Jarek raised his hands to signal his soldats. But he never finished the command, because Asha charged him first—disregarding every rule Safire ever drilled into her.
He caught her blades easily. But when he tried to cast her off, Asha held her ground. She didn’t have to beat him in combat. All she had to do was hold him back.
“Out of my way, Iskari. Or I will make you regret it.”
Asha gritted her teeth, holding off the strength and weight of his saber. Her body screamed. Her legs buckled. Jarek roared in her face.
Asha roared right back. Screaming out her fury.
Holding fast.
When he looked up over her head, whatever he saw made his mouth contort with rage. The force of him lifted as he stepped back, casting his saber into the sand.
Asha turned and looked skyward just as the bars clanked closed. Beyond the crisscrossed bars, the empty sky stretched cloudless and blue above her.
They’re gone.
And with that thought came a loneliness so sharp and cruel, it felt like an axe cleaving her heart in two.
Twenty-Nine
Above the bars, the crowd hissed at Asha, cursing her name. Shame crept around her heart like a poisonous vine.
She didn’t resist when Jarek took her slayers, then gave the order to empty the arena. She didn’t meet the gazes of the soldats pulling arrows from their fallen comrades’ chests, all of them looking like they wanted to put a dozen arrows in her.
Under the weight of what she’d done, Asha sank to her knees in the sand.
Somewhere in the arena above, her father was making his way down to the pit. She should be thinking about what she needed to tell him.
Instead, she thought of Torwin saying her name.
Asha. The name her mother gave her. Not Iskari, the name of a corrupted god.
What if I never see him again?
It shouldn’t have mattered.
At the sound of Safire’s moan, Asha looked to find two soldats dragging her into the pit. Asha went to rise, but three soldats moved toward her at once, and the look of pure hatred on their faces stopped her.
Jarek dragged Safire to Asha, throwing her into the sand, where she collapsed in a battered heap.
“Asha!” Her father’s roar rumbled through the empty arena as he entered the pit. Sand scattered as he walked toward his Iskari. “You’ve made me into a fool!”
Asha kept her eyes lowered as he closed the distance between them.
“Look at me.”
Obediently, her gaze trailed up his golden robe, past his royal crest, and settled on his stormy face.
“For years, I believed in you. For years, I’ve been on your side when no one else was. And in a single morning, you have undone all of it. All our hard work. Why?”
A voice rose from behind the king.
“Leave her alone.”
Dax stepped casually through the gate, tossing a knife, undecorated and roughly forged, from one hand to the other. As if it were a ball. His gaze locked on their father, and in her brother’s eyes Asha caught a glimpse of something dangerous.
Her father grimaced and motioned to a soldat to his left. “Get him out of here.”
But Dax kept walking, heading straight for the king, his chin tilted high, his brown eyes the clearest they had been in days.
When the soldat arrived at his side, Dax lifted his knife.
Scrublander made, Asha realized.
“Touch me,” said Dax, “and I’ll open your throat.”
The soldat paused, looking to Jarek. Jarek looked to the king, waiting for the order.
Dax didn’t wait.
“Five days ago”—his voice echoed through the empty arena as he moved toward their father—“I begged my sister to save the life of a slave.”
The king narrowed his eyes.
“Naturally, Asha refused. So I blackmailed her.” Arriving at Asha’s side, Dax stepped in front of his sister, cutting her off from sight. “Just like I blackmailed her into stealing your precious flame and intercepting the fight down in the pit.”
What?
Confused, Asha looked to Safire. But Safire’s eyes were cast down at her hands, planted in the sand. Her body trembled from the beating she’d taken.
Her father studied Dax with caution. “And why, my son, would you do that?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Dax’s eyes gleamed. “I hate you. And what better way to strike at the one you hate than use his own pet monster against him?”
Pet monster. Those words stung worse than if Dax had cut Asha with his knife.
But he’d lied about blackmailing her. Maybe he was still lying.
