He turned back to her, his eyes cold. “Then why would I hate the sight of yours?”
But Torwin had never been proud of his scars, while Asha had loved her scar—because her father loved it. She’d used it to justify killing dragons. Her father lied to her over and over again while she brought him their heads. That’s what Asha saw now when she looked at her scar.
Tears stung her eyes and blurred her vision. Asha pressed her hands to her face, trying to hide them.
“Asha . . . ?”
When she wouldn’t look at him, Torwin’s arms came around her, crushing her into his warmth. With his cheek pressed against her hair, he didn’t say a word. Just held her as she cried. His warm palm moved in slow circles against her back, trying to soothe her.
“I almost killed Kozu,” she whispered into her hands when her hiccups fell silent. “I nearly destroyed the old stories.”
“Isn’t that what you wanted?”
Asha shook her head. His hand stopped. He reached for her wrists, pulling her hands away from her face.
“Tell me.”
She told him everything. The truth about the day Kozu burned her and all the things that came after. All the lies she’d ever believed. All the dragons she’d ever killed. And for what? For a tyrant. For a father who never really loved her at all.
Torwin held her tighter.
After a long while, he turned his face into her wet, glistening hair. “Stay here tonight,” he said. “It’s quiet and peaceful and you’ll get a good rest. Better than you will back at camp.”
“Here?” She palmed the tears from her cheeks. “In your tent?”
“Just for tonight.” He stepped away to pull his shirt back on. The cool air rushed in, chilling her once more. Grabbing a bundle of dry clothes, he held them out to her. “I’ll sleep outside.”
Taking them, she said, “Torwin—”
“I prefer the stars.” He reached for his lute, ready to leave so she could change. “And besides, I don’t sleep much. Nightmares, remember?”
But before stepping out of the tent, he stopped and turned around.
“You don’t ever have to go back. Not if you don’t want to.”
She frowned at him.
He took a shaky step toward her. “We could leave,” he said. “We could leave tonight.”
“Torwin, where would we go?”
His mouth tipped up at the side. “Anywhere. To the edge of the world.”
That smile sent the tiniest of thrills rippling through her. Asha tamped it down.
Run away? No.
She understood wanting to run from Jarek, but he would never stop hunting them. And what of the rest? What of Dax and Safire? She couldn’t leave them to fight this war alone.
Asha stepped back. “I can’t.” She shook her head. “Everyone I love is in that camp.”
And a lying tyrant ruled over Firgaard.
“Everyone you love,” Torwin repeated.
He stood very still. Like he was waiting for something.
But Asha didn’t know what else he wanted.
The light in his eyes went out.
“Get some rest,” he said, turning to leave. Without glancing back at her, he slipped out of the tent and into the darkness beyond.
Asha stared at the tent flap until the shivering returned. It felt like the time she left him in the clearing. Something lay unfinished between them. Like they were a fraying tapestry in need of a weaver.
She changed out of her sopping-wet dress and dumped it outside in a heap. Torwin’s clothes, while far too big, were warm and dry.
Turning down the lantern, she climbed into the bedroll. She tossed and turned in the darkness, her thoughts full of thorns.
It was only when a quiet melody drifted in that she fell still. From outside the tent, Torwin plucked a familiar tune from the strings of his lute. The same tune he’d been humming ever since he’d stitched up her side. There was more of it than the last time, but it still wasn’t complete. Torwin kept falling into silence halfway through, only to pick it up again at the beginning.
She imagined those hands, so deft and sure, plucking strings as easily as they’d made a poultice and stitched up her side. As easily as they’d undone the buttons on her dress.
Swallowing, Asha imagined those hands going farther. Sliding off her dress. Moving across her bare skin.
She shut her eyes, trying to escape the thoughts, knowing the danger they put him in. But they only flared up brighter behind her eyelids.
Much later, when Torwin gave up on his song at last and went to sleep, Asha lay awake, thinking of his hands.
Thirty-Eight
The next morning, when Asha entered the meeting tent, she ran straight into Jas. His eyes, rimmed in dark lashes, widened at the sight of her. Recovering, he smiled, fisting his hand over his heart in greeting.
“You look well this morning, Asha.”
His kindness startled her. After all, she’d pulled a knife on him just last night. And most people upon meeting the Iskari were not so quick to smile at her.
Torwin stepped in behind them. “Sorry we’re late. We . . .” At the sight of what was clearly the middle of a meeting, he stopped.
A dozen people looked up from the roughly hewn log benches. Dax stood in the center, pouring tea.
The sight of it jarred Asha. Serving tea was a slave’s task. But here was her brother, the heir to the throne, holding the brass teapot high in the air as liquid gold streamed in an arc, filling the circle of glasses with frothy, steaming tea.
Before the Severing, under the old ways, the master of the house always served the tea.
Dax stopped pouring to stare at Asha’s clothes. Which were actually Torwin’s clothes. The daughter of the dragon king was wearing the clothes of her husband’s slave.
Her face flamed as she realized how it looked. But she was surrounded by strangers—draksors, scrublanders, skral—so she said nothing. She didn’t look at Dax, whose stare burned up her skin, just ducked past a wordless Jas and filled the empty spot on the cushions next to Safire, who shot her a curious look.
Dax’s stare turned to a wordless question, which he fixed on Torwin. Torwin, who was supposed to be leaving.
Avoiding eye contact, Torwin filled in a gap on the other side of the circle, as far from Asha as he could get, sitting between Roa and a woman Asha recognized: the blacksmith who’d forged her slayers. The blacksmith nodded to her. Asha nodded back.
Safire broke the awkward silence, continuing as if they’d never been interrupted. “Aren’t we forgetting something?” She tossed a throwing knife from hand to hand. Its sharpened steel edge broke the light into countless colors that went skittering across the tent. “There’s a law against regicide, in both the old age and the new.”
Asha thought of the last three scrublander assassins who’d tried to take her father’s life. Remembered the blade hacking at their necks beneath the blazing midday sun. Remembered their heads falling to the stones with sickening thuds. Dax had been sitting right next to Asha, watching it happen.
She thought of Moria, centuries earlier, kneeling on those same stones, resting her head on that same bloodstained block.