Page 113 of The Jasad Crown
“Not if I can help it,” I said. “Not if everything goes according to plan.” I did not need to mention how little faith I had in this plan.
“And if it doesn’t, you want me to kill you. Is that right?”
I drew myself up tall. “It would be your duty. It is your oath to protect against the abuses of magic, and if I go mad—”
“You will not go mad.”
“Butif—”
In a flash, his hand clapped over my mouth. Arin snarled like it was pure willpower preventing him from hurling me into the lake until I stopped speaking. “There is noifyou 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.”
I caged my breath. Vaida’s voice found me in the meadow, her prophecy a soundless whisper in the dark.
Arin is consumed by what he loves. If asked, he would get on his knees and let it kill him.
A rush of guilt tightened my fingers around Arin’s sleeve. My entire life had been measured by the places I fled. I had never settled long enough to wonder about the people I left behind; the lives I destroyed.
I’m so sorry, I wanted to whisper.I am so sorry I did this to you. I never meant to drag you into my wreckage. I never expected you to stay.
I gently withdrew Arin’s hand from my mouth, my gaze steady. “Then have me yourself.”
Whatever concept of time marched outside the Mirayah, it failed to reach us here, in this meadow where Arin traced the lines of my face with his fingertips, traveling over each detail as he might pore over the valleys and canyons of his most precious map.
My mouth went dry as Arin lowered me onto his coat, his body carefully leveraged over mine. He kissed me until I scarcely remembered my name—any of them. His mouth revisited the places his fingers had traveled, pressing against the hollow of my throat, the pulse at my neck, the hasanas under my chin. Heat carved through me like a merciless blade, leaving me shaky with a nameless, devouring need.
I grabbed the edge of my tunic and tried to shove it over my head, but the useless pile of buttons caught on a curl halfway through. Before I could tear it loose, Arin laughed, brushing my hands away to untangle the trapped strand with blood-boiling patience. When my turn came, I sat up and undid each strap of his vest with a restraint my quaking body did not share, working it down his arms and onto my discarded tunic.
I fought through the buttons of Arin’s black shirt, my stomach winding itself into tighter and tighter knots. A heavy hand settled on the back of my neck, coaxing my head up.
“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.”
A grin broke out on Arin’s face, which did very little to soothe my nerves. I braced myself on his thighs, unconsciously flexing myfingers around the same muscles I’d watched kick a soldier halfway across the shore.
He was the single most beautiful thing I had ever laid hands upon, and I was not good at treating the beautiful things in my life gently.
When I finished unbuttoning his shirt, rising to my knees to draw it off the broad cliffs of his shoulders, I had to redirect my gaze from his bare upper half to the fire to give myself a chance to breathe. No wonder this man wore his vests and his coats and his gloves. Without those layers, the world might fall to distraction any time Arin entered the premises.
I shied away from meeting Arin’s gaze. He was allowing me a rare opportunity to see his plain thoughts, to peer inside the mind he fought so hard to protect. Baring himself in more ways than one, and I—
I lowered my hands to my lap, unable to do anything other than stare dumbly at the build of a man who had most assuredly never eaten a sesame candy in his entire life. The fig necklace sat beneath the hollow of his throat, framed by collarbones I could crack my skull against.
I beat back the sudden urge to cackle as I dropped my back to the grass, digging my knuckles into my eyes. Arin leaned over me, bracing his arms on either side of my head as his lips ghosted over the furrowed lines at my forehead. His low laugh warmed my skin, and I didn’t resist when he tugged my hands away from my face. He’d laughed more in the last day than I had heard him laugh the entire time we’d known each other. “I believe this is the longest you have ever stayed quiet. I find it rather disturbing.”
Before I could break my accidental vow of silence with a surly retort, the world spun. Arin flipped our positions, my knees hitting the ground on either side of his hips and straddling his waist. His hands traveled over my legs, curving around the backs of my knees.
I stared down at Arin, and I tried not to feel like a disciple of carnage pinning their sacrifice to the altar.
“You can touch me, Suraira.”
I unknotted my fingers from their nervous tangle.Don’t shake, I warned my hands.Hold steady.If Arin thought for half of a second that I was afraid of him, his Awaleen-forsaken vest would be back on before I could blink. He wouldn’t believe me if I tried to explain that my fear was for him. For what the sheer depths of my hunger might wreak upon him. 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?
Perhaps temptation was the Mirayah’s great trick. If threats would not compel me to stay, the promise of a lifetime of this very well might.
I gingerly mapped the scars curving along his side from the encounter with the Ruby Hound. Convinced Arin would interfere and get himself killed, I’d used my magic to trap him while I disposed of the Urabi’s beast. The injuries from Galim’s Bend were hidden beneath his bandages, and I forced away the memory of digging my fingers into his wounds while he bled. His scars were a reminder of a lesson learned; mine were a haunting, a tapestry of failure.
But when he stroked along the damaged skin on my back, I wondered if he read in my scars another story.
