“Iskari. It’s nearly midday.”
Asha opened her eyes and found Maya crouched over her. Her hood was pushed back and the light of a lantern illuminated the soft curves of her face.
Asha’s body groaned in protest. She was tired and sore, and it took considerable energy to push herself up into a sitting position. She tried with her burned hand first, and the pain jolted her to full wakefulness. Without thinking, she resumed the effort with her paralyzed hand.
Asha froze. Sitting now, she lifted the hand to her face, flexing her fingers one by one. The arm was no longer numb. No longer limp.
There was no time to marvel, though. She had a more pressing concern: her clothes were covered in dried blood. She couldn’t leave the temple like this. Not in broad daylight.
“There’s a spring,” Maya said, “where the guardians bathe.” She held a blue bundle tucked beneath one arm. “I have a clean kaftan you can wear.”
“Why are you helping me?” Asha asked, pushing herself to her feet. “I broke into the home of my own betrothed, drew a weapon on him, and stole his property. That makes me a criminal.”
“It’s like you said.” Maya smiled a little. “This temple is a place of sanctuary.”
Asha looked to the slave, stretched out across the cot, fast asleep. Wrapped around his shirtless torso were linen bandages, already bled through. Beyond him rose shelves full of scrolls, their carved wooden handles peeking out.
Asha remembered Maya turning the key in the lock. Remembered how deep into the temple they’d gone to get to this room. What in these scrolls warranted keeping them so safe?
“You need to wash and then leave. The entire city is assembling at the pit.”
“Is there a fight scheduled?”
Maya nodded.
Her brother would be there. Asha needed to tell him she’d done what he asked. And then, at last, she could return to hunting Kozu.
She took the blue bundle. “Show me the spring.”
At the opposite end of the city, near the south gate, sat the pit. Built during Asha’s grandmother’s reign, the walls of the arena rose up like jagged teeth. Its front entrance gaped open like a mouth, and—as usual—draksors stood just outside, protesting the fights. Just a few months ago, a protest got so out of hand, the soldats couldn’t control it and the fight had to be canceled.
Now, the protesters threw rocks at the soldats. They shouted in the faces of the attendees. By the time Asha arrived, more than half of the protesting draksors were clapped in irons. One of them glared at Asha as he was hauled off by a soldat.
Draksors like these, those who thought the skral should go free, would be enraged if they knew Asha was hunting Kozu for her father. They believed the old ways should be returned to, not snuffed out. They were no better than scrublanders.
But everyone knew what would happen if the skral were free: They would turn on their former masters and finish what they had come to do during Asha’s grandmother’s reign. They would take Firgaard for themselves.
These draksors were fools if they thought any different.
Inside the arena, Asha stuck out like a scrublander, dressed as she was in a simple blue kaftan, absent of beading or embroidery and years out of fashion. Worse than the kaftan, though, was her lack of armor and weapons. Asha had left both her slayers in the temple. She’d go back for them later.
Asha moved deeper into the arena, surrounded by roars of applause. It stank like too many men standing too close together. The arena bowled out and upward, half full of draksors watching matches play out in the pit below.
But news of the Iskari’s arrival traveled faster than a windstorm and soon the roars turned to nervous whispers. The clapping hands became clenched fists. As everyone turned to look at her, the crowd dispersed, not wanting to be anywhere near the girl who’d called down dragonfire on their homes and stolen the lives of their loved ones.
“Hey,” came a voice at her shoulder. Asha looked up into her cousin’s face. Safire dutifully kept her gaze on the ground at their feet, littered with olive pits and pistachio shells. The hood of her new mantle hid her face, helping her blend in. “Where have you been? We were worried.”
“I’m fine,” Asha said as they passed cages full of criminal slaves behind bars, waiting to be sent down to the pit. She wondered what their crimes were. “Where’s Dax?”
Safire nodded to the crimson canopy at the top of the arena. The pit was ringed with benches, like the ripple made by a stone dropped into a pool, and the dragon king’s tent rose high above these ripples. It had the clearest view of the fighting down below.
They made their way toward it, up the sloping path, away from the slave cages. When they were surrounded by cheering draksors on all sides, Safire stepped in close, keeping her voice low, her mouth near Asha’s ear.
