“Liar!”
Kozu dropped her into the grass. The moment she touched the ground, she drew her slayers.
Lies. Wasn’t that what all stories were? Wasn’t that what made them so dangerous?
Suddenly, a familiar voice rose up in her.
Dragon burns are deadly, Iskari, and a burn like that?
Asha tried to shake Torwin’s voice loose. But it lodged inside her.
You were just a little girl.
If the story she believed was true—that she was alone when Kozu burned her—how had the toxins been drawn out in time?
Asha remembered the burn Torwin helped treat. Her hands shook so hard. The poison set in so fast. . . .
Kozu stood stone still, watching her. The glow of his belly dimmed.
“What are you waiting for!” Jarek yelled. “Strike!”
Asha stared at the commandant. The one who found her that day and raced her back to the city.
Have I not done everything you’ve ever asked of me, my king?
Jarek drew his saber—which shimmered against the angry sky. He motioned to his soldats, who swarmed the field like cockroaches.
Have I not defended your walls? Put down your revolts?
Kept your secrets?
Kozu stood at Asha’s back. Those great wings spread wide as he eyed the armored men around them. Asha could have turned and plunged her sacred blades into his breast. It would have been easy. It would have ended everything right here.
Instead, she fixed her gaze on Jarek, like a hunter on its prey. “Tell me: how long did it take you to find me, the day Kozu burned me?”
Jarek turned to face her. There it was again: the fear in his eyes.
Kozu’s story blazed inside her, weaving with her own memories of a fire burning away her skin and the screams trapped inside her throat.
“How long!” she demanded.
She watched him bury his fear the way she buried her shame. Watched him look to the dragon at her back, then change his mind about the saber. He called out to a soldat behind him and the man tossed him a spear.
“Truly, you’re as foolish as your brother,” he said, his grip tightening on the shaft as he waded into the tall, rattling grass. “The enemy stands behind you, Asha. Everything you’ve ever wanted lies at the edge of your blade, and yet you hesitate.”
A soldat holding a body-length shield waded out with him.
Everything I’ve ever wanted . . .
She wanted deliverance from Jarek. She wanted redemption for her crimes. She wanted revenge on the one who’d burned her and brought destruction to Firgaard.
But what if the crime was never hers?
What if the enemy was not the one she’d always thought?
Jarek crept closer. At her back, Kozu growled again, louder this time. The commandant stopped short, fifteen steps away. The soldat at his side trembled.
Asha stepped closer to Kozu’s beating heart. Kozu, who could have killed her mere moments ago if he’d wanted to. Kozu, who didn’t take to the skies even as the soldats closed in around him.
If Kozu were truly her enemy, she wouldn’t be alive.
“Dragonfire is deadly.” This was one truth she knew. “Even the smallest of burns must be tended immediately, to draw out the toxins.”
“I’m the one who discovered your treachery.” Jarek’s gaze darted to the soldats moving closer in, checking their positions as he kept her distracted. “Eight years ago, I followed you. I saw you telling the old stories aloud. I saw the First Dragon come to you.”
Asha lowered her slayers. “You followed me?”
“I told your father,” he said. “And he put a stop to it.”
Asha felt light-headed.
She thought back to the sickroom after the burning. When she couldn’t remember what happened, her father filled in the gaps. It was all her fault, he said. Together they would make it right, he said. He would use her scar to show the world how dangerous the old ways were.
While everyone else looked away from her scar in revulsion or fear, her father looked on with pride. As if it were his crowning achievement. His magnificent creation.
His creation . . .
Asha wanted to shut off her thoughts, to stop herself from following them to their most logical conclusion. But they were like a scroll unraveling. She had to read to the end.
Asha’s father had always wanted to rid the realm of the old ways. He used Asha to hunt down Kozu. And when she was burned, he turned her into a tool—a cautionary tale. A living piece of propaganda.
A monster.
Asha didn’t want to believe it. She wanted to believe Kozu’s story was the wicked, twisted thing. But there was the burn, and here she was—still alive.
Her father had been there when it happened, along with his soldats and—she realized now—his healers.
Asha looked to her betrothed. This was the secret Jarek kept for the king. All those years ago, her father stepped aside and let Asha burn. And Jarek knew. This was why Asha had been promised to him—in exchange for compliance and secrecy.
All her life, she’d thought of herself as wicked, corrupted, in need of redemption.
A shocking thought occurred to her. What if I’m not any of those things?
A low growl shook the earth at her feet. Asha turned to find the soldats advancing on Kozu’s back.
“Kill it now!” Jarek shouted, looking over Asha’s shoulder. “Strike! Before it flies!”
Asha lifted her slayers. But Kozu’s tail came around her, stopping her from charging, pulling her back against the searing-hot scales of his chest.
Asha felt his acid lungs filling up with air. Felt the beat of his ancient heart.
Jarek ducked behind the soldat’s shield.
Kozu breathed, streaming flames in an arc. Red and orange filled Asha’s vision, swallowing the advancing soldats. The air shimmered with heat.
When the fire stopped streaming, the whole field was ablaze. And it wasn’t the only thing on fire.
In the distance, beyond the trees, beyond the lower Rift and the wall, the city rooftops were going up in flames.
“Firgaard!” she screamed, pointing.
Jarek—unburned behind his shield—turned to see.
“The city is under attack!”
Asha’s hands clenched as the smoke billowed into the sky. Dax and Safire were in there.
When darkness falls, little sister, the Old One lights a flame.
It was the last thing her brother said to her.
Asha’s hands unclenched as she remembered the look on his face as they hauled him away to the dungeon. Like it was all a part of his plan.
No, she thought. Dax wouldn’t destroy his own home.
“The skral are revolting!” called one of the soldats. “We need to go back!”
Every skral in the city would have heard of what happened in the pit. That the Iskari saved a doomed slave. It would have bolstered their courage. And with half the army on its way to Darmoor, and the commandant here in the field . . .
It was the perfect opportunity.
While the soldats around her paused, caught between their burning city, their homes and families, and their loyalty to their commandant, Asha turned to Kozu.
She thought of the pit and Torwin’s arrow pointed at her chest. Thought of what he’d say if he were here right now.
It was the same thing her heart said.
Get on the dragon, Asha.
Kozu looked at her. If she sealed the link, it would mean they were allies. And allying herself to her oldest enemy made Asha hesitate.
No, she thought, staring into his slitted yellow eye. You and I were never enemies.
Asha reached for his wing bone the way Torwin had reached for Shadow’s that day. Stepping into the crook of Kozu’s knee, she hoisted herself up onto the First Dragon’s back.
From this high up, Asha felt invincible. Lightning flashed above her. The blazing field sprawled out before her. And in the midst of the chaos, Jarek stared up at her, his eyes wide and afraid.
“Fly,” she told Kozu. “Fly far away from here.”
Jarek shouted orders to stop them, to kill the dragon. Kozu stretched out his wings the way night stretches over the desert. But just as he leaped into the air, there came a sickening thud. Kozu roared and swooped sideways.
Asha slid but clung on. She looked down to find Jarek’s spear lodged in Kozu’s side.
No. . . .
Thunder cracked as Asha reached for it, her hands gripping the smooth wood of the shaft. As she pulled, the pain of it made Kozu lurch. The earth surged toward them. The spear came out at the same time Kozu staggered, then lost his balance. They hit the ground and the force of Kozu’s momentum made him roll, pitching Asha from his back.
She heard a loud crack! Smelled the earthy scent of esparto grass. And then: pain, bleeding through her.
The world went ink black.