Jeru released a sound between a laugh and a strangled hiccup. He covered his mouth.
Arin tipped his head to Jeru and Wes. “There are parcels near the stairs. Take them to her room.”
Parcels?
“Are they for me?”
“They’re for the vermin.” He glanced at my bowl. “Are you finished?”
I pushed away from the table. “Evidently.”
We walked to the training center. I fidgeted with the sleeves of my borrowed tunic, still too tight around my biceps. I avoided the walls alive with birds and my dead family.
“How long has your magic been blocked?”
My head whipped toward him. Arin uttered it as he had “You have magic” or “I choose her.” Absolute. With the conviction of one who never speaks in vain.
“Do you find these bold, sweeping inquiries satisfying? Catching the recipient off guard and startling the truth from them? Is that your strategy?”
He didn’t blink. “Generally, yes.”
“Might I ask how you’ve reached this conclusion?”
“The power I felt when I touched you in the Relic Room should have torn me to pieces,” he said calmly. I stilled. We had yet to openly discuss the details of what had occurred in the war room. “Instead, it barely stopped me from killing you.”
Niphran was right, I marveled.
“Are you typically so overcome when you sense magic?”
“Nothing was typical of my behavior.” Disturbingly pale blue eyes studied me. “Yours is not a simple magic.”
Another diversion. I imagined the Nizahl Heir’s tutors must have been driven mad at his expert evasions of any clear reply.
He went on. “Jasadi magic cannot be hidden from me. I should have detected it at the river, when you placed your hand in mine. At the very least, it should have reacted last night. Pain and peril are two of the surest ways to ignite magic. Yours reacts to mine in unusual ways. I can sense it, I can draw it close, but it will not leave the limits of your body.”
He frowned at a cobweb on top of the weapons chest before redirecting his attention to me. “That is how I’ve reached my conclusion.”
“Your touch boiled my magic. It nearly killed me,” I said flatly.
“It saved you. Twice.”
Aha. “And how can a nonmagical touch do such a thing, Your Highness?”
A glimmer of approval passed over his features. I had neatly walked him into my own trap.
“Under normal circumstances, it can’t. I sense magic because I am immune to it, and I can drain the magic from a Jasadi with the same touch that seems to ignite yours.”
I did not try to hide the horror written on my face. He could drain magic with a touch?
My cuffs tightened around the sudden force of my magic. How many Jasadis had he robbed of the very advantage for which they were hunted? How many had felt their magic stripped from them in the moment they needed it most?
“I don’t understand.”
He watched me coolly. “You don’t need to.”
“Explain what you mean by ‘draining magic,’ and I will answer your query.”
Surprise darted in the Heir’s eyes, gone before I could chase it. He had expected me to ask how his touch came to be its own weapon. And indeed, I should have asked that. The mechanics of how he drained magic did not affect me; my cuffs prevented him from doing more than pulling my magic to the surface. Damn it to the tombs. The stupid moving wall had thrown me off-balance. Affected my judgment.
“Jasadi magic is not a bottomless well. Every Jasadi has a finite supply from which to draw. Imagine one uses their magic sparingly, easing the drudgeries of daily chores. Another spends their allotment on some spectacular display. For the first Jasadi, replenishing their magic is not an issue, because they never reached the bottom of the well. The one who drained their magic by commanding a horse to fly or rain to fall must wait, helpless, until time renews their supply.” He raised his gloved hand to his temple, brushing it with a featherlight touch. “I possess the ability to drain the well temporarily. Time will still replenish their magic, but by then—”
“You will have already caught or killed them.” My cuffs throttled my wrists, so urgently did my magic beat against my veins. Was it reacting to Arin or to Arin’s words?
“Yes.” He remained composed in the face of my loathing. Had I not heard the hatred in his voice last night, I might have believed his indifference. But at least now I had an answer for why my magic reacted so strongly to his touch. He couldn’t drain my magic, but he could bring it surging to my cuffs.
He removed a handkerchief from his coat and brushed it over the spiderweb. “Your turn.”
I wanted him to choke on his intestines as I fed them to him in pieces. He did not deserve my secrets.
Then do not give them to him, Hanim urged. She seemed buoyed I had chosen to ask a question on the Jasadis’ behalf instead of my own. Escape again and join the Jasadis he is hunting.
Cold water splashed over my rage at the very notion. No, I had made my decision. My best route to freedom was through the Nizahl Heir. I hadn’t forgotten what Arin said yesterday. The Mufsids and Urabi chased the same Jasadi only if they had held an important post in Jasad. They either suspected who I was… or they somehow already knew.
“I do not remember a time when my magic flowed free.”
He clasped his hands behind his back. “Can it be fixed?”
I shook my head. If he pressed, I did not know if I could devise a lie capable of withstanding his scrutiny.
“It is an unusual cruelty. Your magic feels strong.”
I almost laughed. If only he knew. My grandparents would not have cuffed an average magic, nor would Hanim have been so desperate to unleash it. Abnormal magic defined my life. “You would know. Unusual cruelty is your specialty.”
Arin moved on without comment, though I was sure the matter of what suppressed my magic would be revisited. He seemed to tuck new information into the frightful web of his mind until he had collected all its threads. “The Champions’ Banquet will be held in Lukub in six weeks’ time. From there, we will depart for the first trial in Orban. We have until then to make you fit for this role.”
He walked to the corner of the room, crouching in front of the weapons chest I’d pilfered yesterday.
Clouds moved leisurely in the facsimile sky above us. “I still don’t understand why I must compete as Champion to lure the groups you seek. If they are the same ones who attacked me in the woods, they already know where I am.”
I crossed my arms over my chest, resisting the urge to shudder. The rotted corpse howling with Hanim’s voice would haunt me forever.
Arin froze. He straightened, turning toward me, and only bewilderment prevented me from stumbling back. “What attack?”
The severity of his tone surprised me. I recounted the confrontation with the mirage of Hanim’s corpse. Arin paced, and I could almost see him weaving this latest revelation into his web. “You did not recognize the corpse or see its summoner?”