She woke in a strange room and a strange bed and she couldn’t remember what happened. In the beginning, her father hid the truth. How do you tell a girl of ten she’s responsible for the deaths of thousands?
Instead, he never left her side. He sat with her through the pain-filled nights. He sent for burn experts to restore her to full health. When they said she would never recover her mobility, he found better experts. And, very slowly, he filled in the gaps of her memory.
When the girl made her public apology and her people spat at her feet, her father stood by her side. While she promised to redeem herself and they hissed the name of a cursed god, her father took their curses and turned them into a title.
The old heroes were called Namsara after a beloved god, he said. So she would be called Iskari, after a deadly one.
Three
The throne room, with its double arcades, soldat-lined walls, and precise mosaic work, was built to draw attention to one place: the dragon king’s throne. But whenever Asha stepped through the giant archway, it was the sacred flame that commanded her attention first. A pedestal of polished onyx stood halfway between the main entrance and the gilded throne. Upon it sat a shallow iron bowl, and in that bowl burned a white and whispering flame.
When Asha was a child, the sacred flame was taken from the Old One’s caves and brought here, to keep the throne room alight. It struck such awe in Asha then.
Not anymore.
Now the flame seemed to watch Asha as much as she once watched it.
A colorless flame burning on nothing but air? It was unnatural. She wished her father would send it back to the caves. But it was his trophy, a sign of what he’d overcome.
“I’m sorry I interrupted your hunt, my dear.”
Her father’s voice echoed across the room, snapping up her attention. Asha scanned the gleaming white walls, broken up by tapestries bearing the portraits of dragon kings and queens of old.
“You didn’t interrupt. I killed it just before your message arrived.”
Dressed now in silk gloves that came to her elbows and an indigo kaftan that swished when she walked, Asha made her way across the room while the eyes in the tapestries watched her. Her steps padded softly on the sea of blue and green tiles as sunlight slid through the skylight in the copper-domed roof, lighting up specks of dust floating in the air.
The man waiting for her looked every bit a king: embroidered over the right shoulder of his robe was the royal crest—a dragon with a saber through its heart—and from his neck hung a citrine medallion. Gold slippers with elaborate white stitching hid his feet.
It was this man she woke to in the sickroom almost eight years ago. The sight of him now brought on a memory.
Kozu’s red-hot flames engulfing her. The awful smell of burning hair and flesh. The barbed screams snagging in her throat.
It was the only part Asha remembered: burning. Everything else was lost to her.
“That was your longest hunt yet,” he said. Asha stopped before the gilded steps of his throne. “I was beginning to worry.”
She looked to the floor. The shame of it made her throat prickle. Like she’d swallowed a handful of cactus spines.
Her father had too many things to worry about without Asha adding to them: war brewing with the scrublanders, the ever-present threat of another slave revolt, tension with the temple, and—though her father never spoke of it with Asha—the growing power of his commandant.
Asha’s bandaged hand throbbed beneath the silk glove, screaming of the crime she’d committed that very morning. As if it wanted to betray her. She held it against her side, hoping her father wouldn’t ask about the gloves.
“Don’t worry about me, Father. I always find my prey.”
The dragon king smiled at her. Behind him, an ornate mosaic was etched into the golden throne, a pattern of shapes within shapes and lines crossing back over lines. Just like the city’s labyrinthine streets or the palace’s maze of hallways and secret passageways.
“Tonight I want you to publicly present your kill. In honor of our guests.”
She looked up. “Guests?”
Her father’s smile broke. “You haven’t heard the news?”
Asha shook her head no.
“Your brother returned with a delegation of scrublanders.”
Asha’s mouth went dry. The scrublanders dwelled across the sand sea and refused to acknowledge the authority of the king. They didn’t agree with killing dragons almost as much as they didn’t agree with keeping slaves. It was why her father had had such trouble handling them in the past—that, and the fact that they kept trying to assassinate him.
“They’ve agreed to a truce,” her father explained. “They’re here to negotiate the terms of a peace treaty.”
Peace with scrublanders? Impossible.
Asha stepped closer to the throne, her voice tight. “They’re inside the palace walls?” How could Dax bring their oldest enemies into their home?
No one had expected Dax to succeed in the scrublands. If Asha were honest, no one expected Dax to survive in the scrublands.
“It’s too dangerous, Father.”
The dragon king leaned forward in his throne, looking down at her with warm eyes. His nose was long and thin and his beard neatly trimmed.
“Don’t worry, my dear.” His eyes traced the scar marring her face. “One look at you and they will never cross me again.”
Asha frowned. If they didn’t fear the chopping block—which was the punishment for attempted regicide—why would they fear the Iskari?
“But that isn’t why I summoned you.”
The dragon king rose from his throne and descended the seven steps to the floor. Knotting his hands behind his back, her father made a slow tour of the tapestries up the left side of the room. Asha followed him, ignoring the soldats standing guard in between each one, their eyes hidden by crested morions and their burnished breastplates gleaming in the dusty sunlight.
“I want to talk about Jarek.”
Asha’s chin jerked upward.
When the people of Firgaard lost lives and homes and loved ones in the wake of Kozu’s fire, they called for the death of the wicked girl responsible. The king, unable to put his own daughter to death, offered her a chance at redemption instead. He promised her hand in marriage to Jarek—the boy who saved her. The boy who’d lost both his parents in the fire that was her fault.
Their union, he said, would be the last act of Asha’s redemption. When they came of age, Jarek would bind himself to Asha and in doing so, prove his forgiveness. Jarek, who lost the most because of Asha, would show all of Firgaard they could forgive her too.
Furthermore, in exchange for Jarek’s heroism, the king groomed him to take over his father’s role as commandant.
It was an act of faith and gratitude.
In the years since, that heroic boy had grown into a powerful young man. At twenty-one, Jarek now held the army in his fist. His soldats were completely loyal. Too loyal, thought Asha. Once he married her, Jarek would be in very close proximity to the throne. A throne that would be very easy to take by force. It worried Asha.