Page 176 of The Jasad Crown
Low clouds veiled the top of the Citadel’s tower. The wings of the Citadel curved around the tower in steel crescents, the glass halls connecting them to the tower frosted from the cold. Black stones gleamed around windows washed gold with candlelight.
Arin knew the Citadel was not particularly warm. Visitors from other kingdoms, even other parts of Nizahl, often joked the Citadel had been built to inspire foreboding in all who gazed upon it.
But then, Arin was not particularly warm, either. The Citadel had always been a part of Arin—the steel in his spine, the stone around his heart. The axis around which his world spun.
As Arin had taken the shape of the Citadel, so too was it time for the Citadel to mirror its master.
Stone for stone. Steel for steel.
Ruin for ruin.
The soldiers handed him off to two of his father’s guardsmen, who were markedly less shaken about transporting Arin like a common prisoner. They were also familiar with the Capsule, having escorted Arin to and from his punishments as a child.
“Rauf. Zach.” Arin inclined his head. “This must feel all too familiar for you.”
Rauf cleared his throat, opening his mouth only to cut himself off at Zach’s sharp look. Rauf had always had a slightly softer touch than the rest of his father’s guardsmen, and age seemed to have exacerbated the problem.
After climbing for five floors, they stopped halfway up the next set of steps. Zach swung his elbow at the uneven blocks of gray stone. Instead of cracking his bones, the block beneath his elbow exploded in plumes of dirt. Zach pushed his arm through the empty space and reached down.
The stones shifted, heaving inward to reveal a dark passageway clouded with dust. The passage was too narrow for more than one person to walk at a time, so Rauf stepped in front of Arin while Zach trailed behind.
The passage ended in a pocket of darkness carved into the wall. It ended in the Capsule, in nothingness—a black hole where neither light nor shadow could reach.
Arin’s teeth ground together. He had underestimated how strongly his body might react to the Capsule, regardless of the years.
Without prompting, Arin stepped over the foot-high threshold and into the hole. The guards watched him for a minute, perhaps waiting for the facade of cooperation to snap.
Arin settled at the back of the hole and stretched his legs in front of him, crossing them at the ankle.
Eventually, their footsteps faded, leaving Arin to contend with his old nemesis.
The void.
The Capsule only existed thanks to the forces of paranoia that had governed Supreme Ghashli, Nizahl’s ruler five generations after Fareed. Supreme Ghashli had been convinced his enemies were in the walls coming to kill him. He hired dozens of Laeyim from Omal to build passageways throughout the Citadel in an effort to find the voices. Laeyim were excellent builders, but their magic came with an unfortunate side effect: the passageways were hidden from everyone, including Supreme Ghashli. Not only was he convinced there were enemies waiting for him behind the walls, but now he had granted them passageways that led directly into various wings of the Citadel.
Supreme Ghashli disappeared shortly after the Laeyim finished construction. It took them years to find his body. One of the passageways to the Capsule had mysteriously opened for the Supreme, and it seemed he had never found his way out again. They discoveredhis corpse in the exact spot where Arin was sitting, a grotesque smile fixed on what flesh remained on his skeleton.
Arin leaned his head back, the wisp of white air leaving his lips the only evidence of life in the nothingness. The only difference between Arin and the lingering ghosts of his childhood, all of whom had died a strange sort of death in this hole.
Arin breathed. He waited.
He closed his eyes and thought of a shy smile curving against his shoulder. He filled his ears with the sound of her laugh, the way it burst uncontrolled from her chest and smothered itself behind her palm.
In the evening, I would come home to you.
Arin sat among his ghosts and dreamed of his future.
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
ESSIYA
Someone peeled open my eyelid.
“Her magic hasn’t lapsed once. It’s been churning since she sent off the kitmers,” Namsa murmured.
“Do we know—could it be—” Quiet and uncertain. Maia.
“What do you think?” Efra snapped. “We have to manage the symptoms before it takes her completely. Help me drag her to the lake. The bucket won’t be enough to revive her this time, and we need to go. The Sareekh will be back for us by tonight.”
