The Last Namsara

by Kristen Ciccarelli

  Asha stared at him. Over his hunched shoulders, the lake shone. The stars’ reflections were a rippling silver on black.

  “And worst of all, you’re fine with it. You’re happy to be a piece in someone else’s game.” He ran frustrated hands through his hair. “It’s as if you believe them when they look at you like all you’re good for is being used. Like all you’re good for is destroying things.”

  She frowned at him through her dripping-wet hair.

  “That’s not what you are, Asha. And it’s not how you should be looked at.”

  All around them was the soft sound of the lake lapping at the shore. Asha crossed her arms. His words struck something soft and exposed. Something she needed to protect at all costs.

  Very quietly, she whispered, “How should I be looked at?”

  Torwin lowered his gaze to her throat. A breath shuddered out of him.

  “Like you’re beautiful,” he said. “Beautiful and precious and good.”

  The words cracked her open, tearing that soft, exposed thing out from the safety of her chest. It angered her that he could do it so easily. It infuriated her that he could do it with just his words.

  But Asha remembered the sight in the mirror.

  She knew what she was.

  “I’ve spent my whole life believing lies.”

  His gaze rose to meet hers.

  “Please,” she whispered, “no more.”

  Torwin no longer hesitated. He stepped toward her. “If I’d spent my life believing lies, I wouldn’t trust myself to know the truth when it stood staring me in the face.”

  Asha narrowed her eyes at him, forcing him to look at all of her. She didn’t turn her cheek. Didn’t hide her scar. She forced him to look his own lie in the face.

  “Why is it so hard for you to hear, Asha? You’re beautiful.”

  Asha opened her mouth to refute this obvious untruth, but he interrupted.

  “You’re precious,” he said, softer this time. “You’re—”

  “Stop it!” She swung her fist, and he caught it. When she tried to free it, his grip tightened, so she elbowed him in the stomach.

  The breath went out of him. He put his hands on his knees, breathing unsteadily.

  But Torwin never gave up easily.

  “It’s what I thought the very first time I saw you,” he said, recovering. “In my master’s library, pulling down scrolls.” Asha shoved him again. He staggered back. “It’s what I thought after Kozu burned you, when you stood before the entire city. It’s what I thought when they shouted at you and turned their backs on you and spat at your feet and you . . . you stood there and took it. I’ve never, not once, stopped thinking it.”

  Tears burned in her eyes. Her throat stung with heat.

  “You’re a liar.”

  He grabbed her fist, pulling her into him. Asha tried to push him off, but his arms tightened around her. She used her elbows and knees, but Torwin only buried his face in her neck and held on.

  When the fight went out of her, she collapsed against him. Her teeth chattered and her body shook. Her arms moved around his neck, hugging him close, surrendering to the warmth of him.

  “You’re going to freeze to death,” Torwin whispered against her neck. “Why didn’t you change?”

  When she didn’t answer, when she only hugged him harder, Torwin pulled away, silent and considering. She could hear the thoughts forming in his head as his gaze ran over her gown.

  He was a house slave. House slaves knew these things.

  “You can’t take it off,” he realized.

  Asha looked down to the sand, hugging her arms now, willing her traitorous body to be still, her chattering teeth to be silent.

  He held out his hand.

  She didn’t reach for it. Didn’t dare look up at him. She stared at her toes. Toes she was starting to lose feeling in.

  “Asha.” He said her name like it was something exquisite and exasperating at the same time. Crooking his finger beneath her chin, he tilted her face up, bringing her eyes back to his. “This won’t be the first time I’ve undressed you.”

  Asha’s pulse quickened.

  “I’ve spent my whole life dressing and undressing draksors,” he said. “It’s just a task. Nothing more.”

  But his trembling fingers betrayed him. The nervous wobble in his voice matched Asha’s own fumbling pulse.

  And still, she went with him.

