Beneath the watchful gaze of the soldats, Asha bided her time, waiting for her moment to steal the flame.
Beneath the blazing sun, Asha and Dax walked side by side. Jarek marched six paces ahead while soldats surrounded them, their gazes cast like spears up and down the green-walled streets of the new quarter. The visiting scrublanders were missing and Jarek’s fugitive slave hadn’t been found. The city was on high alert.
“No one is allowed in or out,” Asha heard Jarek tell his second-in-command, “until the missing scrublanders are found.”
While her brother brooded beside her, Asha set her thoughts on her task. She needed to take the sacred flame from her father’s throne room without getting caught.
Up ahead, Jarek took off his mantle—useful in the early morning chill but stifling now in the increasing heat of the rising sun. A dagger hung at his hip, the ivory hilt polished and shining. Beside Asha, Dax’s gaze burned a hole in the back of Jarek’s shirt.
“You didn’t have to torch them,” said Dax. His brown curls were damp against his skin, where sweat beaded from the sun’s heat.
“You didn’t exactly give me a choice,” she said.
If she hadn’t shown up, what would Dax have done? How would he have hidden the evidence of Jarek’s rogue slave? She loved her brother, but he was too much of a dreamer. Expert at coming up with lofty plans, unskilled at carrying them out.
Like the scrolls.
What in all the skies was he thinking?
“Where’s Torwin?” Dax kept his voice low. He didn’t look at her.
“The slave?” Asha shook her head, whispering back. “You led Jarek straight to that room. Why would I tell you where he is now?”
Dax opened his mouth to respond, but instead of words, a fit of coughing erupted out of him. The harsh, ragged sound made Asha go rigid. Dax doubled over, pressing his hands to his knees at the force of it.
Asha stared at her brother. For a moment, it wasn’t Dax standing before her in the middle of the street. It was her mother, standing at the window of the sickroom, gripping the ledge with her sapped strength, willing it to bear her up as the same harsh cough racked her body.
No, thought Asha.
Jarek turned to see why the soldats stopped, but by then, Dax’s coughing subsided. The heir wiped his mouth and Asha looked for blood on the gold sleeve of his tunic. He tucked it out of sight before she could see.
When they arrived at the towering door set into the caramel-colored wall of the palace, Jarek issued an order to the soldats on the other side. Before Asha could pass through the arching doorway next to Dax, Jarek grabbed her arm, forcing her to face him.
“My offer still stands,” he said, his voice a low rumble. “I will find that slave and finish him. Or you could accept, and I’ll forget about him.”
Asha twisted free and caught up with her brother. “Hunt him to your heart’s content,” she said over her shoulder.
“The moon wanes, Asha!” Jarek called after her. “Why prolong the inescapable?”
But her father had given Asha an escape. Jarek just didn’t know it.
Once she and Dax were both through the gateway, Asha moved quickly through the shaded arcades, leaving her brother behind. The sound of cascading water chimed from the fountains as mist evaporated in the heat of the sun.
“Asha,” Dax said, jogging to catch up with her. “Talk to me. Please.”
“Talk to you?” She stopped walking and spun to face him. “You who put those scrolls in that room? Who brought enemies into our home? I’m not telling you anything. Jarek’s right. You’ve put us all in jeopardy.”
Slaves going about their daily tasks stopped to eavesdrop on the two royal siblings in the middle of the arcade. When Asha shot them warning glances, they quickly moved on.
She thought of the old stories, written in Dax’s handwriting.
She lowered her voice. “The stories on those scrolls. Did you write them?”
His eyebrows shot upward. “I’m surprised you think me capable.”
That wasn’t an answer.
She studied him. His cheekbones jutted out too far. His clothes hung too loosely. As exasperating as her brother was, she couldn’t bear to lose him.
“You look just like she did,” said Asha. “Right before she died.”
A wild emotion flickered across his face. But it was gone as soon as it arrived.
“Not everything is as it appears, Asha.” His gaze flicked over her shoulders, checking for soldats and slaves. Satisfied that they were alone and unwatched, he stepped in close and lowered his voice. “When darkness falls, the Old One lights a flame.”
Asha stepped back. “What?”
“It’s what Roa says.”
Roa? The girl who betrayed him?
Was he serious?
Asha didn’t have time for this. Her brother was a lost cause. She needed to steal the sacred flame so she could get back to hunting Kozu.
She moved past her brother, heading deeper into the palace.
Dax’s footsteps rang out behind her.
“The realm is divided against itself!”
She ignored him and kept walking—through shady galleries and bright courtyards, through gardens full of date palms and vines of white jasmine creeping up the walls.
Dax followed her.
“You don’t see it,” he persisted, “because you’re forever in the Rift, doing Father’s bidding. Things are bad and getting worse. A reckoning is coming.”
When they reached the throne room, Asha turned to him.
“What does that have to do with you?” she demanded. “Since when do you care, Dax? About anything?”
He stepped back. As if she’d shoved him. Beneath the wounded look in his eyes she could see a war waging. Could see the reckless, careless Dax fighting to come out. To hide the truer, softer Dax and his myriad of hurts.
She shouldn’t have said that. Of course he cared. About too many things.
They were just the wrong things.
“The Old One hasn’t abandoned us.” He stared her straight in the face as he said it, forcing her to look him in the eye. “He’s as powerful as ever, waiting for the right moment and the right person. He’s waiting for the next Namsara to make things right.”
Asha froze just beyond the throne room’s archway, out of sight of the soldats within.
Did he realize how he sounded?
Insane. Traitorous. Just like a scrublander.
Asha stared at her brother. Dax had always been recklessly heroic. Like Namsara and Iskari, he was the tenderhearted hero and Asha was the destroyer.
But unlike Namsara and Iskari, Asha had never hated her brother, only worried about him.
Enough of this. I’m running out of time.
Turning from Dax, Asha looked to the bright, eternal flame. She watched it burn in an iron bowl on the black pedestal.
Even though the dragon king’s throne sat empty, his guards held their positions all around the walls. Asha counted sixteen of them. Sixteen pairs of eyes all watching her as she stepped through the archway and into the enclosed space, her footsteps echoing up to the domed ceiling. Her gaze swept over the room. There was no balcony level and only one doorway from which to enter and exit. The only other opening was through the skylight in the roof. The soldats and their watching eyes guarded the throne all day and night, changing their posts at dawn and dusk. Yet Asha was supposed to steal the flame and not be seen.
At a loss, she stared at the sacred flame itself, which twisted eerily, bright white and making no sound. The flame didn’t need to be fed; it simply burned on and on, ever since Elorma brought it here from the desert a thousand years ago.
No, she thought. Not here. Elorma brought it to the caves beneath the temple.
You will take the sacred flame from the thief who stole it and return it to where it belongs.
Asha pressed her palms to her temples, trying to crush the command out of her head.
What should she do?
Her father would want her to focus on her hunt. Once Kozu was dead, it wouldn’t matter where the flame burned. Kozu’s death would end the Old One’s regime once and for all. With their god proven false, the scrublanders would come to heel and her brother’s yammering about the Namsara would cease.
But if she ignored Elorma’s task—what price would she pay?
She thought of her paralyzed arm—the cost for using her slayers unwisely.
To ensure her strength was not diminished, she would have to steal the flame. And then she would end Kozu. Once and for all.
But she couldn’t complete this task alone.
Asha needed an accomplice.
A large, fire-breathing one.