“My soldiers would not have killed them. They are instructed to take them to Nizahl for trial.”
“Please,” I said. “I respect you too much to think you could ever be so foolish as to believe those are two separate fates.”
I couldn’t bring myself to stoke the same flames of fury back to life. This night might very well be my last, and I didn’t want to spend it as angry as I spent the rest of my days. An apology was more than I could have expected. “I’m sorry about Ren.” Despite my dislike of the guardsman, he had been loyal to Arin.
“Me too.” Arin shut his eyes for a second. I wondered if he was seeing the other soldiers Soraya had killed. Adding Ren to the tally of his failures.
“I am not sorry about interfering. You cannot ask me to actively assist you in capturing Jasadis. My only part in this is to compete in the Alcalah.”
Arin’s brow furrowed. “I didn’t ask you to assist. It was meant to proceed without your involvement.”
My lips parted, winded from the blow. He had expected me to do what I did best: stand idly by. Maybe I would have, had the arrows not put Marek and Sefa at risk. Most people feared what they were capable of doing, but I… I was starting to fear what I was capable of ignoring.
“So you aren’t angry anymore?”
He lifted a shoulder. “The power you displayed will encourage the Urabi to utilize every resource to capture you. When they come again, I’ll be ready.”
He didn’t elaborate, and I did not ask him to. No matter what the voice inside me urged, this was not my battle. I wouldn’t let it be.
“Sylvia.” There was a strange note in the way he said my name. “You helped me in the Pass. The magic might have driven me from my mind if you had not stopped it.”
“Arin.” I said his name the same. “You are more miserly with your gratitude than with your praise. Just say thank you.”
Arin gifted me one of his rare smiles. My stomach clenched, and it took an inordinate amount of time to tear my gaze from his mouth. He should know better than to share his smiles with me. I should know better than to crave them.
“Thank you,” he said softly.
Rarely did fortune place me in an advantageous position, and I would not see the opportunity wasted. I hadn’t forgotten Arin’s agonized state in the Pass.
“How can you sense magic?”
In Arin’s world, information was a transaction. He did not gift it freely, and he certainly never wasted it. The price for this information was prohibitively high. I had nothing to barter for it. I hadn’t possessed an ulterior motive for helping him in the Pass, but Arin would sleep better if he thought I helped in anticipation of this moment. Just another material exchange removed from the vagaries of emotion.
He nodded to himself, as though he had been prepared for my question. “I will satisfy your curiosity, Suraira.”
He lowered himself to the chair across the bed. With the moon casting half his face in shadow, his back straight and gloved hands curled over the arms of the chair, he was an artist’s dream.
“As Heirs, we inherit the enemies and debts of our father. I am my father’s sole child. I represented an invaluable emotional currency for his enemies. The Citadel was well protected, and my mother rarely left my side.” Arin turned his cheek to the window. His eyes dissolved in the moonlight, swirling in its colors. “When I was two years old, my father executed a Jasadi merchant found guilty of enchanting the weapons of Nizahlan dissidents in the lower villages. There was an outcry from Malik Niyar and Malika Palia. They had wanted him punished in Jasad. Two weeks later, a musrira misted past our guards and into my bedroom.”
I frowned, tempted to interrupt. I had begged Dawoud to introduce me to a musrira when I was a child. Most Jasadi magic did not show a preference in how it was expressed or exhibit an affinity toward a particular use. Musriras were one of the rare exceptions. These Jasadis possessed the ability to move through space in spirit. They could vacate their physical forms in a safe place and spirit themselves anywhere they wanted to go. Usr Jasad had been warded to the teeth, but even our most powerful security barriers could not keep out a musrira.
“She cursed me. We believe she intended the curse to kill me, but my mother interrupted halfway through. The curse took only half effect. I woke up three days later with a new attunement to magic. I could sense it, feel it.” He turned away from the window. A strand of silver hair came loose at his temple. “Temporarily drain it.”