Page 42 of The Jasad Heir
The wind carried his smooth voice through the dark. “You must have an appetite for failure.”
Too close. He was too close. I pumped my arms. My bun unraveled, curtaining my vision in curls. I just needed to reach the river. It couldn’t be far.
A streak of mud caught my boot, shooting me forward. I careened right to the edge of a steep, pitch-black riverbank. I gasped, throwing my weight away from the crumbling cliff and crashing to the ground. Idiot! I had forgotten the small cliffs curving around the western bank of Hirun, eating into Essam with uneven, jagged lines.
My fingers skimmed against the bristly surface of a tree trunk. I scrambled upright, maintaining my hold on the tree. The dull roar of Hirun greeted my ears like the fondest song.
He couldn’t bring his horse. It was too slick to risk riding. He would almost certainly approach on foot. Unfortunately for him, I did not intend to wait around.
I put my dagger between my teeth and pulled off my boots. They tumbled over the edge, crashing on the boulders below. I watched them disappear with a heavy heart. The last thing I brought with me from Mahair—gone.
You will have plenty of opportunity to be sentimental from the grave. Climb!Hanim snapped.
A thin calfskin slipper covered the bottom of my foot and curled over my toes. I was grateful for its protection as I found a foothold. With an eye to the stones at the bottom of the riverbank, I started to climb.
The sole skill I had developed as the Jasad Heir came from my affinity for climbing. Afternoons sneaking from Usr Jasad to the courtyard outside and scaling our towering date and fig trees. I would climb to the very top and wave at Bakir Tower, imagining Niphran could see me from her tiny window. That Niphran wouldwantto see me.
With a groan, I heaved myself onto the first branch thick enough to support my weight. I threw my leg over it and buried my face in the tree, heedless of the striations and hardened sap digging into my cheek. Let the dark swallow me from his sight. Let him forget to look up. Better yet, let him slide in the mud and right over the riverbank.
Below, unhurried footsteps crossed the spot where the mud stole my footing. I caged my breath.
“This is your last opportunity to minimize the damage you have done tonight,” Arin said. His voice came closer, and I struggled not to move my head. Had he spotted me up here?
“Show yourself, suraira.”
Surairaagain. I made a note to investigate the meaning of the Nizahlan word if I lived to see a new day. I was fluent in every kingdom’s original language, but certain dialectal words evaded me.
A long pause. A spider skittered over my elbow and onto my wrist. I didn’t dare breathe.
The soft neigh of his horse perplexed me. Had he brought it out here? The terrain could barely support a human’s weight.
“I was mistaken in my original assessment of you. A Jasadi capable of hiding her magic from an entire village is restrained. Clever. But you insist on running in the dark, chasing monsters you are not prepared to face.” His tone hardened, shedding its false amiability. Each word fell like the swing of an axe. “You want to be hunted?” A branch snapped somewhere below me. “Then I will gladly grant your wish.”
A strangled cry tore through my teeth as searing pain cleaved my calf. “Son of a—” My hand flew to my leg, and there, inches above my ankle, was a knife. Hestabbedme?
The knife throbbed with the blood flowing from my wound. Tossing aside my failed attempt to stay hidden, I pulled one arm from around the tree and turned to scour the ground for the Heir. How had he thrown a dagger with such force and accuracy that it found my leg?
My stomach turned to stone. With the reins in one hand and a hold on the lowest branch of the tree behind him, Arin stood on his horse’s saddle. The cliff curved mere feet from its hooves. If it spooked, it could hurl its rider straight over the edge.
The moonlight weaved through his silver hair, loosened from its meticulous tie. Without his coat, freed from his perpetual mask of politeness, Arin of Nizahl was every inch a monster.
And he was staring directly at me.
Death had always scared me more than its fair share. I had watched it steal everyone I loved. I had guided its hand in taking the lives of others. But one thing scared me more than death ever could: capture. Losing myself in the will of another, feeling my purpose crushed and re-molded to fit someone else’s plans. Hanim had torn the Heir of Jasad to parts. She needed a weapon, so she assembled me into one. The night before I escaped, I had pressed a dagger against the throbbing vein at my neck. Death was a door, I told myself. An escape. One slice, and I would be free.
I killed Hanim that same night.
Arin was too strong for me to kill. What good was his offer of my freedom if it was a lie, a honey-soaked trap for the witless bear?
I wouldn’t be trapped again. I had cut and bled and fought for my freedom. I would rip his head from his shoulders with my teeth before I took his shackles.
Gripping the hilt of the dagger, I yanked it out of my leg, burying my cry in my shoulder. A fool’s move, to be sure. Depending on how deep the knife had wedged itself, removing it without a readily available tourniquet would endanger the entire limb.
Another knife slammed inches from my hand. Arin had ridden closer, looping the end of a rope around the base of my tree. “It is not mere caution stilling your magic, is it?”
I stifled my groan. Baira’s blessed beauty, was his goal to evoke my magic by riddling me with knives? I didn’t understand how it healed me last time, and I doubted it would bother to save me twice.
My leg cramped in protest as I hauled myself to the next branch. Blood dripped down the bark like grotesque sap. The wound bled freely, slicking the back of my heel. All I wanted to do was press my forehead to the tree and catch my breath again, but I didn’t have time. I anchored one arm around a thick fork of branches. With the other, I threw the bloody knife straight at the Heir.