“There’s a rumor going around.” Safire cast quick glances around them, checking for eavesdroppers. “People are saying someone broke into Jarek’s home, attacked him, and made off with one of his slaves.”
A prickling fear spread across Asha’s skin.
She thought of her brother, pinned to a brightly woven rug in one of the palace salons. Remembered Jarek’s thick hands around his throat and the way Dax’s legs kicked as he fought for breath.
Jarek didn’t like people taking his things.
Asha’s eyes fixed on the tent up ahead. Its red silk walls billowed, straining against the wind. All she had to do was give Dax the information, and then she could leave.
More spectators parted as the two cousins approached the crimson canopy. Asha stepped into the tent while Safire stayed behind.
Her father sat in a gilt throne. He nodded to Asha as she entered, a question in his eyes. Why aren’t you hunting?
I’m trying, she wanted to tell him. Instead, she looked to Dax, sitting with his scrublander near the front of the canopy. Roa wore that blue sandskarf wrapped loosely around her shoulders and head. In the desert, sandskarves were worn to protect from the wind and dust, the cold and heat.
Asha watched the way Dax leaned toward the girl, his hand gripping the bench behind her. He kept glancing at her, then away, chewing his lip, bouncing his knee, frowning hard.
When it came to girls, Dax was usually all confidence and swagger. He knew the right things to say. Things that would make a girl glow, then pine for him as she fell asleep at night.
But this . . . this was something else.
Roa seemed tense. Her back was rigid and her hands were gripped firmly in her lap, as if she were not enjoying herself. She didn’t even seem to notice Dax. Instead, she stared straight ahead, out over the pit, her white hawk perching on a leather patch on her shoulder. Like she was thinking of a hundred things other than the boy at her side.
Perhaps plotting to kill all of Firgaard in its sleep, thought Asha.
It was dangerous, bringing her here. So close to the king.
Suddenly, someone stepped in front of Asha, blocking Dax and Roa from view.
She looked up into the face of her betrothed.
Glossy hair. Strong, severe jaw. Freshly shaved cheeks. The only thing out of place was the black bruise blooming across his temple.
“Asha.” The way his hands clasped hers—like a snare—said that despite his drunkenness, he remembered everything. His saber was sheathed at his hip. “Where have you been?”
Sweat prickled along her hairline.
“Sleeping,” she said, matching her voice to his. “I had a rough night.”
He leaned in close. Her body tensed the way it did the moment before a dragon struck.
“Give him back.” His lips brushed her unscarred cheek. “And we can forget it ever happened.”
Asha tried to pull her hands free, but his grip tightened. He spoke so softly, anyone standing nearby might think he was whispering words of love.
“If you don’t, when I find him—and I will find him—I’ll make you watch everything.”
He thought she felt about his slave the way Rayan felt about Lillian. It astonished her.
“Go right ahead,” she said.
When her father looked over at them, Jarek released her.
Asha saw the troubled look in her father’s eyes. She shook her head, telling him not to worry. Stepping around Jarek, she took her seat next to Dax and wiped her sweaty hands on the scratchy fabric of Maya’s kaftan.
Jarek had nothing to gain by bringing her offense to light. Jarek wanted Asha. He wanted her the way he wanted the most lethal of sabers or the most hellish of stallions. He wanted to conquer and own her. And, if the whispers were true, if he really was planning to take the throne, their marriage would make it that much easier. He wasn’t about to sabotage his chance by exposing Asha’s crimes. Not when there were other ways to punish her.
Jarek followed her to the bench and sat down, pressing his leg against her own.
Seeing it, Dax tensed beside Asha, then met her gaze.
Before she could tell Dax she’d done as he asked, Jarek leaned in, interrupting. “My soldats tell me you went out hunting yesterday.”
Asha straightened.
“They said you went out alone.”
If Jarek suspected the truth, if he discovered what her father promised in exchange for Kozu’s head . . .
“Perhaps she only needed to breathe,” a honeyed voice interrupted. Asha looked to the scrublander on Dax’s other side, who stared at Jarek’s leg pinning Asha’s.
Jarek’s eyes narrowed. “Did I ask for your opinion, scrublander?”
Roa’s hawk puffed its white chest. Its silver eyes glared at the commandant.
“In the scrublands,” said Roa, “no one needs to ask for a woman’s opinion. It’s expected that she gives it freely.”