  Thirty-Seven

  Inside the tent there was darkness, then the sound of a match being struck. The smallest of flames lit up Torwin’s hands as he cupped the match and ignited the lantern hanging above. It swung, scattering light across the tent and illuminating a bedroll, a pile of folded clothes, and the lute she’d bought in the marketplace.

  They stood face-to-face, Asha chattering and trembling and dripping. Torwin, waiting and silent and still.

  Asha had been dressed and undressed by slaves before. But they’d always been female slaves. Torwin was not. And the dress in question was her binding dress, meant to be taken off by her husband.

  She needed to turn around so he could undo the buttons. She didn’t, though. In case a better option presented itself. Maybe she could call Kozu, fly back to camp, and get Safire to help her instead. But the thought of flying wet, in the freezing wind, made her shiver all the harder.

  Torwin touched the knot in her sash. When she didn’t resist, he stepped in close. His fingers trembled as they untied the knot. The wet silk slid across her waist when he pulled and the dress loosened, letting her breathe.

  The sash fell to the floor.

  Torwin pushed the gossamer overlayer off her shoulders. With the slightest of tugs, it joined the sash at their feet.

  When Asha still didn’t turn, he touched her wrist. His fingers trailed slowly up to her elbow, turning her gently until she faced the rough canvas wall of the tent. With her blood humming, she gathered up her wet hair and pulled it over her shoulder.

  His fingers started at the top of her underlayer, sliding the tiny pebble-like buttons out of their corresponding loops.

  The silence grew like a storm rolling in.

  Soon, Asha couldn’t bear it.

  “Thank you,” she said, breaking the silence.

  Her voice startled him. He fumbled, his knuckles brushing across her bare skin. Asha’s heart raced like a desert wind.

  “This is no imposition,” he whispered.

  As the dress loosened and air rushed against her, Asha felt his gaze trail over her. The bumps of her spine. The wings of her shoulder blades. The curve of her lower back.

  “There.” He swallowed softly, undoing the last button. “You’re free.”

  Asha turned her back to the tent walls. She kept her arms crossed against her chest, holding the loosened dress up as she looked at him. The light cast by the hanging lamp made his skin glow. The shadows sharpened his cheekbones. Her gaze slid to his mouth, where the line of his lower lip dipped like the mantle of the Rift.

  What would it feel like to press her mouth against his? To close the space between them? To claim him right here in his tent?

  As if sensing her thoughts, Torwin raised his eyes to her face. Asha turned her scarred cheek away.

  “Why do you keep doing that?” His voice hardened around the words.

  When she didn’t answer, he slid off his shirt.

  A feeling rushed through Asha, like plunging through the air with Kozu. Dropping the shirt at their feet, Torwin turned so his lacerated back—scabbed and finally healing—was on full display.

  “Do you hate the sight of them?”

  Asha sucked in a breath. “What? No.”

  He turned back to her, his eyes cold. “Then why would I hate the sight of yours?”

  But Torwin had never been proud of his scars, while Asha had loved her scar—because her father loved it. She’d used it to justify killing dragons. Her father lied to her over and over again while she brought him their heads. That’s what Asha saw now when she
looked at her scar.

  Tears stung her eyes and blurred her vision. Asha pressed her hands to her face, trying to hide them.

  “Asha . . . ?”

  When she wouldn’t look at him, Torwin’s arms came around her, crushing her into his warmth. With his cheek pressed against her hair, he didn’t say a word. Just held her as she cried. His warm palm moved in slow circles against her back, trying to soothe her.

  “I almost killed Kozu,” she whispered into her hands when her hiccups fell silent. “I nearly destroyed the old stories.”

  “Isn’t that what you wanted?”

  Asha shook her head. His hand stopped. He reached for her wrists, pulling her hands away from her face.

  “Tell me.”

  She told him everything. The truth about the day Kozu burned her and all the things that came after. All the lies she’d ever believed. All the dragons she’d ever killed. And for what? For a tyrant. For a father who never really loved her at all.

  Torwin held her tighter.

  After a long while, he turned his face into her wet, glistening hair. “Stay here tonight,” he said. “It’s quiet and peaceful and you’ll get a good rest. Better than you will back at camp.”

