The Jasad Heir (The Scorched Throne #1)

by Sara Hashem

“Children are not meant to bear the woes of this life, Sylvia. It breaks them. They will spend their adult lives doing everything in their power to never feel the weight of the world again.”

I had a complicated relationship with luck, but after the last few days, it owed me.

She had the temperament of a deranged goose. Every interaction he’d shared with her had thoroughly convinced him he was not dealing with a stable woman.

Loyalty meant nothing when it was for the dead.

“You think your mind is a blank slate, where you can build your own networks of information from scratch, through pure logic and reason. You ignore that each child enters a completely unique world, founded on different truths. We build our reality on the foundation our world sets for us. You entered a world where magic is corrosive and Jasadis are inherently evil. I entered one where turning a shoe into a dove made my mother laugh. Have you considered, in that infinite mind of yours, that the truly brilliant people are the ones who understand the realities we build were already built for us?”

How do you predict the patterns of a river that never floods, never ebbs or flows?

“No one is certain what occurs in the crossing. Suraira crafts her victims an image of beauty, decadence, freedom from their woes and burdens. She lures them into willingly leaping off the bridge and into the abyss. Every kingdom has outlandish stories about crossing Sirauk; Suraira is merely one of Nizahl’s. How did you hear the name?”

This was far worse than I could have imagined. I had not earned this. Loyalty could be broken. These destructive fools loved me.

He folded back my collar.

“I kept wondering what you could have possibly meant. You meant this, didn’t you? The Nizahl Heir is polite, brilliant, handsome. He is the opposite of a brute, and a thousand times more dangerous for it, because you cannot know from which direction he will strike.”

We mourn what history mocks.

“You are a creature of pure spite. You would not react out of fear, but out of fury. I think daily of chaining you to a wall and seeing which you would attack first—me, or the wall.” His voice was low, threaded with… curiosity? No, it couldn’t be that. Endeavors to unravel my identity nonewithstanding, Arin seemed to find me as noteworthy as a blunt axe.

“You gave me your name without asking anything in return.”

He kept tossing up the dagger. I picked up the tools, trying to remember how he liked to sort them. Did the three-pronged lance go after the spear or hammer?

Marek, however, had the instincts of a goat flea. He raised a blond brow in our direction and drawled, “Lovers’ spat?”

“Pointless questions are best left to the poets,”

This was the closest I’d been to a man I wasn’t trying to stab. The closest I had been to anyone not actively trying to kill me, actually. How depressing.

“There is much you don’t know about me, but understand this: I will fight for my freedom until my last breath. You took it away, and you cannot fault how ardently I choose to take it back. Until you have felt hunted, less than human, rejected from the moment you were born for something you did not ask for and cannot control—until then, do not speak to me of martyrs and mercenaries.”

“Blood cannot lead a kingdom,” Rory said. His voice gentled. “Sacrifice can. A true ruler is one who puts their people before themselves. No matter the cost.” “That isn’t me. It is not in my nature—” “Of course it isn’t. Altruism is no one’s nature. It wouldn’t be half as remarkable otherwise.”

“Are you aware you have five freckles under your jaw?”

Arin’s hands knit together over his stomach as he sat back. “I am open to any suggestions on how I can improve my clumsy affections—”

It took Arin a second too long to respond. He seemed to be noticing my dress for the first time. His gaze trailed over me, a leisurely perusal that made my mouth dry. Arin’s attention was usually as efficient as him—he didn’t linger, and he certainly never perused. “Nizahl’s colors suit you.”

I wanted to cut him open and compare our bones to understand why his gave him grace and mine gave me back pain.

“Men don’t see women, dear Daleel. They see power. Which one of us has more of it, and how easily they can drain it out of her.”

“My dear, if Arin of Nizahl loves you, you can be sure the Alcalah is the least of your worries. Arin is not the kind of man who puts his heart before his head. His enemies are many, and he conceives of every way they can attack him. I’m sure you have seen how still he holds himself, how strong a hand he wields over his temperament. Even if he were capable of caring for someone else, I cannot imagine he would ever be so selfish as to let himself fall in love. He knows his own nature and all the dark places love could steer him.”

“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.”

At this, Arin broke out into a grin. My heart, which had done an excellent job of beating for my nearly twenty-one years of life, stuttered at the sight. The wonders of tonight would never cease.

