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.
Eleven
One thing Asha was sure of: she would not be marrying Jarek. If she died hunting Kozu, so be it. She would rather be dead than married to a monster.
Asha slipped through the horde of draksors and fled through the streets, needing to sink her axe into a dragon’s heart. The walls crowded in too close. She wanted the Rift beneath her feet and the desert wind on her skin. Most of all, she wanted to hold the First Dragon’s head up before the entire city and see the look on Jarek’s face when her father declared their wedding canceled.
So while everyone was at the pit, Asha raided the palace kitchens for food. She had five days left before her binding. She needed to pack enough to last.
A lidded silver box waited in her room. When she opened it, a gold necklace studded with rubies winked out at her. Another gift from Jarek.
Asha slammed the lid closed.
She changed into hunting clothes, grabbed her armor and pack, and set out for the temple. Inside, she slipped through the shadows, passing guardians murmuring prayers in candlelit rooms. She moved silently down the corridors. As she did, she heard the faint sound of a lute being played somewhere in the distance.
As she walked, the gray-haired slave lingered behind her eyes. Her blood spilling over her combatant’s hands. Her body slumping forward. Greta had protected a fellow skral, and it had gotten her killed.
Soon, Asha found herself at the bottom of the narrow stairway she sought. The song was louder here. She climbed the steps, stopping before the carved door at the top, about to knock, when the sound within the room made her fist pause in midair.
This was where the song was coming from.
On the other side of the door, someone was plucking the strings of a lute. A voice wove through the notes. A voice like rain falling softly on sand.
A story swelled within her, pushing at her seams. She thought of Rayan watching Lillian dance in the orange grove. . . .
The sight of her was like a still pool. Like a calm and soothing place.
No. Asha forced the story down into her darkest depths and banged her fist on the door. The song abruptly stopped.
When the door opened, Asha looked up into a face flecked with freckles. The skral’s eyes were shadowed by dark half-moons.
“Do you have a death wish? I could hear you playing halfway through the temple.” She motioned to where his hand gripped the neck of his pale, worn-looking lute. “Where did you get that?”
The moment she stepped past him, she stopped. Dressed in gold, her brother, Dax, rose from a crouched position near the shelves full of scrolls.
The slave shut the door. “Your brother brought it.”
Asha looked to her brother, expecting some kind of explanation.
Dax simply studied her, then went back to reading his scroll.
What is going on? she wondered.