  “Here?” She palmed the tears from her cheeks. “In your tent?”

  “Just for tonight.” He stepped away to pull his shirt back on. The cool air rushed in, chilling her once more. Grabbing a bundle of dry clothes, he held them out to her. “I’ll sleep outside.”

  Taking them, she said, “Torwin—”

  “I prefer the stars.” He reached for his lute, ready to leave so she could change. “And besides, I don’t sleep much. Nightmares, remember?”

  But before stepping out of the tent, he stopped and turned around.

  “You don’t ever have to go back. Not if you don’t want to.”

  She frowned at him.

  He took a shaky step toward her. “We could leave,” he said. “We could leave tonight.”

  “Torwin, where would we go?”

  His mouth tipped up at the side. “Anywhere. To the edge of the world.”

  That smile sent the tiniest of thrills rippling through her. Asha tamped it down.

  Run away? No.

  She understood wanting to run from Jarek, but he would never stop hunting them. And what of the rest? What of Dax and Safire? She couldn’t leave them to fight this war alone.

  Asha stepped back. “I can’t.” She shook her head. “Everyone I love is in that camp.”

  And a lying tyrant ruled over Firgaard.

  “Everyone you love,” Torwin repeated.

  He stood very still. Like he was waiting for something.

  But Asha didn’t know what else he wanted.

  The light in his eyes went out.

  “Get some rest,” he said, turning to leave. Without glancing back at her, he slipped out of the tent and into the darkness beyond.

  Asha stared at the tent flap until the shivering returned. It felt like the time she left him in the clearing. Something lay unfinished between them. Like they were a fraying tapestry in need of a weaver.

  She changed out of her sopping-wet dress and dumped it outside in a heap. Torwin’s clothes, while far too big, were warm and dry.

  Turning down the lantern, she climbed into the bedroll. She tossed and turned in the darkness, her thoughts full of thorns.

  It was only when a quiet melody drifted in that she fell still. From outside the tent, Torwin plucked a familiar tune from the strings of his lute. The same tune he’d been humming ever since he’d stitched up her side. There was more of it than the last time, but it still wasn’t complete. Torwin kept falling into silence halfway through, only to pick it up again at the beginning.

  She imagined those hands, so deft and sure, plucking strings as easily as they’d made a poultice and stitched up her side. As easily as they’d undone the buttons on her dress.

  Swallowing, Asha imagined those hands going farther. Sliding off her dress. Moving across her bare skin.

  She shut her eyes, trying to escape the thoughts, knowing the danger they put him in. But they only flared up brighter behind her eyelids.

  Much later, when Torwin gave up on his song at last and went to sleep, Asha lay awake, thinking of his hands.

  Thirty-Eight

  The next morning, when Asha entered the meeting tent, she ran straight into Jas. His eyes, rimmed in dark lashes, widened at the sight of her. Recovering, he smiled, fisting his hand over his heart in greeting.

  “You look well this morning, Asha.”

  His kindness startled her. After all, she’d pulled a knife on him just last night. And most people upon meeting the Iskari were not so quick to smile at her.

  Torwin stepped in behind them. “Sorry we’re late. We . . .” At the sight of what was clearly the middle of a meeting, he stopped.

  A dozen people looked up from the roughly hewn log benches. Dax stood in the center, pouring tea.

  The sight of it jarred Asha. Serving tea was a slave’s task. But here was her brother, the heir to the throne, holding the brass teapot high in the air as liquid gold streamed in an arc, filling the circle of glasses with frothy, steaming tea.

  Before the Severing, under the old ways, the master of the house always served the tea.

  Dax stopped pouring to stare at Asha’s clothes. Which were actually Torwin’s clothes. The daughter of the dragon king was wearing the clothes of her husband’s slave.

  Her face flamed as she realized how it looked. But she was surrounded by strangers—draksors, scrublanders, skral—so she said nothing. She didn’t look at Dax, whose stare burned up her skin, just ducked past a wordless Jas and filled the empty spot on the cushions next to Safire, who shot her a curious look.