Broad-shouldered and polished, Arin observed the others with feigned boredom. A predator playing at docility, probably contemplating the creative ways someone could try to kill him. He was the most achingly beautiful threat I’d ever seen.

Arin glanced up and froze. A myriad of emotions flashed over his features, too many and too complicated to name. He straightened, gaze roaming over my gown. “Sefa did wonderful work on your dress.” He sounded dazed. I had watched him bleed half to death without sounding anything but composed. “Although you are certainly not endearing yourself to Vaida.”

“It’s customary for the hostess to outshine her guests.” Arin’s eyes swirled with humor and something quieter, more intimate. Just f...

I barely heard him. The most bizarre sensation trembled through me. A violence I didn’t recognize. Violence… that wasn’t the right word. Against my own volition, I touched the loose hair at his temple. Arin held himself still as a statue while I swept the strand behind his ear. My fingers lingered against the strong line of his jaw. I had the most irrational wish for m...

What a reversal of fortunes, that I should seek a tou...

Arin of Nizahl was a twenty-six-year-old man, filled with the ennui of one who thought most everyone in the room beneath him, struggling not to exchange a laugh with the girl on his arm. Perhaps Arin was his own ghost, too.

looked at Arin in a panic. I hadn’t prepared for the possibility of sitting apart. I lacked his agility of speech and his even-keeled constitution. His gloved hand squeezed mine, once, before he went to the opposite side of the table.

But I wanted you to know, because… the way he looks at you sometimes. Like you are a cliff with a fatal fall, and each day you move him closer to its edge.”

Most people feared what they were capable of doing, but I… I was starting to fear what I was capable of ignoring.

“But if you want my strongest theory, I suspect touching you while you can fully express your magic would kill me.”

Arin studied me. My smirk faded. I had worn a thousand faces in my twenty years. Fooled friends and enemies with my false names and empty smiles. But sometimes, like now, Arin gazed at me a certain way, and I thought he saw it. My true face, hidden beneath the debris. I wondered what it looked like. I wondered why in a world ripe with monsters and magic, only he could see me so clearly.

Power is a choice, Sylvia. When you choose who you are willing to fight for, you choose who you are.”

“All your choices require sacrifice. The question is, what are you willing to lose?”

“I am still waiting,” Arin said. “Waiting?” I had learned to defend myself against every version of Arin. Devised strategies to safeguard against his ever-twisting mind and sharp tongue. But no one taught me how to protect myself from the Nizahl Heir when he looked at me like this—gentle, human, with his steadfast gaze pinning my own. Grounding me. “To be disappointed.”

Gloved hands framed my face, drawing me back. Arin’s ironclad composure faltered as he searched my tearstained face. There was a wildness to him I had never seen before. “Look at me, Suraira.” A fierce defiance radiated from the Nizahl Heir. “You don’t have to do this. Run. Take a horse and get as far away as you can.” I blinked. “Wh-what?” “I won’t come after you. I have hidden holdings in every kingdom. Throughout Essam Woods. They’re yours. Take them. Be free.” Arin’s grip was tight enough to hurt, belying his words.

Arin looked at me until it started to hurt. A covered thumb slid across my cheekbone. “What appeal can reason have in the face of your tears?”

“You maddening Jasadi girl, I cherish your tongue too much to see it cut out of your head.

I had singlehandedly sent the least reactive man in the kingdoms into a panic.

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

“I am glad to hear you speak my name outside of imminent danger,” Arin said softly, and the battle was lost. Idiot! Hanim howled. How many ways can you betray us, Essiya? It didn’t feel like betrayal. It felt like wandering through the woods for an endless night and finally stumbling into the dawn. It was the feeling I had at the sight of Mahair after hours of catching frogs by the moonlight. The rush of Hirun around me. Fairel’s giggle and the click of Rory’s cane. Anchors, real and solid, pinning me to earth. I smiled shakily. “I will make frequent use of it, then.” After a lifetime of running, he was my homecoming.

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.

“If anybody was going to bring a mountain to its knees, it would be you, amari. Arin of Nizahl falls in love with the Jasad Heir. Ha! And he thought my deceit was bad. No wonder he has shuttered his heart so tightly: the damned thing keeps leading him astray.”