The Last Namsara

by Kristen Ciccarelli

  Safire moved first, hopping the table and lifting Asha up in a hug. No one would punish her for touching Asha now, and she took full advantage of the freedom, squeezing her cousin until it hurt.

  “Saf,” Asha managed. “I’m so sorry.”

  Safire pulled away, frowning hard. “For what? This?” She pointed to her bruised face and grinned. “You should’ve seen what I did to their faces.” Letting go of Asha, she looked to Torwin. “When the red moon bled out and you hadn’t returned . . .”

  “They had her in the dungeon,” Torwin explained. “I couldn’t get in alone. I had to wait.”

  Asha looked from Safire to Torwin to Dax. The three of them had planned her rescue together.

  “The day of the revolt, we searched for you,” said Dax, coming out from behind the table. His hands no longer shook. He was still reed thin and tired, but his eyes were clear and earnest. “But you weren’t anywhere.” He looked away. “So we left you behind.” She heard what he didn’t say: with a monster. He thinks he abandoned me, she realized.

  “I never would have forgiven myself if—”

  Asha shook her head. “I’m here now.”

  “Yes,” said Safire, her eyes narrowing. “Which means Jarek is already looking for you.” She glanced at Dax. “We need to double our patrol.”

  He nodded. “Go do it.”

  Safire hugged Asha one more time before leaving the tent. In her absence, Asha looked to her brother. Though his golden tunic was wrinkled and smudged with dirt, he seemed to shine in it.

  “Tell me what all of this is,” she said, motioning to the map, the tent, the door leading out to a camp full of rogues.

  “We’re going to invade Firgaard and overthrow the dragon king,” said Dax. “But we need more men, women, and weapons in order to stand any kind of chance. So Roa made me a deal: the scrublanders will lend us what we need if I make her my queen.”

  Asha felt like her heart had just fallen out of her chest. It was Roa’s household that turned against Dax all those years ago. “But . . .”

  “It was Roa’s idea to take Darmoor,” he explained, anticipating her objection. “Roa gave us the distraction we needed. She knew Jarek would send the army there, which would cut the number of Firgaard’s soldats in half.”

  Which was why the revolt had been so successful.

  Asha marveled. Roa was a mastermind.

  “But queen of Firgaard? Are you sure you can trust her?”

  He sighed, not quite meeting her eyes, and ran a hand through his brown curls. “I don’t have much choice. Without the scrublander army, our father will tear this realm apart, piece by piece.”

  Piece by piece. Until he found Asha.

  She looked at Torwin, silhouetted in the opening of the tent.

  Until he found them both.

  Just think of it, Asha, Torwin’s voice echoed through her mind. Freedom, adventure, the salty sea air on your face. . . .

  It was a delusion. A fantasy. As long as her father held the throne, Torwin would be hunted. It wouldn’t matter how far away he got.

  The thought hit her like an arrow to the chest.

  Asha couldn’t run. She had to stay and fight.

  “A caravan bringing weapons is due in three days,” Dax went on. “Once it arrives, there will be a wedding. And then we go to war.”

  “I want to help,” she said.

  Only Asha knew what her father was truly capable of. The way he’d lied to her, twisting her into a horrifying tool to do his bidding. The way he handed her over to Jarek, like she was worthless. Like what she wanted didn’t matter. Like her heart and soul didn’t matter.

  Dax smiled at her. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

  “What? No.” Torwin stepped farther into the tent, glaring at Dax. “You said if I brought her to you, you’d keep her safe.”

  “This is her fight too.”

  Torwin swung to face Asha, his eyes full of anguish. “You’ve only just escaped. You can’t march right back—”

  “Who are you to say what I can and can’t do? You plotted a revolution with my own brother and told me nothing.”

  Torwin’s jaw clenched, his hands curled into fists. “I plotted a slave rebellion. I plotted the freedom of my people. I want no part in this grasp at power.” His eyes slid to Dax for the briefest moment and his voice dropped to something softer. “Asha, you’re free. What if this fails? What if you fall into their hands again?”

