Dax moved to help his sister. The soldats restrained him.
“We could forget this ever happened.” Jarek put one big hand on her scarred cheek. “You could offer me something in exchange.” His hand moved down her face, then her throat, then ever farther. “If you came with me now, I could overlook the incident with my slave. . . .”
Asha’s eyes stung. She felt vile. Repulsive. Jarek’s touch made her hate herself more than she’d ever hated anything. More than the old stories and the First Dragon and the Old One, she hated her own heart for being desirable to someone so despicable.
It was further proof of her wickedness.
“Tell me how we should proceed.” His voice turned husky. Full of desire. “My fearsome Iskari.”
Asha’s fingers itched for her axe. But there was no axe to reach for.
So Asha reached for something else.
“Has anyone told you about Moria and the fourth king of Firgaard?” Her angry gaze met his. “It’s an old story about a man who took what wasn’t his and the girl who put an end to him. Shall I tell it to you?”
Something shifted, then. Jarek’s grip on her loosened.
Asha pushed away from the shelves and he stumbled back.
“Give me the torch.”
She didn’t wait for him to hand it to her. She snatched it from him.
Before anyone could stop her, Asha set the scrolls on fire.
Maya cried out, covering her mouth with her hands as the flames licked the parchment and the wood. Dax, released from the soldat’s hold, opened the door and held the guardian back, out of the way of the fire, while smoke filled the room. Asha watched the parchment crumple and burn.
“The stories killed our mother.” Asha didn’t look at her brother. “They must be destroyed.”
She tried to remember her mother’s voice chasing her nightmares away, those soft arms pulling her into a hug. But they were only memories of memories and too far gone.
Asha hugged herself tight as she watched the ravenous flames devour the shelves, and with them, any evidence of her brother’s treason. Now, if Jarek went to the king, it would be his word against Dax’s.
But that wasn’t the only evidence the fire destroyed.
As she listened to the strings of the lute—warping, bending, snapping—the skral’s freckled face flared up in her mind, drenched and smiling brightly as he tucked her hair behind her ear.
There are plenty of other lutes in the city, she told herself, pulling her hunting shirt up over her mouth to stop from breathing in the smoke. I will bring him one of those.
Moria and the Fourth King of Firgaard
The fourth king of Firgaard was not a kind man. Some called him cruel. Others called him wicked. Still others, power starved. He built a palace that towered over the temple. He taxed his people into poverty. And he took a different girl to bed every night.
If the fourth king of Firgaard came to your home and asked for your daughter, you gave her up to him. If you didn’t, he would take her anyway and your family would be dead come sunrise.
Moria was the daughter of the priestess. Raised in the temple, she lived a devout and sheltered life. She went to bed early and got up long before the sun to pray. She visited the poor and sick and held fast to the Old One’s laws.
Until the king took her dearest friend.
On that night, Moria did not go to sleep early. She did not get up before the sun. She spent the long, cold stretch of moon kneeling on the stone floor of the temple, speaking to the Old One.
“I can’t save her,” Moria told him. “But I can save the next girl.”
“To take the life of another is a monstrous act,” the Old One told her. “Even the life of the wickedest among you is sacred.”
“If I must become a monster to stop a monster,” said Moria, “then that is what I will do.”
And the Old One said, “The killing price of a king is death.”
And Moria said, “So be it.”
She got up from the floor. She grabbed the ceremonial knife off the altar. Its blade scraped against the stone.
That evening, Moria combed her hair until it shone. She smudged her eyes with kohl and doused her skin in rose water. She put on her prettiest kaftan and set out for the palace.
The guards took her straight to the king.
Moria bowed low to the king of Firgaard. She did not meet his gaze for fear he would see the raging fire in her eyes. She did not speak her name for fear he would hear the sharpened edge of her voice.
The dragon king dismissed his guards.
The flame in Moria flickered. Who was she, to pit herself against a king? She was nothing more than a girl. Not yet eighteen. And he was twice her size.
When the king reached for her, Moria froze.
When he undid the buttons of her kaftan, she trembled.
When he slid the kaftan off her shoulders and down her arms, when he let it fall to the floor, Moria thought of her dearest friend. She thought of all the girls who’d stood right here, trembling and afraid. With her clothes crumpled around her feet, Moria reached for the knife strapped to her thigh.
Seeing it, the king’s eyes widened in surprise.
And Moria cut open his throat.
The guards found her standing over the body, blood dripping from the ceremonial blade in her hand. When her gaze fell upon them, they shivered. As if it were the gaze of Iskari herself.
Taking life was forbidden. The king’s life, especially. Elorma himself instated the law against regicide. It was as old as the founding of Firgaard.
Ancient laws needed to be upheld.
So, three days later, they marched Moria to the bloodstained block in the center square, where a man holding a saber waited. All of Firgaard came to watch. Every girl who’d ever been taken by the king lined the streets, with their families at their backs.
But as the guards marched Moria past them, her people raised a fist over their hearts. And Moria held her head high all the way to the chopping block.
Unafraid.
Twenty-One
Beneath the watchful gaze of the soldats, Asha bided her time, waiting for her moment to steal the flame.
Beneath the blazing sun, Asha and Dax walked side by side. Jarek marched six paces ahead while soldats surrounded them, their gazes cast like spears up and down the green-walled streets of the new quarter. The visiting scrublanders were missing and Jarek’s fugitive slave hadn’t been found. The city was on high alert.
“No one is allowed in or out,” Asha heard Jarek tell his second-in-command, “until the missing scrublanders are found.”
While her brother brooded beside her, Asha set her thoughts on her task. She needed to take the sacred flame from her father’s throne room without getting caught.
Up ahead, Jarek took off his mantle—useful in the early morning chill but stifling now in the increasing heat of the rising sun. A dagger hung at his hip, the ivory hilt polished and shining. Beside Asha, Dax’s gaze burned a hole in the back of Jarek’s shirt.
“You didn’t have to torch them,” said Dax. His brown curls were damp against his skin, where sweat beaded from the sun’s heat.