“Take my son out of my sight.” The king’s voice was measured and calm, but beneath it, Asha heard a fault line. “Put him in the dungeon and wait for me. I want to interrogate him myself.”
As the soldats moved in, Dax crouched down before Asha, his gaze softening on her scarred face.
“When darkness falls, little sister, the Old One lights a flame.”
As they grabbed his arms and pulled him away, Dax winked at her. There was no fear in him as they hauled him off. As if this was just a small part in a much bigger game he was playing.
They heaved Safire out of the pit after him. She glanced back at Asha, her face full of worry.
Worry for Asha. Not herself.
Asha frowned, remembering something Torwin had told her.
The day I found you in the sickroom, I knew things were about to change.
What things? she wondered now, thinking of the bow and arrows. What is my brother up to?
“Now that we’ve swept out the riffraff . . .” Jarek handed something to the dragon king. It was Asha’s leather arm piece. The one she’d unbuckled to escape him. “Her arm was unprotected when the dragon breathed its fire.” He stepped toward Asha, grabbing her bare arm and holding it up. “So why isn’t she scorched?”
Her father held up the armor, asking her a silent question.
“I can’t be burned,” she whispered to the sand.
“Speak up.”
Raising her chin, Asha said it louder: “I can’t be burned by dragonfire. Or any fire. It’s a . . . gift. From the Old One.” She couldn’t meet his eyes. “I wasn’t allowed to refuse it.”
Jarek and her father exchanged a look. Together, they turned their backs on Asha, speaking quietly.
Asha watched them: her father and his commandant, surrounded by soldats. The arena was empty. The Iskari knelt weaponless in the sand, while the king’s heir was being marched to the dungeons. If Jarek really were planning to take the throne, what was stopping him? Why wasn’t he overcoming her father right now?
Her father turned back to her, his grip on her arm piece tightening. “Has the Old One given you other gifts?”
Asha looked away, her shame scattering her thoughts. “Yes.”
“And? What are they?”
“The slayers,” she said. “And . . . the dragon.”
A stony silence solidified between them.
“You mean to tell me, all this time, you’ve been dealing with the Old One?”
Tears stung her eyes. She squeezed them shut. “If I don’t do what he says, he takes away my strength and keeps me from”—she darted a glance at Jarek—“from hunting.”
He’ll denounce me now. He’ll realize I’m a lost cause and cut me loose.
Her eyes opened. She looked to find her father examining her scarred face with worry in his gaze.
“He wants to use you, Asha. Like he used you eight years ago. You’re easily corrupted. A dangerous vessel he can turn against the rest of us.” He began to pace, running his hand over his bearded cheeks as he thought. When he stopped, he crouched down before her. “My dear child, why didn’t you tell me this before now?”
Asha loosed the breath she’d been holding.
“Because I was ashamed,” she said. “Because there is and always has been something dangerous inside me. I was afraid if I told you the truth, you’d think I
was beyond saving.”
“Look at me.”
She did.
Those eyes were warm again.
“I can’t help you if you don’t tell me when you’re in trouble.”
Asha stared at her father, dangerously close to crying tears of relief.
“Our initial bargain still stands,” her father said softly, so only she would hear. “You have until moonrise tonight.”
The commandant reached down to help his king rise. Asha watched the locking of their hands, the strength of their grip.
“She’s going to hunt you a dragon,” the king said as Jarek pulled him to his feet. “I want you to go with her this time.”
Asha froze, too startled to speak. Jarek raised his eyebrows, surprised.
“You saved her once from the Old One’s machinations,” said the king. “If the Old One seeks to manipulate her now, I want you there, at her side.”
Asha stared at her father. Their shared secret hung in his eyes. He wanted her to kill Kozu in front of Jarek. Jarek, who thought Kozu’s heart was a pledge, not a severing.
Was this his way of bolstering her? Of saying he knew she could do it?
And then, for the second time in the span of mere days, the king reached out and touched his daughter, gripping her shoulder tight.