  Asha saw the fear in his eyes. He’d risked so much to save her tonight. And here she was, throwing it in his face by marching back to the city alongside her brother.

  “Asha.” Torwin’s voice was strained, his eyes pleading. “You don’t have to do this.”

  But she did. She wanted—no, needed—her father brought to his knees.

  My father must pay for what he’s done to me.

  Asha turned to face her brother. “Whatever you need me to do, I’ll do it.”

  From behind her, Torwin said, very softly, “Then I guess this is good-bye.”

  When she spun to face him, he was already gone.

  Thirty-Five

  Asha tracked Torwin through the camp and up into the blue-black darkness of the woods, where she promptly lost him. Why hadn’t she brought a torch? Her heart pounded. She needed to find him.

  She would not let that be their good-bye.

  When starlight filtered through the cedars, Asha followed it to where the trees ended, giving way to the precipice Shadow had landed on. Asha stared out over the realm before her. The jagged ridges of the Rift slowly collapsed into desert, and beyond it: stars forever.

  Asha stood at the edge, shivering in the cold night air, searching the skies for a dust-red dragon and its rider. With the Rift sprawled out before her and the camp nestled in the valley at her back, Asha did the only thing she could think of: she spoke an old story into the wind. One meant for the dragon darker than a starless night.

  She heard his wingbeats in the distance. Saw the silhouette of his form fly across the face of the moon. Asha hugged herself to stay warm, waiting.

  Finally, Kozu landed in a spiral of dirt and leaves, tucking in his wings. Asha traced the scabbed wound in his side from the spear, remembering how he’d stumbled and hit the earth. Remembering how she’d been pitched from his back.

  She was afraid to try again.

  Kozu swung his head around to face her. They stared at each other, the Iskari and the First Dragon, until finally Asha took a deep breath.

  Slowly, her fingers felt for the bump of his shoulder bone. After grabbing hold, she swung herself up onto his back, hiking her dress up to her thighs. His scales were warm and smooth beneath her palms. She breathed in his smell: all smoke and ash.

  If she let herself think of what she was about to do, she might climb down. So she didn’t think. With her tongue against her teeth, Asha clicked the way Torwin had with Shadow.

  Kozu leaped off the precipice and into the sky.

  Asha’s stomach lurched as the wind rushed past her face and rocky ridges rose up to meet them. She gripped Kozu’s neck and held on tight until he leveled out.

  This time, something locked into place deep inside her. Something that was always meant to be.

  Asha sat up, looking out over craggy outcroppings, over meadows flecked with oleander. She felt Kozu not just beneath her, a dangerous creature moving from wind current to wind current, but in her mind too. Like a dark shadow. An ancient presence. Fixed and fierce and hers.

  The wind smacked her bare legs and face. It whipped her hair and stung her eyes. When her teeth started to chatter, she pressed herself against Kozu to keep from freezing. But she didn’t turn him back; she needed to find Torwin.

  She needed to persuade him to stay. To fight with them against her father.

  As Kozu flew, Asha searched the sky. Shivering, she watched the smoky clouds pass overhead, depriving her of light from the stars. When the clouds fled, she scanned the peaks and ridges they flew past. But
there was no sign of any other dragon.

  As her shivers turned more violent, Asha understood the reason for Torwin’s fitted coat and gloves. If she didn’t find him soon, she would have to head back—or she’d freeze.

  It was when she looked down again that she saw a familiar shape, flying below. Asha clicked to Kozu and he dropped, making her stomach flutter. A heartbeat later, both dragons flew side by side.

  Shadow’s rider looked over at Asha. His sandskarf covered his nose and mouth.

  Don’t make me say good-bye to you, she thought.

  Asha pitched her voice above the wind. “Where are you going?”

  He didn’t answer.

  Squinting into the distance, just past two rocky peaks, she saw the glassy surface of a lake, silver in the moonlight.

  “There’s water down there!”

  Again, he kept silent.

  “I’ll race you to it!” she shouted.

  Torwin didn’t have time to respond. Asha leaned close to Kozu, who knew exactly what she wanted, and together they plunged into the wind.

