But asking questions would only delay her. So, deciding it was better not to, Asha eyed them both warily as she moved for her slayers beneath the cot.
Dax watched Asha put her armor on over her hunting clothes. “Where are you going?”
She ignored him.
The fireproof leather hide curled like parchment around her legs and arms, overlapping in places. She buckled each piece into place before sliding the breastplate over her head.
“Looks like she’s going hunting,” said the slave, sitting down on the cot. He began to play his lute again, and this time Asha noticed the name Greta elegantly engraved near the bottom. The slave winced every once in a while until whatever pain it caused him was forgotten in the joy of playing. In between plucking, he tapped out a rhythm on the belly of the instrument. He let the song build and build until Dax started tapping his foot to the beat, a small smile tugging at his mouth.
Asha stared at them, speechless.
She didn’t know what angered her more: her brother’s disregard for his own rank or his lack of concern at the noise—noise that would put this slave back into the danger Asha had just delivered him from.
She wanted to shake her brother. This was not the behavior of a king to be. It was the behavior of a fool.
She couldn’t abide it.
“Is this the plan, then?” Asha towered over the skral. “To lead Jarek right to you?”
His fingers silenced the strings. He looked up at her.
“Someone’s prickly today.”
Her temper flared. Before she could respond, he went on.
“Are you going hunting?” He looked her up and down. “Because the law says your hunting slaves have three days of rest before you can take them out again.”
Asha frowned. Why would a house slave know dragon-hunting laws? And anyway, Asha always gave her hunting slaves five days of rest. Well-rested slaves made better hunters.
“I’m not taking them.”
The slave set aside his instrument and rose, stepping toward Asha, his eyebrows drawn together in that curious look of his.
“You’re going alone?” His gaze flickered over her face. He stood so close, she could have counted all of his freckles if she wanted to. “Tell me again, which one of us has the death wish?”
She narrowed her eyes at him.
Dax put the scroll back on the shelf before stepping up beside the slave.
“Asha.” Her brother’s smile was long gone. “It isn’t safe to hunt alone.”
“Because stealing Jarek’s slave was safe?”
She thought of the shaxa. Of the jealous rage in Jarek’s eyes. Of being trapped beneath him, unable to breathe.
The room went quiet.
Once the memory started, Asha couldn’t stop it from unraveling completely. She saw Greta’s hands pushing Jarek off. Saw Greta giving her murderer permission to take her life. Saw Greta’s blood in the sand.
“Iskari? Are you all right?”
The slave’s eyes came into focus first. There was something tender in his gaze. Something worried. Out of habit, she almost told him to look away. But the truth was, no one looked at her the way this slave did: carefully, as if bandaging a wound; gently, so as not to hurt.
Asha looked back. She studied the straight line of his nose, the bumps of his cheekbones, the curve of his jaw. He was sharp and sure. Like her favorite axe.
And just like her favorite axe, he was dangerous.
Dangerous . . . but comforting.
No.
Panicking at her own thoughts, Asha pushed past him. She grabbed her helmet off the floor and lifted it over her head. It blocked out everything but the door, which she opened and stepped through, then shut behind her.
On the other side, Asha leaned against the wood, waiting for her racing heart to slow. When it did, she took the stairs two at a time, swearing to stay as far away from that skral as she could.
Twelve
There were officially two ways out of the city: the north gate, which faced the wild and rugged Rift, and the south gate, which faced the ruthless desert. Both were heavily guarded by soldats.
In truth, though, there was one more way out.
A secret way.
Deep below the temple lay a crypt that led to the Old One’s sacred caves. In the walls of the crypt were the ashes of the dead, sealed up in ceramic jars. But in one wall there was something else: an alcove small enough for a curious child like Asha to find on trips to the temple with her mother. Hidden in the alcove was a tunnel leading straight up into the Rift, far away from the walls where soldats stood and watched.
It was the tunnel that started the trouble with the dragons.
After Jarek made his suspicion clear, she decided not to use either of the gates. Instead, she took a vaulted stairway down into the temple’s depths. At the bottom, she pushed open the old and rotting door. The light from behind her slipped into the crypt, making her shadow stretch and grow.
Without torches to light her way, Asha kept her hand on the crypt walls, letting the cold rock guide her through the darkness. She’d spent so much of her childhood sneaking around beneath the temple that she remembered exactly how far her tunnel was: ninety-three steps through the dark and the damp.
And just beyond her tunnel? The sacred caves.
No one had set foot in them for years. Not since Asha summoned Kozu and he burned half the city to the ground. Before that, the caves were a holy place. And the sacred flame was the temple’s beating heart.
A draksor could only enter the caves after she fasted for three days and washed herself in the sacred spring. Even then, she needed to go in barefoot and she could never, ever, set foot in the inner sanctum. It was forbidden to anyone but the guardians.
It was the sanctum where Asha first saw the image of Elorma’s face. She hadn’t cared then if the Old One struck her down for her disobedience. In fact, she wanted to be struck down. That day, Asha came angry. She came to rage and scream and break things. To hurl her hate into the heart of the Old One’s holy place.
Her mother was dead, killed by the old stories, just like the raconteurs before her.
Asha’s grief made her easy prey that day. It left a fault line running through her. The moment she set foot inside the inner sanctum, the Old One found the fault line. He broke it open and buried a wicked, insatiable hunger within her. One that would turn her against her father, her people, her realm.
From then on, the old stories lived inside Asha, brimming just below the surface. It was how Kozu found her, lured by the old stories buried in her heart. Stories needing to be let out. It was how she almost destroyed the city.
Now, though, the sanctum sat empty and its flaming heart beat elsewhere.