He didn’t even hesitate.
“I wish I could be there when you strike the final blow,” he said. “The moment you do, you will free us all.”
Thirty
At midday, the Iskari and the commandant rode into the Rift.
Asha took the lead, atop Oleander, whose hooves thudded the earth in a rhythmic tattoo. Jarek rode on Asha’s left; and in their wake a dozen soldats galloped, armed with spears and halberds and armored with shields. Warblers and bush chats chirped out warnings from the trees as they thundered by.
The air felt heavy and charged. As if a storm were rolling in.
Asha raced down hunting paths, taking every shortcut she knew through woods and streams and more treacherous rocky terrain.
Jarek kept pace.
“Something doesn’t make sense,” he said as their horses waded through a wide creek, splashing cold water. “Why would Dax blackmail you? What does he care about my slave? Or the sacred flame?”
Oleander reached the bank first, clambering up and trying to put distance between herself and Jarek’s black stallion. Jarek grabbed Asha’s arm. She pulled hard on Oleander’s reins before he yanked her backward.
The sunlight sifting through the cedar and argan trees dimmed as the sky darkened above them.
“What is he up to, Asha? What secret are the two of you keeping?” Jarek loomed over her, his grip tightening. “Tell me the real reason you threw yourself into that pit.”
Asha thought of Torwin’s bruised face and bloody back. She thought of Shadow’s belly, glowing red with fire.
There had never been a choice. Asha could never have watched them die.
“How about a trade?” she said, narrowing her eyes. “My secret for the one you’re keeping for my father.”
Asha didn’t expect him to let go of her.
Nor did she expect the fearful look in his eye.
When the soldats galloped into the stream, Asha tore away from Jarek, through the pines, then burst into the meadow beyond. The clouds hung low. Swollen and dark, like a purple-black bruise.
Jarek came through behind her, followed by his soldats, the pine boughs rustling in their wake.
“Stay where you are,” Asha told them as she dismounted, then waded into the esparto grass. The storm clouds turned the meadow silver and gray.
This was where everything started.
At the edges, a familiar presence lurked. She smelled the faint scent of smoke and ash. But Elorma couldn’t stop her now. It had been eight years since Kozu burned her. Eight years since the city went up in flames and people lost their lives—because of her.
Asha was here to set things right.
“Well?” called Jarek. “Where is he?”
“He’ll come,” she said, reaching deep inside for the story buried in the darkness. “Tell the soldats to hide themselves.”
The soldats took up their positions in the trees, keeping out of sight. A memory flickered in Asha’s mind. One from eight years ago. The last time she’d stood in this meadow.
She shut it out.
“Asha?” Jarek sounded uneasy.
There was no way around it. She was going to have to tell the story right in front of her father’s commandant, and in doing so, reveal the truth: she’d never succeeded in overcoming her nature. She’d only succeeded at hiding it.
But it wouldn’t matter in the end. Not once Kozu was dead.
Staring up at the clouded sky, Asha threw her voice out as far as it could go. It wasn’t an old story she told—not exactly.
“Once there was a girl who was drawn to wicked things!” The wind snatched up her voice and threw it across the field. The grass rattled and hissed all around her.
“It didn’t matter that the old stories killed her mother. It didn’t matter that they’d killed many more before her. The girl let the stories in. Let them eat away at her heart and turn her wicked. The girl didn’t care.”
The air crackled around Asha. In the distance, she saw a black shape launch itself from a jagged, mountainous ridge into the dark clouds.
“Under the cloak of night, she crept over rooftops and snaked through abandoned streets. She sneaked out of the city and into the Rift, where she told the dragons story after story. She told so many stories, she woke the deadliest dragon of all: one as dark as a moonless night. One as old as time itself. Kozu, the First Dragon.”
“Asha . . .” Jarek’s voice sounded strange. Frightened.
She walked farther into the tall grass. The sound of wingbeats reverberated on the air. The wind rose, howling. It tugged her hair out of its braid and whipped it across her face.
