Page 185 of The Jasad Crown
On the other side, I watched the bridge while I waited for the soldiers to dock their boats. For annihilation or salvation or a savage marriage of the two.
A presence at my elbow ticked into the second reality. Maia rolled on her heels, restless. “Take a knife, at least. This one is so small.”
She offered me a dagger with a blade roughly the length of my wrist. The silver and gold roiling in my eyes glittered off the blade’s edge.
“I won’t need it.”
“Nevertheless.” Maia nudged it toward me, a silent plea.
I took the knife and tucked it into my boot. “Go back to the tree line. Your magic is useless against so many soldiers. Climb to a high vantage point and do what you can to warn the others.”
Maia’s mouth puckered around a protest, but she left without freeing it.
A low, long whistle pierced the quiet.
The soldiers had landed.
My instructions to the Jasadis had been clear, but I couldn’t resist raising my hand as a reminder. Their obedience was vital. They needed to trust me, however sour it might taste, or suffer the consequences.
In one reality, the boats knifed through the fog, sharp-nosed and austere as they butted into the shore. Soldiers in black and violet splashed into Hirun as they climbed onto the western perimeter of Janub Aya. Arrows stretched in taut string. Swords hissed free of their sheaths.
In the other, my largest kitmer folded its wings and dove.
The initial wave of soldiers multiplied, wet boots leaving mud tracks in the dirt as hundreds marched forward.
More than anything—their boats or their uniforms or their useless weapons—those mud tracks scraped at an infected wound inside me. We stood in the mouth of Janub Aya’s destruction, and ten years later, they came to track mud in a wilayah they weren’t fit to lick the dust off of?
I started to walk.
The soldiers at the front exchanged unsettled glances. Whatever they had expected, it hadn’t been this. A lone woman walking over a rocky plain, an armed audience unmoving in the background. A flurry of kitmers circling patiently in the sky.
What their pathetic mortal eyes couldn’t see were the veins rich in color on my face. Pulsing, twisting beneath the hollows of my eyes, tangling at my temples.
By the time they realized they were looking in the wrong direction, it was too late.
A great shadow blotted the clouds. An ear-splitting shriek pierced across the wilayah. Trees bent and snapped beneath the gales forming beneath my last kitmer’s beating wings.
I broke into a run, a giddy laugh whipped from my lips as the wind raced and the air thinned behind the kitmer. It flew above me, keeping pace as I ran faster than I ever had. Faster than the night I killed the Nizahl soldier. Faster than when Arin chased me to the edge of the river. Faster, even, than I had in the Alcalah’s first trial, with a pack of rabid dogs and the Lukub Champion at my heels.
They tried to turn back, to escape, but their own numbers worked against them. Pathetic little ants, bumping and jostling one another, swords greasy in their grips. Seventy or so men in the rear were clever enough to turn around and dive into the river.
My two realities blended into one. I crossed my arms over my chest, and the kitmer flattened its wings. I slid to my knees in a long skid, and the kitmer dove ahead, its torso nearly skimming the top of my head.
The kitmer unfolded its wings, and I threw my arms wide as it collided with the front of the Nizahl incursion.
Jasad’s symbol roared one last time.
Together, we burst into flames.
The lucky soldiers were thrown in the blast—hurled into trees and Hirun, but spared the fate of those directly beneath the kitmer. Then again, the ones directly under the kitmer had the benefit of dying quickly, spared the scent of their flesh burning as they desperately crawled toward the river. Bloodcurdling howls joined the stampede of flaming bodies careening toward Hirun.
When the last of the kitmer’s magic burned off, the flames dancing over my body died with it. The earth quaked under me as the Jasadis surged toward the remaining soldiers.
Someone dropped to the ground beside me, grabbing my face with frantic hands. “Oh, thank the Awaleen!” Sefa choked out.
“I told you she was all right,” Marek said from somewhere behind me, suspiciously hoarse. He cleared his throat. “Killing the moon is easier than killing Essiya of Jasad.”
Sefa shook me. “You neglected to mention that when the kitmer burned, you would burn with it!”
