Arin continued, “Then again, perhaps it is a sign of your shrewdness that you care so little. Jasad was always damned. A kingdom so mired in treachery is the architect of its own ruin.” He bowed over the map, bracing his weight on his knuckles.
Mired in treachery? Now I was sure he wanted a reaction. Jasad was the only kingdom without twisted court politics and double-dealing deceptions.
I turned to face him. This was the closest we had been without someone actively bleeding. I would be happy to rectify that.
“No one follows your edicts. Why would they? Your father controls the courts, and the soldiers know any Jasadi they capture will be put to death immediately. Jasadis are guilty by existence.”
The scar curving beneath his jaw caught the lamplight. “Do you deny your nature?”
Disgust suffused my words. “What nature? If you mean my tendency to violence, it is no greater than yours.”
To my shock, a small smile curved the corner of his lips. “Perhaps. But there will never come a day where my nature will overcome my mind. There is no magic in my veins that will turn poisonous and drive me to madness.”
I shook my head. What was I doing, wasting my breath reasoning with Supreme Rawain’s son? Rawain was hardly the first Supreme to work against Jasad—he was just the most successful. Jasadi magic had been hated and feared for centuries, and it was only a matter of time until they devised a reason to invade strong enough to overpower their guilt. The Blood Summit killed a dozen royals, including Supreme Rawain’s wife—Arin’s mother.
He would never suspect what I knew to be true. Arin would never believe his father was behind the deaths at the Blood Summit.
“For someone so convinced of his own brilliance, you do seem to neglect quite a glaring flaw.”
He stayed quiet. Refusing to engage me. I didn’t care.
“You think your mind is a blank slate, where you can build your own networks of information from scratch, through pure logic and reason. You ignore that each child enters a completely unique world, founded on different truths. We build our reality on the foundation our world sets for us. You entered a world where magic is corrosive and Jasadis are inherently evil. I entered one where turning a shoe into a dove made my mother laugh. Have you considered, in that infinite mind of yours, that the truly brilliant people are the ones who understand the realities we build were already built for us?”
My muscles locked in anticipation. Had I spoken with such impertinence to any other Heirs or royals, I would be on my knees with a sword at my jugular. Even my grandfather would have belted my hands, or at the very least banished me to my quarters.
Arin, expression thoughtful, poured the lavender liquid from the pitcher into a chalice and passed it. “Here.”
With a sizable helping of bewilderment, I accepted the chalice. Better than a sword. I sniffed the drink. The smell burned my nose, far stronger than any ale in Mahair’s taverns. Under Arin’s watchful gaze, I tipped the chalice into my mouth, swallowing with a grimace. Ugh. Eating dirt after a fresh rain would probably taste better.
“You are not what I was expecting,” Arin said. He drained his chalice and set it aside carelessly. It dawned on me, embarrassingly slow: this was not his first drink of the night. Each of these drinks was likely as strong as three ales. Even in a diminished state of reason, the man possessed more restraint than the entirety of the kingdom combined.
I hated him for more reasons than I could ever name. But his restraint—it infuriated me beyond sense. How do you predict the patterns of a river that never floods, never ebbs or flows?
Hanim’s years of discipline had failed to corral my reactive nature. What training must he have endured to become this way?
Arin reached around me. I recoiled, acutely aware of his bare hands. But he only unfurled a new map, smoothing it over the first. I pulled in a breath. Was it—
JASAD, the new map proclaimed, the letters bold and golden. A line weaved around the border where our impenetrable fortress had once loomed, barricading Jasad from Essam and any outside threats. The fortress was keyed to every Jasadi citizen’s magic to allow us to pass freely through the fortress, like it was nothing more than shining air. Anyone else was met with hard resistance.
I traced the lines of Usr Jasad, following it to the tiny letters pinning Bakir Tower. My home, then my mother’s. Down I went, through the borders of Jasad’s twelve wilayahs. An indescribable emotion rose in my chest. Jasad had existed. It had been real, once. More than Scorched Lands. It had been known for more than its fate.
“Read the names of the wilayahs,” Arin said.
I flinched, shrinking from the map. The Nizahl Heir would not show me this out of kindness. He had an ulterior motive. But what?
I thought fast. The wilayahs were named in Resar. Jasad’s dead language. He already knew I was literate in Resar thanks to the death rites I performed over Adel. What benefit could he derive from hearing me read the names of twelve vastly disparate wilayahs in Jasad?
Your accent is perfect.
Baira’s bountiful beauty, how could I have missed it? My accent—or lack thereof. The wilayahs had slight dialectal differences in their speech and small variations in their naming systems. If he knew which wilayah I belonged to, he’d begin to cull the list of possible important figures I could be.
An idea unfurled its petals.
“Har Adiween,” I began. I moved my finger along the wilayahs as I spoke. “Janub Aya, Eyn el Haswa, Kafr al Der, Ahr il Uboor.” I continued until the very last wilayah, tucked right next to Sirauk Bridge.
“How odd,” Arin said once I had finished. His hair fell like spools of silk between his fingers when he raked it from his face. “You seem to have developed an accent since you last spoke Resar.”
I widened my eyes and flared my nostrils. Nuanced, minuscule indicators of fear. I had spun lies around Mahair as skillfully as a halawany spun sugar, but they were not Arin of Nizahl. They did not have senses honed against falsehood. “I—I do not have an accent. I misspoke. You make me nervous.”
Arin tilted his head. “A sliver of truth in a stream of lies. But which is which?”
“I am not lying. I was nobody in Jasad.”
The steadiness of his conviction worked opposite my own, unraveling me at the seams. I wanted to lash out, force the specter of discovery and certain death into his bones until the shadows on the wall were indistinguishable from the ones in his nightmares. But Arin was not Hanim, or any other adversary I had gritted my teeth against and overcome.
He was my discovery. He was certain death.
My cuffs tightened almost beyond the point of tolerability. Arin stepped closer. If he touched me in that moment, my magic would overwhelm him, just as it had in the Relic Room. The incensed throb of it skimmed along my skin.
“I do wonder just what you’re capable of,” he murmured.
“Be patient, my liege,” I said. “You might yet find out.”