  A feeling rushed through her as they fell: excitement, fear, exhilaration, all snarled up together and lodged in her belly. Soon, though, a sharper feeling replaced it. Asha looked from side to side, searching for Torwin and Shadow. They hadn’t followed. She and Kozu were alone.

  Asha swallowed disappointment. Sensing it, Kozu started to level out, and, just as he did, a dust-red dragon and its rider plunged past them. For a moment, Asha watched them: Torwin keeping low to Shadow’s back while Shadow tucked his wings in—falling, falling. As if they’d done this thousands of times. As if it was their favorite game.

  A moment later, she was falling too.

  Asha clutched Kozu’s neck as the wind whipped her hair. When they righted again, Kozu was head-to-head with Shadow.

  Torwin glanced their way, then clicked. Shadow sped up.

  A moment later, almost lazily, Kozu caught up with them.

  Above his sandskarf, Torwin’s eyes narrowed. He clicked once more. But this was the fastest Shadow could go. He was smaller and more agile, but Kozu was stronger and had more weight to thrust them forward.

  Torwin and Shadow fell back. Asha turned her attention to the lake.

  She thought Kozu would land beside the water. Kozu did not. As Asha focused on the bank, the dragon headed straight for the water. Asha clicked frantically, then tried to pull up on his neck, then his wings, wanting him to slow down. To stop before—

  The surface of the lake broke as Kozu hit. Asha held her breath just before the water rushed up to swallow them.

  Underwater, she slid from Kozu’s back. When her feet touched the bottom, she pushed up, then broke the surface. Asha spluttered and gasped. She splashed at Kozu in retaliation, but the dragon was deep underwater, swimming away from her. The lake was warmer than the night air and Asha stayed a moment, her dress floating around her as she tilted her face back to the jeweled sky above.

  On the shore, Shadow landed.

  Asha swam for the lake’s edge as Torwin dismounted, but the layers of her dress made kicking hard, and it took her twice as long as it normally would. She lost both her slippers. When her feet finally touched stone, Asha made her way toward the place where Torwin stood. Her bare feet slipped on the underwater rocks.

  “You win,” he said, reaching down from his dry overhang.

  Asha made a face as he grabbed hold of her hands and pulled her out of the water. The wet dress stuck to her body and weighed her down. Shivering, she picked up the hem and wrung it out.

  “Here.” He slid off his strange coat and tucked it over her shoulders. “There are dry clothes in my tent, if you want them.” She did want them—and along with them, an escape from this gown. Torwin pointed up the shore to an angular shape hunched on the sand. “I’ll make a fire while you change.”

  Asha nodded, shivering, then made her way toward it.

  Halfway up the shore, though, her feet fell still as she remembered the tiny buttons dotting the back of the underlayer of her dress.

  I can’t take it off without help.

  Her face flamed at the thought. Jarek had her gown made for exactly this reason: so she would need her new husband to undress her.

  At that thought, Asha pulled Torwin’s coat tighter around her. She looked back, to where the skral knelt before his crackling kindling, blowing on the fragile flames. The silver collar around his throat caught the light.

  Not so long ago, she’d thought they were nothing alike, her and this boy. Now she knew the only difference between them was he wore his bondage around his throat while hers was invisible to the eye. She’d thought her title, Iskari, was her greatest power. She’d thought hunting dragons in the Rift was her fiercest freedom. But the truth was: these things had never been anything more than a collar around her throat.

  And now that they were both free, he was escaping the horror while Asha was marching right back into it.

  How can I ask him to stay and fight? she thought. This isn’t his war.

  Torwin had suffered enough. He deserved to be free.

  She looked away from him. She didn’t dare ask for his help with the dress. Not after everything back in the camp. But with the sun gone, the temperature would drop. It was dangerous to be inadequately dressed in the Rift at night.

  Trembling with cold, Asha made her way toward the fire, hoping the heat of the flames would be enough to dry her. Otherwise . . .

  She didn’t want to think about the second option.