  Dax’s stare turned to a wordless question, which he fixed on Torwin. Torwin, who was supposed to be leaving.

  Avoiding eye contact, Torwin filled in a gap on the other side of the circle, as far from Asha as he could get, sitting between Roa and a woman Asha recognized: the blacksmith who’d forged her slayers. The blacksmith nodded to her. Asha nodded back.

  Safire broke the awkward silence, continuing as if they’d never been interrupted. “Aren’t we forgetting something?” She tossed a throwing knife from hand to hand. Its sharpened steel edge broke the light into countless colors that went skittering across the tent. “There’s a law against regicide, in both the old age and the new.”

  Asha thought of the last three scrublander assassins who’d tried to take her father’s life. Remembered the blade hacking at their necks beneath the blazing midday sun. Remembered their heads falling to the stones with sickening thuds. Dax had been sitting right next to Asha, watching it happen.

  She thought of Moria, centuries earlier, kneeling on those same stones, resting her head on that same bloodstained block.

  The law against killing kings was an ancient, sacred law. It couldn’t be circumvented.

  If Dax killed their father, he too would lay his head on that block.

  And Asha would have to watch.

  “You can’t be thinking of killing the king,” she said.

  “We can’t take the throne if your father lives,” Safire said. Essie, Roa’s silver-eyed hawk, perched on the leather patch on her shoulder. “Not officially.”

  Asha stared at her brother. “But if you kill him, your life is forfeit.”

  “A detail we have yet to work out.” Dax set down the tea and served the first cup to Roa. She took it stiffly, not meeting his gaze, as if still vexed from their argument. But the moment Dax turned to pour the next cup, she looked up, watching him with her dark brown eyes.

  “Let me help,” said Asha.

  Dax shook his head. “I don’t want you anywhere near Firgaard when this starts.”

  “I don’t need to be near Firgaard.”

  He gave her a puzzled look.

  “We can use the dragons,” she said. “The king won’t expect an attack from the sky.”

 
A murmur rose around her as everyone exchanged nervous glances.

  “If the dragons are on our side,” Asha continued, “so is the Old One. Any draksor in the city still devoted to the old ways will be with us.”

  Dax shook his head in disbelief. “You—the girl who’s made it her life’s mission to hunt dragons into extinction—now want to recruit them? The dragons hate us, Asha. How can you possibly think of bringing them to our side?”

  Her eyes fixed on the silver collar resting against Torwin’s collarbone. “I know a way.”

  Dax waited, looking skeptical. He was right to look skeptical. Asha didn’t actually know—not for certain. But according to Shadow, the dragons turned on the draksors because they enslaved the skral. So if the draksors set them free . . .

  “You’ll have to prove your motives are true. Prove you’re not just hungry for the throne.”

  “And how do I do that?”

  Asha’s gaze cut to Torwin. His attention fixed on the bone ring encircling his smallest finger. His hands shook, ever so slightly, as he twisted it back and forth. He must have retrieved it while she slept.

  “Break the collars of every skral in this camp,” she said.

  Torwin’s gaze lifted to her face.

  “And the moment you seize the throne, break the collars off those still in the city. It must be the first thing you do.”

  Her brother looked at her as though he no longer recognized her. She didn’t blame him. Not so long ago, she’d thought that if the skral went free, they would finish what they came for.

  Asha glanced at Torwin.

  She didn’t think that anymore.

  The blacksmith spoke up suddenly, her voice ringing like a hammer on an anvil. “I can remove every collar in this camp by nightfall.”

  Asha nodded at her, then turned back to her brother. “All I need are riders, and you can count dragons among your arsenal.”

  “I’ll find them for you,” said Torwin.

  Asha met his gaze. Very quietly, she said, “Does this mean you’re staying?”

  He looked away. “Just . . . until the wedding. That will give me enough time to find you riders, and train them so they’re flight ready.”

  Asha bit down on the smile creeping across her lips.