The moonlight weaved through his silver hair, loosened from its meticulous tie. Without his coat, freed from his perpetual mask of politeness, Arin of Nizahl was every inch a monster.
And he was staring directly at me.
Death had always scared me more than its fair share. I had watched it steal everyone I loved. I had guided its hand in taking the lives of others. But one thing scared me more than death ever could: capture. Losing myself in the will of another, feeling my purpose crushed and re-molded to fit someone else’s plans. Hanim had torn the Heir of Jasad to parts. She needed a weapon, so she assembled me into one. The night before I escaped, I had pressed a dagger against the throbbing vein at my neck. Death was a door, I told myself. An escape. One slice, and I would be free.
I killed Hanim that same night.
Arin was too strong for me to kill. What good was his offer of my freedom if it was a lie, a honey-soaked trap for the witless bear?
I wouldn’t be trapped again. I had cut and bled and fought for my freedom. I would rip his head from his shoulders with my teeth before I took his shackles.
Gripping the hilt of the dagger, I yanked it out of my leg, burying my cry in my shoulder. A fool’s move, to be sure. Depending on how deep the knife had wedged itself, removing it without a readily available tourniquet would endanger the entire limb.
Another knife slammed inches from my hand. Arin had ridden closer, looping the end of a rope around the base of my tree. “It is not mere caution stilling your magic, is it?”
I stifled my groan. Baira’s blessed beauty, was his goal to evoke my magic by riddling me with knives? I didn’t understand how it healed me last time, and I doubted it would bother to save me twice.
My leg cramped in protest as I hauled myself to the next branch. Blood dripped down the bark like grotesque sap. The wound bled freely, slicking the back of my heel. All I wanted to do was press my forehead to the tree and catch my breath again, but I didn’t have time. I anchored one arm around a thick fork of branches. With the other, I threw the bloody knife straight at the Heir.
My aim met true… in a sense. The knife sailed past Arin and sliced into his horse’s flank. It shrieked, rearing onto its haunches. Had Arin been seated, he would been thrown directly over the riverbank, his body smashed into the stones at the bottom.
I made an unintelligible noise of frustration as the rope in his hand went taut. He swung off the horse with disconcerting grace and landed at the base of my tree. His horse galloped off into the woods.
“You can’t use your magic. Someone or something has blocked it off.” Arin’s laugh, devoid of any warmth or humor, sent shivers along my spine. He retreated from my tree, and to my horror, began to climb the one right next to it. “How utterly miserable you must be.”
Why was he climbing the tree next to mine? I froze, unsure whether to climb higher or drop to the ground and outrun him on foot. He balanced himself on a branch parallel to mine, and I realized his intentions a split second too late.
A new dagger slammed into my arm, pinning me to the tree. I screamed, the sudden agony whiting out my vision.
You will not do this, Essiya, Hanim commanded. You will not allow the Supreme’s Heir to finish what his father started.
My cuffs tightened. I swallowed a sob. Everything hurt. I forced myself to look at the dagger. One good turn: it hadn’t hit bone.
But the next one might. He would cut and cut and cut at me until I crawled down in defeat. My blocked magic was an experiment to him, another string to tug and twist. He thought it would heal me. I did not know how to explain that my magic cared less about my suffering than he did.
“I will not be trapped again,” I whispered.
A path to the finish appeared before me. A way to end this, one way or the other.
I stuffed the torn sleeve in my mouth and grasped the hilt of the dagger. One breath. Two. I yanked the dagger from my arm, my muffled shriek reverberating in my ribs. My hand convulsed. Oh, it hurt, it hurt. Through blurry eyes, I watched the dagger tumble to the ground.
“You can climb down and end this whenever you want,” Arin said.
I spat the sleeve from my mouth. Fury cleared the haze of agony from my mind. He was so assured, so confident he would win. Why wouldn’t he be? Shedding Jasadi blood was his birthright.
For once, spite motivated me faster than fear. I peeled myself from the tree trunk. With my uninjured arm, I pushed myself away from the branch’s root. I scooted back—to the edge of the branch, directly above the riverbank. One stiff wind, and I would tumble over the side and splatter my insides on the stones below.