Before arriving in Mahair, the rumors placed Arin in Gahre. If he’d found the soldier’s body, then he must have been traveling south along Hirun. Along the outer edges of the lower villages.
I thought of the inexplicably stationed cabinet of war relics, leagues away from the Citadel. Our very first meeting—hadn’t the guards mentioned releasing someone? The layers knit together, and it hit me with such clarity that I placed a bracing hand on the wall.
“This isn’t about me at all, is it?”
I laughed, the sound grating and overly loud. I had played his game as Essiya, a girl who merited such attentions from the Nizahl Heir. But Sylvia was nothing. No logical reason existed for why the Commander of the Nizahl army himself should devote his energy toward my capture.
The truth is always in the beginnings, Hanim murmured. What is his basic truth?
Arin of Nizahl had trained thousands of soldiers on identifying and combatting Jasadis. The raven-marked trees, patrols, and trials were his prerogative. Where the Supreme just conquered and killed, his Heir turned Nizahl’s power into a political stranglehold on the other kingdoms.
Two obligations could compel the reclusive Nizahl Heir from his kingdom: choosing a Champion for the Alcalah and hunting a Jasadi threat of extraordinary danger. I’d assumed the wrong obligation brought him here.
“There is another Jasadi. Maybe a group,” I said. Slowly, the pieces slotted into place. I couldn’t believe how stupid I had been. “You’ve used the guise of choosing a Champion to hunt them down undetected.” The copious maps mounted in the war room, covered in lines and scribbles. “You’re after them. I am only convenient.”
I drew closer. A herd of deer stampeded on my chest, warning me back, Haven’t you learned anything? But if my suspicions were right, I had nothing to fear. Not yet. I leaned into the Commander’s space, gripping the arms of his chair. I gazed down at him, stirring the hair at his temple with my words. “I am alive because you need me, don’t you?” I lingered close enough to count his silver lashes. “And you’re furious.”
Arin smiled, pulling his scar tight. “Finally.”
CHAPTER NINE
Arin stood. I retreated, tripping over the edge of the threadbare carpet, but he moved around me.
He knelt by the soldier. A black gloved finger tapped the corpse’s throat. “It puzzled me at first. A broken neck, a broken back, and a disguised six-inch knife wound dealt to an area of the torso thick with muscle. Such excess. To what end?”
I crossed my arms over my chest. Did he mean to unnerve or flatter me?
“What I did not question was the use of magic in his murder. Only a Jasadi could have the capacity to eviscerate and break the back of a seasoned soldier.” Arin’s hand shifted to the soldier’s vest. He reached into its pocket. “And then I found this.”
Arin unfurled his palm, revealing tangled strands of curly black hair.
Not just any hair. Dania’s dusty bones, that boar of a Nizahlan died with a handful of my hair.
My scalp stung with a phantom ache. After I bit him, hadn’t he used his grip on my hair to hurl me away? I had seen the strands caught in his fist, but I assumed he dropped them. When had he gotten the chance to tuck them into his vest? Why would he?
“When defeat becomes a possibility, Nizahl soldiers are trained to collect evidence of their killer.” Arin turned his palm over. The strands floated onto the soldier’s chest. “I was seeking a Jasadi with long, curly black hair and a fondness for sesame-seed candies. And who did I see at the river, speaking Resar over a dead Jasadi?”
The one time I tried to be kind—
You weren’t being kind. You thought it would get me out of your head, Hanim snorted. “Well? Don’t leave me in suspense.” Knowing he had no immediate plans to kill me had done a great deal to loosen my tongue.
The side of Arin’s mouth twisted up. How pathetic I must have seemed to him. Like a bug running so quickly from an approaching shoe that it stumbles onto its back, arms and legs writhing in midair.
“You’re abnormally strong. You lie well enough to fool an entire village. Despite your attempts to prove otherwise, I believe you possess an agile mind.” He unfurled to his full height, and the shift was unmistakable. This was the moment he had foreseen as Felix’s guards leveled their swords at us. The crossroads he had already traveled and planned out.
“You will train and serve as my Champion for the Alcalah. When you have finished the trials, freedom is yours.”