Asha looked to Dax. He should have warned Roa about Jarek and what happened when he was challenged.
“And that,” Jarek sneered, “is why your people will never rise above the dirt they live in.”
Roa’s eyes darkened. It was the only outward sign that his words affected her. Dax, on the other hand, oozed anger. His thin frame buzzed with a dangerous, reckless energy, reminding Asha of all the times he’d stepped into Jarek’s path as a child. All the times he’d turned himself into a target to protect others.
Before he could do it again, Asha bent her head toward her brother’s.
“He’s in the temple,” she whispered so only Dax could hear. “Ask the guardian called Maya.”
It worked.
That buzzing energy dimmed as Dax looked into Asha’s face. From this close, she studied her brother’s thinning cheeks. She could see too much of the bones beneath his skin. Just like she could with their mother, in those last days.
Thank you, he mouthed. And then, remembering their deal, he tugged their mother’s carved bone ring off his finger. His hand shook slightly as he held it out to her.
Asha took it and slid it onto her fourth finger.
It wasn’t a beautiful ring. But its presence held a kind of power. The same power as her mother’s voice in the darkness. Or her mother’s hands, cupping Asha’s face as she told her not to be afraid.
The ring was a reminder: people hadn’t always been scared to touch her.
Or love her.
The weight of her mother’s ring on her finger comforted Asha.
Dax rose. Roa glanced at Asha before rising, too, then disappeared with him into the crowd.
Jarek nodded to two soldats standing just beyond the canopy, who turned and followed the pair.
Asha was about to go after them, to warn them, when the crowd roared. Draksors got to their feet or hopped up on benches, shouting down into the pit. Jarek rose, one hand going to the pommel of his saber, the other lifted to block the sun from his eyes.
Asha didn’t need to look. She knew what was happening: a slave was about to be killed.
Asha had lost all interest in the pit fights when they’d stopped fighting dragons. After the hunting began, there simply weren’t enough of them left to keep the people entertained. The spiked metal bars ringing the pit acted as a gate now, keeping drunken draksors from falling to their deaths. Back when dragons fought below, the bars were lowered to keep the beasts from flying away.
“You might be interested in the outcome of this one,” Jarek said.
Another roar rippled through the crowd. Chilled, Asha stood. In the depths of the pit below, a young skral forced an elderly skral to her knees. Her gray hair was bound in a thick braid and her hands were knotted with age.
Asha went rigid at the sight of her.
“Last night an intruder came into my home, knocked me unconscious, and stole my slave.” Nodding at the skral with gray hair, Jarek said for everyone to hear, “Greta let the intruder in.”
Asha couldn’t breathe.
“All she had to do was tell me where they went, but she refused,” Jarek explained. “So I’m afraid I have to punish her.”
Asha’s hands balled into fists in her borrowed kaftan.
“It’s not too late.” He turned to look at Asha. “Even now, she could tell me where my slave is, and all would be forgiven.”
Asha should give up the truth, right here and now. She should declare the skral below innocent and she herself the culprit. Tell them the slave they sought was hidden in the temple.
But even if she said all that, Greta would still die—she was complicit in Asha’s crime. Despite his words, Jarek was not a forgiving man. And the moment Asha admitted the truth, Jarek’s steely-eyed slave would die along with her. And probably Maya, the temple guardian, too.
Asha pressed her lips together in a hard line.
She looked back to the pit.
The combatants knew one another. It was why this fight had gone on so long. If they were strangers, it would have already been done.
But the young slave knew Greta, which made it hard to kill her.
Greta tossed her knife away as she knelt. Its shining edge lay in the red sand, far out of reach, and the boy sank to his knees before her. His free hand cupped the back of Greta’s head and Asha saw his lips move, asking a question.
Greta nodded.
The boy slashed his blade across her throat.
Crimson blood spilled over his hands. He pulled Greta tight against him until the life in her winked out.
Cries of victory or defeat, depending on how the bets were placed, went up all around the pit. Draksors hopped down from benches. Those who bet correctly moved to collect their winnings. Others lingered behind, staring somberly down at the bloodstained sand.
Asha stood frozen, her throat burning, watching the slave press his face into Greta’s neck as her blood soaked his shirt. He kissed the top of her head and murmured some kind of prayer, until the soldats pried her body out of his arms and took it away.
Which was when he turned the knife on himself.