Page 43 of The Jasad Crown
“That bad?” she whispered at his rigid silence.
Bad? Bad was the greeting. Bad would be the first sentence of a book Arin planned to fill with blood and agony and words so heavy with cruelty they would pin down any tongue that tried to speak them. The page where he would record her fate would wrinkle to escape the horror of his pen, and he would ink it with the blood he poured from her.
Sylvia’s gaze dropped to the knife in Arin’s grip, then swung back up to him. She huffed a short laugh.
He struck fast, but she had seen it coming. The knife went airborne as Sylvia reared back and kicked Arin’s wrist, sending a spasm of pain through his arm. Before he could reach into his coat, she collided into him like a bull, slamming his back against Isra’s statue.
“You still don’t think I’m real,” she heaved. Her hands bunched in Arin’s lapels, pinning him to the statue. “You wouldn’t fight me so leisurely if you truly believed I was here.”
Arin studied the collection of freckles on the underside of her chin. Interesting. The pattern looked remarkably identical to her real freckles.
Not freckles—hasanas.
It was ludicrous to argue with a hallucination, but this woman—and apparently, even her apparition—frequently compelled Arin to the ludicrous. “Were you truly here, I would have felt your magic the instant you entered the Citadel’s grounds.”
She was pinning him to the statue so earnestly, her arm a solid bar against his collarbone. Arin almost smiled. Fine, then. If his hallucination wanted an actual fight, Arin may as well indulge her.
Sylvia wheezed when Arin’s knee slammed into her stomach. He grabbed her wrist and twisted the arm she’d used to pin him behind her back. “Is this satisfactory to you?”
He launched the hallucination into the rosebushes.
She careened into the bushes and hit the ground. Slapping off the burrs caught on her sleeve, she leapt to her feet. “You stubborn, tombs-damned man, I am trying towarn you—”
Footsteps farther up the grove drew Arin’s attention. Urgency burst across Sylvia’s features, and she spoke fast. “Arin, you need to listen. Evacuate Galim’s Bend. The cages—”
“Sire?” Wes turned the corner, a lantern held aloft to ward away the encroaching shadows. “There you are. Is anything the matter?”
Arin didn’t move his gaze from Wes. He knew she was gone.
“I should ask you the same,” Arin said. Calmly, smoothly, as if Wes hadn’t interrupted Arin in the middle of his flight from reality. “Did my father send you?”
“The attendants said they saw you enter the groves without a torch. I worried you might lose your way back.”
Arin was the last person who would get lost anywhere, never mind in the Citadel’s gardens, and Wes knew it.
“Wes.” Light, congenial. “I advise you to exercise extreme caution before lying to me.”
Wes set his feet, moving away from the throng of branches he’d begun to subtly disappear into. His chin jutted forward, resolvereplacing his wariness. “Your Highness. Arin. I have served as your guardsman for more than ten years. My life has always been forfeit to yours, and I bear the sacrifice with pride. It is a sacrifice you have always respected. Until now.”
The number of times Arin had been caught off guard tonight could be counted on more than a finger, and Arin didn’t much care for it. “If you wish to lodge a complaint, be clear with it.”
The light from Wes’s torch cast long shadows over the brush. If the torch tilted four inches to the right, it would catch on the branches in seconds. Winter had not yet loosened its hold on the gardens, so the blaze would be contained to the areas where the frost had melted. But it would reach his mother. It would lick hungrily at the bottom of her pedestal, confusing stone for skin, until futility smothered the flames. Its glory—its potential—foiled by its own determination to consume the only thing in the garden it could not burn.
Rawain is cruel by nature, but you? You are cruel by choice.
“Sire? Are you listening?”
Arin passed a gloved hand through his hair, sweeping out the Jasad Heir’s voice. He needed to get out of these groves. “Unfortunately.”
“The whole of your evenings are spent in the library. You rise to meet the council at dawn. The shadows under your eyes grow darker each day.”
Arin did not wish to be curt with his guard. Wes was ten years Arin’s senior, and his temper wasn’t as fractious as Vaun’s, nor his heart as easily won as Jeru’s. He wouldn’t be addressing Arin with such gravity were it not a matter Wes considered of the utmost importance.
But Arin was tired, and he needed to reserve his restraint for supper with Rawain. “I imagine you’re hiding your point somewhere in this observation.”
“Jeru thinks you need to talk.”
A humorless smile touched Arin’s lips. So the young guardsmanhad finally won the elder to his side. Arin started walking. “Explain why I should care about Jeru’s opinion on my needs.”
