The Jasad Heir

What appeal can reason have in the face of your tears?

I wanted to cut him open and compare our bones to understand why his gave him grace and mine gave me back pain.

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?

She had the temperament of a deranged goose. Every interaction he’d shared with her had thoroughly convinced him he was not dealing with a stable woman.

Because it is the nature of humanity to celebrate the things that want to kill them.

I wanted to stay there. I wanted to tell him that I had not easily embraced anyone for a while now. That even though one day I would kneel before Jasad's judges in the afterlife to account for it, I would not renounce a single moment of loving the Nizahl Heir.

Children are not meant to bear the woes of this life, Sylvia. It breaks them. They will spend their adult lives doing everything in their power to never feel the weight of the world again.

Try again," he said. "What?" "Think of a better lie. You're capable of it.

Shame is a dangerous feeling to manipulate. Pull at the string too many times, and it will eventually snap into apathy.

When he saw me looking, a red tinge brightened the top of his cheeks. I blinked, and it was gone—a trick of the light, maybe. “No,” Arin said. “No?” “No, I don’t wish I was alone with my maps and my talwith. I am where I want to be.

And to every eldest daughter who chooses to be brave.

I am not killing my fig plant.” I pushed to my feet. “I’m cultivating its fighter’s spirit.

Most people feared what they were capable of doing, but I... I was starting to fear what I was capable of ignoring.

Blood cannot lead a kingdom,” Rory said. His voice gentled. “Sacrifice can. A true ruler is one who puts their people before themselves. No matter the cost.” “That isn’t me. It is not in my nature—” “Of course it isn’t. Altruism is no one’s nature. It wouldn’t be half as remarkable otherwise.

All your choices require sacrifice. The question is, what are you willing to lose?

That even though one day I would kneel before Jasad’s judges in the afterlife to account for it, I would not renounce a single moment of loving the Nizahl Heir.

It didn’t feel like betrayal. It felt like wandering through the woods for an endless night and finally stumbling into the dawn.

I sobbed like I hadn’t since the Blood Summit, when my first life ended. Pressed against the son of the man who had taken everything.

Two things stood between me and a good night’s sleep, and I was allowed to kill only one of them.

I didn't say that those things reminded me of safety and comfort. Two things that, in a painfully ironic twist of fate, I had come to associate with him.

Arin of Nizahl was maddeningly elegant. I wanted to cut him open and compare our bones to understand why his gave him grace and mine gave me back pain.

You want to be hunted?” A branch snapped somewhere below me. “Then I will gladly grant your wish.

Loss was an anchor I would always drag behind me. If I stopped moving, if I let the anchor catch, I would never summon the strength to keep going. I was not kind. I did not choose right over wrong or my heart over my head. But I was tenacious. I was spiteful.

My teeth were stuck together, and I had the most terrible notion that they were protecting me from what might fly out of my mouth if I unhinged my jaw.

Perhaps. But a temper that ignites as quickly as yours leaves ashes in its wake. I need only follow the trail.

I couldn’t imagine Arin permitting anyone to push his coat off his shoulders or undo the tight straps from his uniform. Would he level his steady gaze on them while their trembling fingers disrobed him? Or stare at the far wall in blank indifference, unyielding in body and manner?

He reddened. “Keep his name out of your filthy mouth.” I saw it, then. The fastest route to the finish. “But he likes my mouth,” I purred.

You think you are the most frightening creature in these woods, but you’re not,” I said to the raven. “I am.

I hate birds,” she said. She sliced into the boiled pigeon on her plate. “But I do love to eat them.