Asha didn’t have time to wonder why Dax had a bow and arrows at the ready. She searched the sand for her slayers, which she’d flung off with her armor, while Torwin readied his arrows in his draw hand.
Does he even know how to use those?
As if hearing her thoughts, Torwin met her gaze, and Asha noticed his split and swollen lip. Then the welt across his cheek. Then the purple-black bruise along his cheekbone.
Someone had struck him. More than once.
A searing-hot rage flared up in her.
“Get behind me.” She grabbed her hilts from the sand. The sacred blades came free of their sheaths with a ring. “I’ll defend you until Shadow has a clear path out of here.”
Torwin did as she said, nocking an arrow just as the gates opened and soldats flooded in.
Asha spun her slayers, her whole body humming and alive. She took the front while Shadow defended their backs.
“Shoot left!” Asha pointed with her slayer as the first of Jarek’s men swarmed the pit.
The soldat fell before the words left her lips, an arrow embedded in his heart.
She marveled as Torwin nocked his next arrow, letting it fly before she could point out the next advancing enemy. Behind them, Shadow struck with his tail, taking out three soldats at once, flinging them into the walls.
“Where did you learn to shoot like that?”
Another soldat got an arrow through the heart.
“Why? Are you impressed?”
From the crank room, Safire’s voice bellowed at whoever was trying to break down the door. She’d locked herself in.
“Greta taught me,” Torwin said as another arrow flew, whooshing past Asha’s hair. “And I taught your brother.”
My brother?
Asha thought of callused fingers—Torwin’s and her brother’s. But there was no time to ask the questions swirling through her.
“As soon as those bars are up,” she said, “get on Shadow and fly.”
At the gate, soldats parted to let someone through. Someone dressed in white and gold.
The commandant stepped into the pit, heading straight for them, his saber in hand.
As Jarek advanced, Asha gripped her hilts hard. Everything Safire ever told her about fighting a bigger, stronger opponent ran through her head. Strike fast. Go for the legs. Get in and out. Never linger.
Halfway to her, though, Jarek stopped dead. The soldats around him all lowered their weapons, staring over Asha’s shoulder. Wondering at the reason, Asha herself turned to look.
Torwin had drawn his last arrow. It was nocked in his bow, the bowstring pulled taut, and pointed directly at Asha’s chest.
No soldat would advance with his arrow trained on the daughter of the dragon king.
“You get on first.”
“What?”
“Asha.”
He’d never said her name before. The sound of it clanged like a bell inside her, filling up her hollow places.
“Do as I say.”
Asha stared at him. “You’re mad,” she whispered.
Above them the gates creaked. Just a little longer and the way for Shadow would be clear.
“Am I?” Keeping his arrowhead pointed at her chest, he motioned with his chin to the spectators above, their faces crammed together at the bars, staring down at the Iskari they hated and feared. “How many of them want me to put this arrow in your heart?”
Asha swallowed. All of them.
“And your father?”
Asha burned at this question, thinking of the king beneath the crimson canopy. Her father would have seen everything. Would have realized the truth: his daughter was corrupted.
At that thought, she stepped away from the slave.
“Please,” she said. “Go.”
Torwin’s gaze trailed over her face. “No one is going to forgive you for this.”
Not at first, no. But her father needed her to hunt down Kozu. Her father and everyone else would forgive her as soon as she brought back Kozu’s head. That one act would absolve her of all her crimes.
“I need to make things right,” she said. “You need to take care of Shadow. That was our deal.”
The bars shrieked in protest, then stopped rising. From the crank room above, Safire cried out. The bars started to lower.
Fear flared hot and bright inside Asha. If those bars lowered completely with Torwin and Shadow still beneath them, there’d be no saving them again.
“If you die here, after I’ve just saved your life, I will hunt you past Death’s gates and kill you a second time.”
“You can kill me a hundred times,” he said, raising his last arrow over her shoulder, taking aim at his master. “If I can’t free you from him, I’m not leaving him alive.”
Asha stared at him.
He was trying to protect her?
Madness.
“Torwin.” Above them, his chance of escape was slipping away. “I still owe you a dance, remember? You can’t dance with me if you’re dead.”
He glanced at her, surprised..
“Promise me you won’t bind yourself to him,” he said, muscles straining against the pull of the bow. “Being owned by him”—his eyes were suddenly feverish—“it will kill you, Asha.”
She stared at his knuckles, clenched hard from his grip on the bow. He still wore her mother’s ring.
“I’m not leaving until you promise me.”
“I promise,” she whispered.
Accepting this, he clicked to Shadow, then threw himself up between the dragon’s wings.
Released from the threat of Torwin’s arrow, Jarek advanced swiftly now. Like a sandstorm sweeping across the desert. His gaze locked on his slave, who was about to escape him a second time.
From the crank room, Safire screamed, turning Asha’s blood to ice.
The gust of Shadow’s wingbeats snatched at loose strands of her hair. She didn’t look. Didn’t dare take her eyes off the commandant. All she had time for was a silent prayer, begging the Old One to get them safely out.
Jarek raised his hands to signal his soldats. But he never finished the command, because Asha charged him first—disregarding every rule Safire ever drilled into her.
He caught her blades easily. But when he tried to cast her off, Asha held her ground. She didn’t have to beat him in combat. All she had to do was hold him back.
“Out of my way, Iskari. Or I will make you regret it.”
Asha gritted her teeth, holding off the strength and weight of his saber. Her body screamed. Her legs buckled. Jarek roared in her face.
Asha roared right back. Screaming out her fury.
Holding fast.
When he looked up over her head, whatever he saw made his mouth contort with rage. The force of him lifted as he stepped back, casting his saber into the sand.
Asha turned and looked skyward just as the bars clanked closed. Beyond the crisscrossed bars, the empty sky stretched cloudless and blue above her.
They’re gone.
And with that thought came a loneliness so sharp and cruel, it felt like an axe cleaving her heart in two.
Twenty-Nine
Above the bars, the crowd hissed at Asha, cursing her name. Shame crept around her heart like a poisonous vine.
She didn’t resist when Jarek took her slayers, then gave the order to empty the arena. She didn’t meet the gazes of the soldats pulling arrows from their fallen comrades’ chests, all of them looking like they wanted to put a dozen arrows in her.