Page 77 of The Jasad Heir

My jest about dragging Arin to the tunnels might be closer to reality than I had imagined. I had forced him to fight past my magic. How much blood had he shed struggling against the barrier?

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I should not have trapped you. It’s just—you would have interfered and lost a limb unnecessarily. I knew it was here for me.”

“Don’t do it again.” The fleeting humor vanished from his tone. He was completely somber. “If you had been wrong, I wouldn’t have been released until you were dead and your magic’s hold broken.”

“You would have had time to run if it killed me first.” I finished tightening the bandages. Though I wagered Arin would walk through a pool of his own blood rather than surrender to his body, tenacity did not grant any superhuman abilities, even to its most ardent disciples.

Arin’s stare bored into the side of my face.

“Yes, I suppose I would have,” he said, and looked away.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The moment Marek introduced himself to me five years ago, all charm, lanky limbs, and sparkling teeth, I had instantly known him for what he was: trouble. Chaos with a pretty face. The impression was solidified within the first few weeks of his incessant flirting. Scowling and stalking away had failed to deter him. Knocking his eyeballs from his skull wasn’t an option if I wanted to maintain my pretense of fragility. So I seized the next best option. I tattled to Sefa.

Now that hitting Marek was an option, I found it quite hard to resist smashing his head into the bedside table. I had been studiously avoiding him since the incident in the training center. Knowing how deeply he regretted his behavior didn’t ease my own frustration.Lovers’ spat.Two careless words could have ended Sefa’s life.

The day after the Ruby Hound’s attack, Marek cornered me in my chambers. “If we were in Mahair, I could earn your forgiveness with a stack of prickly pears or sesame-seed candies. I am at a loss here, Sylvia.” He spread his arms.

I regarded Marek, once again wishing for Arin’s talent for seeing through people. Cutting past the noise and into the heart of the beast. Whatever caused his outburst was linked to the same impulse that drove Marek to accept his back-breaking position with Yuli and his bristling hatred for Nizahl. In many ways, I understood Marek better than Sefa. Sefa’s heart was the governing force behind her actions. She categorized every decision into uncomprosining columns of right and wrong. To properly burn, rage must be given room to grow, and Sefa had long decided she would never open herself up to becoming its kindling.

Not Marek and me. Whatever we felt, we felt in its full violence. But where I kept my feelings in a stranglehold, Marek felt—and expressed—his emotions to their fullest extent.

I needed to understand what was happening in his head. Another glib remark like that outside these tunnels could end in disaster. “Let us make truth our currency this time. What did you leave behind in Nizahl, Caleb?”

His contrition wavered into a grimace. Marek raised his knuckles to his temples, kneading his forehead. “Nothing good.”

I crossed my arms. “If you want my forgiveness, earn it.”

Marek dropped onto the bed. Resistance drained from him in a great sweep. “What do you want to hear? People like you and me keep our secrets for a reason.”

“ ‘People like you and me’?” I repeated with a disgust reserved for stepping in a bucket of fish heads. Did he want me to pat his hand and whine over our shared suffering? “Are you a Jasadi, too, Marek?”

“I did not mean—”

“I don’t care.”

He sighed.

“You want a story, Sylvia? I was born the youngest of five children to a family with an infamous military legacy. My father and mother had served in Supreme Munqal’s army. My grandparents, Supreme Tairal. On and on it went. The Lazur family was synonymous with Nizahlan military excellence. We were expected to join as soon as we were old enough. My sister, Amira, died at twenty-one in a clash between Nizahl’s lower villages. The grain stores had run low, and Nizahl’s soil is hostile to all but a few crops. Supreme Rawain was Commander at the time, and he sent soldiers to quell the violence with more violence.”

Marek raised his head to check that I was listening, then dropped it back on the bed. Golden hair fanned around his face. I perched at his side, keeping my expression carefully neutral. I considered this revelation of Marek’s lineage with the scrutiny I would afford a cut on my palm. Prodding the edges, testing the sting.

“Darin died in the border battles with Orban. The khawaga cut him open and poured cheap ale onto his insides for the animals to smell. They left him in the sun for six days. My last brother, Binyar, rose in the ranks quickly under Supreme Rawain. He was among those chosen to lead the siege on Jasad’s fortress after the Blood Summit. He never returned.”

A tear trickled toward Marek’s hair. He dashed it away.

Marek threw an arm over his face. “Hani was two years older than me. He wanted to enter Supreme Rawain’s confidence, forge a place for our family at the highest tables in the kingdom. He spent years trying to earn invitations to the most exclusive parties and bend the ears of the kingdom’s rich and powerful. What Hani did not grasp was that the inside of the Citadel was a thousand times more lethal than anything he might encounter on the battlefield. When I was thirteen, a prisoner was thrown into Nizahl’s most heavily fortified dungeon. A high-risk Jasadi prisoner who had nearly killed the Heir. Hani and a dozen soldiers guarding the cells were slaughtered by a group of Jasadis later that night. The prisoner vanished, and we laid Hani to rest next to Binyar and Amira. When my turn for conscription arrived, I fled.”

I sat up. “A Jasadi group killed your brother?”

Marek pushed himself upright. He tossed a half-formed smile in my direction. “I have no animosity toward Jasadis as a whole, if that is what you fear. The group that rescued the prisoner and killed my brother were skilled criminals.”

A group of Jasadis breaking into a highly fortified Nizahlan prison should have been the news on everyone’s tongue. Hanim, who regularly traveled into the kingdoms for supplies, would surely have heard about it. Not to mention a Jasadi almost killing the Nizahl Heir. Arin would have been… sixteen? Supreme Rawain must have expended great effort to bury the news.

An old conversation between Wes and Jeru surfaced.

I was appointed to his guard when he was sixteen.

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