“By the power given to me by the dragon king himself . . .”
Those weren’t the binding words. The power to bind a pair together came from the Old One, not the king.
Maybe her father didn’t need Kozu’s death to usher in his new era. Maybe he could simply seize it for himself.
“I weave these lives together as one! Only death can break my threads and tear them asunder!”
Normally the bride and groom refuted this last line by reciting vows taken from Willa’s story. Because the line was wrong. Willa had proven that Death couldn’t break the bond between her and her beloved. Love was stronger than death.
“Only Death himself,” Jarek recited, “can tear this bond asunder.”
Those weren’t the vows. They were butchering Willa’s words.
She stared at the guardian, wanting her to protest. But the young woman simply stood there, waiting for Asha to repeat the words.
Jarek reached for Asha’s arm and drew her in close. His grip tightened. Always tightened. “What do you think will happen to you if you don’t say the words, Asha?”
My father will give me to you anyway. It was the worst punishment she could think of.
“Say them.”
She never would. Not to Jarek. The words belonged to Willa. Saying them to Jarek was a desecration. A mockery of Willa’s fierce, unyielding love.
Asha looked to the guardians beyond the circle of flame. Six sets of eyes looked back at her, watching. As if she were nothing more than a slave being sold and locked in a collar.
She thought of the people gathered outside. Thought of how, before her mother died, she could hear the chant of prayers all the way from the market.
Asha didn’t have any prayers. But she had something else.
“Once there was a king, rotting from the inside out!” Asha threw her voice so hard and so high, she imagined it reaching beyond the stained-glass windows hidden behind her father’s banners. Imagined it reaching all the way to the sky. “He tricked his own daughter into betraying the First Dragon! He turned Kozu against her, letting her burn, all so he could use her! So he could twist her into a tool for his own dark purposes!”
Beyond the circle of flames, the guardians exchanged startled glances.
“The dragon king convinced his daughter it was her fault; she burned because she was the rotten one. He showered on her false kindnesses, to make her feel indebted to him. To use her to usher in a new era—one without dissent.”
“Silence!” her father commanded.
Jarek squeezed, crushing her bones.
But Asha didn’t stop.
“She believed the lies he told. She hunted down monsters because he asked her to, never realizing the most wicked monster of all stood right behind her.”
From outside, Asha thought she heard murmurs turn to shouts. Thought she heard the crash of lanterns dropped on the stones.
“Bind them,” commanded the dragon king.
“But, my king, she hasn’t said the—”
“BIND THEM!”
The temple guardian stepped forward, her hands trembling as she did. She took the white silk and, as Jarek laced his fingers with Asha’s, tied it around their wrists.
“Your worst fear has come true, Father.” Asha stared down the dragon king. “I am corrupted. The Old One owns your Iskari. You have nothing left to use against her, nothing to make her do what you want.”
The guardian said the binding words. A moment later, Jarek ripped off the silk. It fluttered to the stones at their feet. He grabbed Asha and yanked her out of the circle of torches.
The sound of shattered glass erupted from above.
A thousand colored shards rained down on them.
Jarek let go. Asha raised her arms over her head, protecting herself from the falling pieces. She looked up, watching her father’s torn banner flutter to the floor.
A fierce wind howled through the broken window—or maybe that was the dragon.
With outstretched wings, the dust-red dragon swooped, circling downward, as out in the street, the screaming started. Asha could hear people pushing and shoving, running for cover.
Shadow landed clumsily on the stone floor before Asha. Gasps rose from the guardians behind her. Two of them fell to their knees.
Righting himself, Shadow’s pale slitted eyes flickered over her, checking for injury, before narrowing on the commandant and the king at her back. Shadow roared, and the temple shook with the sound. As if the Old One himself had woken from a too-long slumber, angry, ready to take back what belonged to him.
Atop Shadow sat Torwin, a bow slung over his shoulder and a knife tucked into his boot. Steely eyes met Asha’s. He wore a strange fitted coat and gloves, with a dark green sandskarf pulled up over his face, covering his nose and mouth.
You’re supposed to be gone, she thought. You’re supposed to be safe.
And yet her hope ignited at the sight of him.
Shadow hissed. Jarek stepped back, out of the circle of fire and away from Asha, his hands raised.
Her father yelled for the soldats. But the doors to the chamber were shut tight. Maya and a few of the other temple guardians were shoved up against them.
With Shadow’s gaze pinning Jarek in place, Torwin held one hand down to Asha. She rose and seized it, letting him pull her up. Asha hiked up the hem of her dress to straddle Shadow’s back. Torwin’s arm slid around her waist, keeping her tight against him. He clicked to Shadow, who hissed another warning and stretched his wings wide.
“Are you ready?”
Her heart thudded at the sound of his voice at her ear, slightly muffled by the fabric of the sandskarf. He smelled like dragonfire and smoke.
“I’ve never been more ready,” she said.
His eyes crinkled. She knew beneath the sandskarf he was smiling the smile she loved best. One that involved his whole mouth.
“Hold on.” His arm tightened as Shadow beat his wings, shifting from foot to foot.
Asha’s stomach lurched as they sprang into the air.
In his leap for the window, Shadow knocked over a torch and her father’s crumpled banner caught fire. As they rose toward the window, Asha looked back to the flames, past Jarek, to the dragon king. Smoke twisted around him.
His eyes raged at her. But underneath the surface, Asha thought she saw the seed of a great fear.
Be afraid, Father. I’ll make you regret everything you’ve ever done to me.
Shadow soared out through the broken window and into the night.
Asha laughed—softly at first. And then deliriously.
She’d just escaped her own wedding on the back of a dragon.
They soared over rooftops, then over the wall. Asha turned and looked back, watching the city fall away, marveling at how different the streets and rooftops looked from so high up. Like a winding web. Shadow sailed higher, beyond the wall and out into the Rift.
The higher they rose, though, the colder it got. Soon Asha’s teeth chattered. Torwin pulled her closer, trying to use his heat to stave off her chill.