“Kozu wanted the girl for himself! Wanted to hoard the deadly power spilling from her lips! Wanted her to tell stories for him and him alone. Forever!”
A shadow fell across her. She looked up to see a dragon circling. Black as ink. Black as a still pool on a moonless night. Black as Asha’s eyes.
She drew the axe at her hip.
Kozu landed with a thud. The earth trembled beneath him. His shadow shot over her, cloaking her in darkness. His scales gleamed and his slitted yellow eye drank her in. Asha’s eyes did the same, fixing on his scar. A mirror image of hers, it ran down his serpentine face, cutting through his eye, marring those inky scales. Two horns twisted out of his head, perfect for goring prey; and on each foot were five talons, sharp as knives. As wide as a courtyard, his wings remained outspread—a show of just how large he was, how easily he could crush her.
Like a story himself, Kozu was formidable and fierce, beautiful and powerful.
The thought of him dead suddenly struck Asha with a piercing sadness.
She gripped her axe harder.
Someone moved behind her. Kozu’s gaze darted to him, slitted nostrils flaring. But whoever it was, the First Dragon hadn’t come for him. He’d come for Asha.
Like the predator he was, he circled her, the grass rustling as he moved.
Asha raised her axe. Her eyes fixed on the place where his heart beat out its ancient song. It was her or that song; they couldn’t coexist. If Asha didn’t silence it, she would be forced to go to Jarek tonight.
Kozu’s chest glowed like a simmering coal in the center of a fire. Her fingers tightened around her axe, waiting for the perfect moment.
She waited too long.
Kozu’s tail lashed, hitting her in the stomach—not with the spiked end this time, but with the strength of the middle. The force of the blow knocked the axe from Asha’s hand. It landed in the grass as she staggered back.
Asha reached to draw her slayers, but Kozu’s tail came again, wrapping around her chest, pinning her arms to her sides and squeezing the breath from her lungs.
She gasped for air as Kozu lifted her off her feet and drew her to him.
His breath was hot on her face. His teeth were hundreds of yellowed spikes.
No. . . .
How could she have come this close, only to fail?
Death’s gate rose up in her mind. In a moment, she’d be walking the path to those gates. The same path Willa walked all those years ago. . . .
Suddenly, a story flickered through Asha’s mind, like a flame in the darkness. It brought her back to the meadow and the dragon and the soldats surrounding them. But the story wasn’t hers.
Another flicker.
This story belonged to Kozu.
She’d told him one. And now, just like they used to do, he would tell her one in return.
Right before he killed her.
Kozu’s Story
He was waiting in the trees, waiting for the girl to come out of the rock. It was dark and he was waiting. Craving the voice thrumming with ancient power. Wanting the girl speaking the stories aloud.
The sun rose, and still, she didn’t come. He thrashed his tail. His wings ached to fly. His hunger needed slaking.
But he wanted the stories more than his wings wanted air and his belly wanted meat, so he stayed. She would come. She always came.
When he heard her voice, it was in the wrong place.
He launched himself out of the trees and into the air. The heat of the sun coursed through him. The strength of the wind bore him up. He saw her alone, far from the wretched city, far from the eyes and teeth on the wall.
He didn’t think why. Why here, when it was always there—at the rock, higher up on the mountainside. Kozu needed, so Kozu went.
She was all he saw. He watched her face turn up to him, the story of Elorma pouring out of her mouth. He circled, landed, sending up red dust. When it settled, he started toward her, needing to tell her a tale of his own, needing her to put a voice to all the stories inside him so the Old One could live on.
Fixated on his dark jewel, he didn’t see the glint of sun on metal. Didn’t see until all of them were stepping out of the trees with blades that stopped the hearts of dragons.
He looked from the girl to her kin swarming out of the woods. They smelled like iron and hate. Their gazes devoured him, hungry for his hide.
The Last Namsara Page 19