Page 194 of The Jasad Crown
“Why? Why?”
“Our magic is one, remember?” The kitmer sailed toward us, sparks of our kingdom’s colors trailing behind it. The smile faded from our face. “When you stripped the magic out of that man, I felt it. I felt you corrupt the very nature of what we are. Whatever you have created, it is a threat to the essence of our world, and it must be fixed. That man—what is he? Lukubi, Omalian? I would like to do him the honor of burying him in his home.”
Ruby and ivory bloomed vicious petals in Baira’s eyes. “Then you will not have to travel far,” Baira spat. “The man you call a corruption was a Jasadi before we took his magic. Before we made him aKing. Fareed will be the first to rule a kingdom that isn’t loyal to our blood, isn’t beholden to our magic. He will fight against you.”
We leaned close to our sister’s face, wiping the opaque red tearsdripping down her cheeks. “My beautiful Baira,” we whispered. “Make a King? You could barely make a shiny dog.”
We stepped off the ledge, landing on the soft neck of our kitmer. Wind rushed through our hair as it climbed higher, taking us home.
Behind us, Baira’s scream joined her Hounds’.
We stepped onto the bridge and crossed our arms. Dania had insisted on this meeting spot, claiming it served as neutral territory between our kingdom and Kapastra’s.
She had some manner of mischief planned. She wouldn’t be Dania if she didn’t. But what?
We screamed as our siblings tore us apart. Baira broke our bones, wrenching us into pieces on the bridge, and Dania plunged her arm into our chest. Kapastra’s hands clutched our skull, holding us prisoner to the endless agony.
“Hurry!” Baira shrieked.
Dania’s fingers grazed our magic at its very core. Her hand closed around it, and her screams of agony joined ours.
“Don’t do this!” we pleaded. “Sisters, please!”
“You will find us again,” Kapastra whispered, blue-and-white eyes gazing down at us with the implacable wrath of the heavens. “At least, what remains of you will.”
They tore our magic from our destroyed body and cast it down into the river flowing beneath the bridge. We collided with the surface of the water, and the sky fractured into gold-and-silver fire as the rest of our limbs were reduced to ash.
We flowed into Hirun and searched for home.
We are a young girl who loves to cup bees from her growing hive. By the time she is twelve, our power has grown too much, and she burns her hives with the same torch she laid upon her sleeping parents’ hut.
She is executed, and we return to the river once more.
Once every hundred years, when the river slows, we are reborn. Sometimes we stay for twelve years, like the first girl, and sometimes we stay for twenty, like the young man who slaughtered his village with the monsters he created.
The story always ends the same. The wrong choices. The scourge of our magic on their mind.
We consume them, and we return to the river once more.
We are a green-eyed girl in a modest town, the pride of our family’s life.
We—
For the second time, reality disappeared.
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
ARIN
Arin cradled her face as magic scoured through him, screaming as it tore out of Essiya.
His was an incomplete agony; a partial evisceration. Because on the other side of it was the gold and silver draining out of Essiya’s eyes, replaced by precious dark brown. On the other side was a beautifully human terror coloring them as she realized what he had done.
“Have you returned?” The echo of a conversation tucked away in a tunnel, hidden beneath the earth. A single bolt of time. An eternity.
Chin trembling, she said, “I never left.”
“Yes, you did.”
