“What are you doing?” Astonishment underscored his harsh tone. He slid to the bottom of the tree and took a step toward me.
“Stop!” I shouted. “One more step and I’ll push myself off. You may think my magic might heal a few stab wounds, but can it knit together a broken body?”
In a blink, his expression went calm and steady. I wanted to slap it off. Did he discard his frustration like a stray eyelash or merely push it down?
“You have lost a great volume of blood. I expect you have minutes until you faint. I will not be fast enough to catch you,” he said.
“Good.”
He took a step forward. Did he think I was making empty threats? I sealed my free hand around the branch and dropped to the side. I went airborne.
The branch crackled ominously, bending under the weight of my body. The veins in my hand bulged with the strain of holding on. I dangled from the branch and felt the inexplicable urge to cackle. If this was how magic-madness felt, I understood why Rovial had wanted to burn the world down.
Arin had darted closer, but not close enough. If he took another step and I let go, I would hit the rocks before he reached me. A fuzziness had already begun to encroach on the margins of my sight.
His manner remained unmoved. He proceeded as though we were sitting down to share a pleasant meal together. “What do you want?”
What I meant to say was “Your severed head rotating on a spit.”
What came out was significantly worse.
“Freedom. Real freedom.” The branch whined. I slid farther down, tightening my sweat-slickened fingers at the last minute.
“I offered you freedom, and you ran away.”
I scoffed. The beat of my heart slowed, becoming as heavy as the rest of me. “I have no need for your empty promises, Commander. Throw your clouds to the sky. I will keep my feet planted in the earth.”
“How can I convince you my word is true?”
I stared at him with open bewilderment. I had prepared to die in the river with the knowledge that the Heir’s offer of freedom meant nothing. Was this another game?
He started talking before I could form a coherent response. “Hundreds of people have disappeared in the last seven years, taken by two groups. Forty-seven of them have been found dead. Likely killed by the same people who took them—Jasadi rebels calling themselves Mufsids.”
At some point, he had maneuvered closer. The woods had narrowed onto Arin, wreathing him in shadows, and I could not distinguish how much of it was due to my failing lucidity. Mufsids. I’d never heard the name before.
“You said… two.” My mouth resisted the onerous task of forming a sentence. I blinked, and when I opened my eyes, I had slid to the very last inch left of the branch.
“The others are the Urabi. A second Jasadi group, less violent than the Mufsids. The Mufsids and Urabi chase Jasadis throughout the four kingdoms, competing to recruit them for their cause. Whoever the Mufsids can’t successfully recruit, they murder. The Urabi steal their target without any trace, whether they come willingly or not. Both groups have only competed for the same person if they held some important post in Jasad. Nobles, army officials, council members.”
Important post?
A distant alarm sounded behind the wall of my fatigue.
“And you think… they want… me?” It took everything not to close my eyes. If I did, they would not reopen, and I was starting to worry I had made a grave error in judgment. What if everything the Heir said in the cabin was the truth?
“I am certain they do. Once I see my plan to the end, freedom is yours. If you do not believe in my honesty, believe in my loss. If it is revealed I allowed a Jasadi to stand as Nizahl Champion in the Alcalah, it will cast my reputation and my throne into ruin.”
Skepticism etched itself into every line of my face. The best way to ensure no one ever found out his treason was to simply dispose of me after he captured the Mufsids and Urabi.
He plucked the next thorn of uncertainty before I could speak. “You will be constantly surrounded by guards if you win the Alcalah—independent guards from every kingdom who do not obey any command but yours. Not even mine.”
It didn’t matter. We both knew that if he wanted to kill me, he would.
Yet I found myself struggling to believe he would risk plunging his own kingdom into turmoil by murdering his Champion. If he accused another kingdom of killing me, it would be grounds for war. Even Felix, whose intelligence I admired less than a rutting pig’s, had not dared to lay a hand on me after Arin’s declaration.