  Thirty-Six

  Asha sank down onto the log next to the struggling fire, shivering in her soaking-wet dress. Just beyond the firelight, Shadow stalked a sleeping Kozu. His forked tail thrashed. He lowered himself on his front legs, ready to pounce. Kozu opened one yellow eye, saw the dragon readying himself, and closed it again.

  “Why are you sleeping out here?” Asha asked as Torwin fed more wood into the flames. “So far away from New Haven?”

  A loud growl startled them. Asha peered into the darkness beyond the fire. Kozu’s scales rippled in the firelight as he pinned Shadow on his back. Kozu’s tail was in the younger dragon’s mouth as Shadow’s own thrashed happily.

  Asha turned back to Torwin, her teeth chattering. She held her trembling palms out to the fire, letting the heat lick her clammy skin, trying to get warm. “There isn’t enough room in the camp?”

  “I’ve spent my whole life in cramped quarters,” said Torwin, blowing into the flames, making them spread. “I prefer the open sky.”

  Asha wanted to say she understood. Sleeping under the sky was one of the best parts of hunting. But her teeth clattered so hard, she could only clamp them together and hunch farther toward the fire.

  Torwin fed it two more logs, and only when these caught and burned did he sink back on his heels and look up at Asha. His hands were streaked with ash.

  An immediate frown creased his forehead.

  “You’re still in your binding dress.”

  She didn’t meet his gaze. Just waved her hand. “I’m fine.” Her whole body shook with shivers. “Really.”

  “I promise the clothes are clean. They might not fit well, but you won’t freeze to death.”

  When she said nothing in response, he rose a bit huffily. “Fine. Do what you want. That’s what you always do anyway.”

  Asha threw him a look and found him struggling to pull her mother’s ring off his smallest finger. When it finally came free, he held it out to her. “Here. This belongs to you.”

  Asha stared at the white circle of bone on his palm.

  All those days ago in the Rift, she didn’t want to give it to him. So much had changed since then. Now that he held it out to her, she didn’t want to take it back. As if taking it back meant taking back everything else.

  “I’m leaving in the morning,” he said. “I’ll probably never see you again. Take it.”

  At those words, Asha pulled her hands away from the fire and placed them firmly on the damp lo
g beneath her. “I can’t take it back.” She kept the scarred side of her face turned away from him. “We had a deal. I promised to fly you to Darmoor, and I didn’t. The ring belongs to you now.”

  “I don’t care about that,” he said, stepping closer, holding it farther away from himself. “It was your mother’s, Asha. I think she’d want you to have it instead of some slave.”

  Anger sparked in her then. How dare he say that—to her, of all people? Asha had risked her life for him. She’d risked even more than her life.

  Rising, she narrowed her eyes on him. “I said, I can’t take it back.”

  He reached for her hand and pressed the ring into her clammy palm. But when he pulled away, Asha’s fingers didn’t close around the band, and it fell into the sand at their feet.

  For several heartbeats, both of them stared at it.

  Torwin turned away.

  Fire coursed through Asha’s veins. “Don’t you dare walk away.”

  He kept walking.

  “Take it back!”

  He stopped then, almost out of reach of the firelight. He didn’t turn around when he said, very softly, “Is that a command, Iskari?”

  Her throat burned.

  “Torwin . . .”

  He turned around. But he didn’t look at her. Like a good, obedient skral, he kept his gaze on the sand at her feet. Where the ring had fallen.

  “Look at me.” Asha’s voice shook.

  His hands fisted. His shoulders bunched. But he didn’t look up.

  Anger blazed through her. He didn’t get to do this. Not in the Rift, where rules bound no one. Not after everything they’d been through.

  She moved like wind.

  Right before she shoved him, Torwin looked up. His anguished gaze met Asha’s furious one.

  And then, beneath the force of her palms, he staggered back. Behind them, both dragons stopped playing and looked up.

  “Why are you doing this?” Asha demanded, warmed by the heat of her own fury.

  A breath shuddered out of him. “I thought I was getting you out of danger.”

  Asha stopped. Her fists uncurled.

  “And then I walked you right back into it.”