Page 206 of The Jasad Crown

To Arin, he had written a short note:We also remember her today. Be careful.

Arin pulled his necklace from under his vest and wrapped his fingers around the worn beads of the fig. It never left his neck, dangling inches above the black raven etched over his heart.

Sefa had wanted to come with him today. Arin rarely refused the Sultana of Lukub anything, but under no circumstances would he bring her to the site of Marek’s death. Ten years, and his ghost still haunted the Sultana. Arin would not deliver her to her grief.

He also did not want to bring along someone who believed Essiya dead. No matter what she claimed, Arin knew she only wanted to come because she was worried. She worried every time he visited.

“She is not coming back, Arin. Nobody who enters the mist returns,” Sefa had shouted once. “Every year, you wait. And every year, you come back from the bridge as broken as you were that first day.”

Arin had not spoken to her for eight months afterward.

Arin’s kingdom thrived. His people were fed, sheltered, and safe. The kingdoms had not seen a significant conflict since the previous Nuzret Kamel, and Arin had spent years working with rulers he barely tolerated to ensure a smooth transition for the widespread return of magic, both within the kingdoms and between them. He had done everything that needed to be done, dedicated the whole of his time and attention to their people’s shared success, and Sefa could not grant him one day a year?

A splatter of mud on the side of the basket caught his eye, andArin swept it clean with the handkerchief in his pocket. Arin never used his own magic. He frequently found himself wishing Essiya had just taken the scepter with her. She had given Arin back a piece of himself that could not fit into any corner Arin cast it into.

Tightening his grip on the basket, Arin stepped onto Sirauk Bridge. The mist billowed around him, pale breath winding beneath his coat and through the black strands of his hair.

He was not as woefully tragic as Sefa and Jeru believed. He knew the Awaleen had been entombed for thousands of years. He knew it was almost impossible they would rise again, let alone within his lifetime.

But it should have been almost impossible for magic to return to the kingdoms.

It should have been almost impossible for the Nizahl Heir to find the Jasad Heir hiding in a tiny village in Omal.

It should have been almost impossible for him to fall in love with a woman who maddened him at every turn.

It had taken Arin too long to recognize that the best parts of his life existed in thealmost. They existed here—beyond the reach of certainty, on the outskirts of doubt, swaying over the cliff of catastrophe.

His coat hung so heavy with frost, Arin did not notice when some of the warmth returned to his stiff limbs. He did not register the rays of sunlight piercing the thinning mist, golden pools gathering over the damp boards of the bridge. The boards he could see again for the first time in ten years, connecting Sirauk Bridge to the dense thicket of trees on the other side of the swaying planks.

Arin watched the mist dissipate, and he feared Sefa might have been right. His heart had begun to thump erratically, beating stronger than it had in a decade.

Ten years he had spent navigating the nexus of duty and despair, learning to balance himself on its fractures. Ten years in constantmotion, never allowing anything as dangerous as hope to rise between the cracks long enough to change the path forward into a cliff.

In the center of the bridge, the mist melted around four figures.

One of them took an unsteady step toward him, curls catching on the rising wind. A slow grin spread over her face. Dark eyes fastened on to him as the sun cleared the last of the mist from Sirauk Bridge.

And Arin finally allowed himself to fall.

“Welcome home, Suraira.”