“Arrrugh!” Asha lowered her weapon. “Just once! I wish you’d let me beat you just once. . . .”
“Wishes.” Safire shook her head. “I wish I knew why the dragons are breathing fire. And why you insist on keeping secrets from me.” She stepped back, surveying Asha, who was walking off the stinging pain in her shin. “And also how your brainless brother could bring those scrublanders home with him.” She rested the tip of her waster in the roof pebbles and leaned on it. “Speaking of Dax, what did you think of his friend? The quiet one.”
“Roa?” Out of breath, Asha spied the water skin Safire had brought up with them. She made for it. “Jarek interrupted before I could properly form an opinion.”
While Asha panted and wiped the sweat from her hairline, Safire now stood fresh as the dawn.
“Did you see what she was wearing?”
Asha took a long drink of water, then stoppered the skin. “The knife?” Roa had been the only scrublander without a weapon at her hip. But Asha had seen the bulge of a hilt strapped to the girl’s thigh, hidden beneath her dress.
“No. The pendant.”
Asha hadn’t noticed any pendant.
“It was a circle, made out of stone. Alabaster, it looked like.”
Asha frowned at her. “So?”
“It seemed like Dax’s handiwork.”
Aside from his looks, this was the one thing Dax inherited from their father: a love of carving. When their mother was still alive, the dragon king used to carve all kinds of things for her out of bone. Combs, tiny boxes inset with jewels, rings. And Dax, in an effort to make his father proud, taught himself the king’s craft.
“What are you saying?”
Safire came to stand before Asha, reaching for the skin. “I’m saying it’s interesting. That girl—Roa—she’s a daughter of the House of Song. Isn’t that the house Dax used to spend his summers in? Before—”
The words halted on her lips.
But Asha knew what she’d been about to say.
Before your mother died and the scrublanders turned against us.
As a child, Dax was quiet and curious, but also slow to learn things. It took him longer to walk and talk. And when it came to reading and writing, no matter how determined he was or how hard he tried, he couldn’t manage it. His tutors had no patience for him. They convinced the king there was something wrong with his son. Dax was simply unintelligent, they said. A waste of their time.
So their mother sent Dax to the home of her childhood friend Desta, the mistress of the House of Song. For years, Dax spent summers in the scrublands, learning alongside Desta’s children, whose tutors were more patient.
But then their mother died. Peace between Firgaard and the scrublands shattered and the House of Song turned against them. Instead of their honored guest, Dax became a prisoner. Asha didn’t know the whole story, because Dax refused to talk about it. But she knew it was a hurt her brother carried within him to this day.
“I’m just saying,” said Safire, tilting back her head to drink. “It looked”—she gulped water, then swiped when it dribbled down her chin—“like a token of affection.”
Those words slammed into Asha like a rockslide in the Rift. “Dax?” she scoffed. “In love with a scrublander?”
Safire made an arching swoop of her hands, as if to say I’m just telling you what I saw.
“Even if he did carve her that pendant, you know how he is,” Asha said. “Dax flirts with everyone. It doesn’t mean anything. And Roa seems”—regal, graceful, proud—“like the kind of girl who wouldn’t put up with that.”
“It’s not Roa I’m worried about.”
Asha frowned, hearing what Safire didn’t say.
It was strange that he’d brought the scrublanders back with him. It didn’t seem like something Dax could manage alone. What if he was smitten with Roa? And, if so, what if Roa knew it and was using it to her advantage? Using Dax’s affection to get within striking distance of the king?
Asha’s heart squeezed at the thought. Because underneath all of her brother’s ridiculous bravado beat a selfless, golden heart.
The real reason Dax got into the fight with Jarek’s second-in-command? It wasn’t because he was drunk. It was because it was the second-in-command who’d beaten Safire so badly, she could hardly get out of bed for three days.
Asha’s brother might be a reckless fool. But he was a reckless fool who would do what it took to save the ones he loved from pain.
She looked to her cousin. “I need you to watch him. Stay close and make sure he doesn’t get himself into trouble.”
“We can both watch him.”
But Asha couldn’t. She had a dragon to hunt.
She walked to the edge of the roof, pacing as she stared out past the city walls to the ridge of the mountain range towering above them. The morning mist gathered in its gray crevices and green valleys. The fading red moon clung to the bit of sky above.
Six more days until the moon disappeared completely. After that, Asha would belong to Jarek.
If only she had more time. . . .
“There’s something I need to do first.”
Turning away from the sight, Asha gathered up the wasters. She felt her cousin’s gaze on her back. This time, Safire didn’t put a voice to the questions burning inside her.
But that didn’t mean Asha didn’t hear them.
“As soon as it’s done, I’ll tell you everything,” Asha said. “I promise.”
She knew Safire wouldn’t betray her secret. Knew it better than the old stories buried in her depths. But if the dragon king found out Safire knew his daughter was perpetrating criminal acts, it would be the end for her. Asha couldn’t put her cousin in a situation that would require more grace from the dragon king—because there wasn’t any grace left for Safire.
The less her cousin knew, the safer she was.
A Tale of Caution
Once there was a slave named Lillian. Like all well-trained slaves, she kept her head down and did as she was bidden. She waited on the dragon queen with patience and care, dressing and bathing her, plaiting her long hair and sprinkling her neck with the finest rose water. Like all well-trained slaves, Lillian was invisible.
The second son of the dragon queen was named Rayan. Like most young draksors of high rank, he wore only the finest clothes and drank only the finest wine. He bet on the strongest dragons in the pit and broke in the most unruly of stallions. Like any handsome son of a dragon queen, Rayan caught every woman’s eye.
One day, returning early from a desert ride, Rayan strode through his mother’s orange grove and stopped short. Someone was singing. Someone with the voice of a nightingale.
Rayan paused, unseen, beneath the blooming trees. He watched, transfixed by the sight of a barefooted slave as she spun on her heel, her plain dress twirling around her as she danced to the tune of her own voice.
Every day after, Rayan returned to the orange grove to wait for his mother’s slave. He only ever meant to watch her. He never meant to be seen.
But Lillian saw. Her dance paused midstep. Her song broke midtune.