The Jasad Crown

Essiya wakes cuffless in a mountain of kneeling strangers

Essiya—the Jasad Heir who spent years hiding as a village apprentice named Sylvia—regains consciousness in a sanctuary carved into the peaks beyond Suhna Sea.

Essiya wakes cuffless in a mountain of kneeling strangers

Essiya—the Jasad Heir who spent years hiding as a village apprentice named Sylvia—regains consciousness in a sanctuary carved into the peaks beyond Suhna Sea. The Urabi, Jasad's underground rebels, drugged her with tranquilizer arrows during the Victor's Ball and spirited her away before Nizahl could seize her. Her magic-suppressing cuffs are gone. Unfettered power thrums through her veins for the first time, and a mysterious gold vein threads across her palm. Namsa, the warrior niece of Essiya's beloved guardian Dawoud, presents her to hundreds of hidden Jasadis. They kneel. Essiya's stomach rebels at their reverence—she can barely lead herself. But when she gave Supreme Rawain her true name, she sealed her fate. The Urabi reveal their plan: claim the Omal throne through her bloodline, or raise the Jasad fortress during a sacred holiday called Nuzret Kamel.

Arin avenges Sefa's childhood and discovers madness keeps a century-old clock

Five days after his world collapsed at the Victor's Ball, Arin—the Nizahl Commander who trained Essiya as his Champion and fell for the lie of her—offers his High Counselor a choice between two glasses. One is poisoned. Arin has discovered the man molested Sefa during her childhood, and the punishment is absolute. The Counselor drinks and dies. Alone afterward, Arin spirals into obsessive research, sharpening hundreds of weapons without sleeping, scouring texts for evidence of magic-madness. He finds a rare book documenting one case every century for five millennia—always a Jasadi with staggering power, always young, always catastrophic. His council fractures over finding the missing Jasad Queen. He orders his guardsmen to track down Sefa and Marek, Essiya's closest friends—both scattered by her magic during the Ball. Arin's control frays while the girl who shattered his certainty haunts his every thought.

Efra's reckless attack forces the Heir to drain a legendary beast alone Efra, an Urabi member hostile to Essiya, releases centuries-old monsters from cages beneath Nizahl's poorest villages—without her approval. Essiya watches through the Urabi's Visionists as creatures devastate Galim's Bend. She had tried to warn Arin through involuntary magical appearances, and he believed her. He rides alone on his black warhorse while reinforcements lag behind. When Al Anqa'a—the glass-feathered predator that nearly killed Essiya during the Alcalah—swoops at him, Arin drops to the ground, stabs into its underbelly, and climbs to its neck. His bare hands drain its magic through contact, a curse-born ability unique to him. The beast crashes colorless through a row of shops. Essiya watches Arin…