craving. That even though one day I would kneel before Jasad’s judges in the afterlife to account for it, I would not renounce a single moment of loving the Nizahl Heir.

“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.”

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