Page 33 of The Jasad Heir

Her skin was fragments of the sun, her shifting eyes stolen from the surface of the sea. “Fight.”

I twisted weakly. Arin’s hand dug deeper, curling into my hair. His eyes were blank, swallowed whole by darkness.

“I cannot!”

Did the Nizahl Heir have magic? How else could he be doing this?

“He is reacting to your magic, and it is stealing him from his right mind,” Niphran said. The sun inside her shone brighter, blinding me. “He will kill you if you do not resist.”

I sank into the raging froth of my magic. It battered against me, growing more enraged with each ineffectual attempt at gaining freedom. His touch drew at my magic without an avenue of release, leaving it shrieking just beneath my skin.

“Do not resist who you are,” Niphran murmured. The sun engulfed her, a white inferno bursting forth and flooding the room in an unbearable brilliance. “Essiya.”

They have taken enough. Nizahl will not destroy what is left of my family.

The ground shook beneath me. The cabinet rained debris as the maps on the wall fluttered wildly. I screamed with a thousand voices as something crumbled inside me. A whisper of relief eased the pressure on my cuffs, and Arin flew into the wall on the opposite side of the room. He caught himself before hitting the ground.

The earth rocked, tilting the cabinet forward.

It was not Niyar’s or Palia’s face I conjured as the cabinet groaned, but Rory’s scowl. Sefa’s musical laughter. Marek rubbing soot from his roasted peanuts and offering a handful to Fairel.

Alarm flashed across Arin’s expression, now devoid of its delirium. The cabinet yawned forward. I had enough time to close my eyes before something collided with the side of my body, hurling me into nothingness.

I swam circles in the velvet darkness of the lake. The creatures dancing down here were much more intriguing than anything waiting for me on the surface.

Wake up, said a disgruntled fish with six lavender tails. It used Rory’s voice.

I frowned and swam toward a large bolti with Dawoud’s stern nose.You cannot sleep any longer, Essiya.

Who was Essiya?

I started to tell the Dawoud bolti it was mistaken—my name was Sylvia, probably—but the water rushed into my mouth, choking me. I kicked up, reaching for the waning, shimmering surface of the water. Almost there. If I could just reach the sunlight…

With a gasp, I bolted upright. A shout rose and died in my throat. Pressing a hand to my racing heart, I struggled to calm myself as my eyes adjusted to the dimness of my new setting.

The room of relics had vanished. This room was smaller, containing only a mirror, a rocking chair, and the cot beneath me. No war cabinets or weapons. Thick, mossy vines weaved over the dirt floor, explaining the scent of damp decay. The walls had been erected directly around the floor of the woods. I sniffed, searching for a note of manure or rotten eggs to determine my distance from Hirun, and instantly regretted it. An overwhelmingly foul odor gagged me. If this was death, my soul hadn’t wound up anywhere good.

On the off chance I was still among the living, I pressed my hand over my nose, sipping the air in tiny, careful pulls. From the size of the vines winding over the ground, this room had been built a long time ago. Perhaps he enjoyed killing me so much that he moved me somewhere new to do it again.

I reached to scratch my shoulder and flinched. My wrists. The Commander had snapped the right one and crushed the other, and I distinctly recalled my cuffs grinding the bones of both to dust. Bewildered, I rotated them. Nothing—no pain. Baira’s blessed hair, had I finally gone mad?

My torn clothes had been replaced by a simple linen gown. The thought of one of the Nizahl guardsmen stripping my clothes while I slept made me grit my teeth. I cast an assessing glance over the room once more, searching for anything I could use as a weapon.

Because your last endeavor to kill the Heir was so exceedingly successful, Hanim bit out.

Who said anything about trying to kill him again? My intentions began and ended with getting out of this room. I turned on the cot, setting my feet on the ground. They settled over a bulbous, springy surface. I frowned. Odd, why would the vines be—

I looked down and screamed. My legs violently recoiled, knocking my knees against my chin.

Stretched on the ground beside my bed was the soldier I killed.

A bone of his snapped neck protruded from the waxen glaze of his skin. Insects skittered in the open gash under his belly. My stomach turned as his lips pulsed, parting briefly as a roach escaped onto his cheek.

I had seen many corpses, but never quite this far into death. Yuck. He must have been a nightmare for the guards to carry. I stretched my leg to hop over him when something much more unsettling caught my eye.

On the soldier’s chest lay a wrapped sesame-seed candy.

The door opened. Jeru and Vaun entered, moving to opposite sides of the frame. They stood at attention.

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