“Saf,” she pleaded. “What’s happened?”
“Come on.” Safire slid an arm around her shoulder. “I’ll bring you to him.”
“When you didn’t return to our tent, I went looking for you,” Safire explained as they strode through New Haven. “Halfway up the valley, I found a group of Haveners in the woods, cursing someone curled on the ground, feeding kicks into his gut and back.”
Safire swept aside the flap of a small tent. From inside, Asha heard raised voices.
“They tried to break his leg, but I stopped them.”
Inside the tent, Asha found a row of cots, a dirt floor, and . . . a shirtless Torwin reaching for the bundle of clothes Callie held behind her back.
“The physician said you need to rest!” Callie’s index finger sliced the air, pointing to the cot.
“Give me my shirt,” Torwin snarled. His hair was damp with sweat and his eyes seemed strangely hollow.
“Get in the cot!”
He was about to shout something back when he noticed the newcomer. At the sight of her, the fight rushed out of him.
“Asha.”
Torwin looked her over, as if checking her for wounds. When he didn’t find any, he shook away the relief in his eyes and turned back to Callie.
“I’ll stay if Asha stays with me.”
Callie shook her head in disbelief. Giving up, she marched right past Asha and out of the tent, taking his clothes with her.
In spite of everything, Torwin smiled a victorious smile, just for the scarred girl standing in the entrance. It made Asha wonder if he even noticed the way Callie was around him. If he had any inkling at all.
Thinking of Dax’s warning, she said, “I just came to make sure you’re all right.”
Torwin moved toward her, a little stiffly. He was obviously hurt, his leg in particular.
“I can’t stay,” she said, stepping back. “This is what happens when I’m near you.” She forced herself to turn, to head for the entrance. “I’ll see you tonight. At the—”
“They gave me a sleeping draught.”
Because you need to rest, she thought, fingers reaching for the tent flap.
“Do you know what it’s like, being trapped inside nightmares all night?”
Asha faltered.
“Nightmares . . . about you.”
She didn’t turn back. Just stared at the tent flap, where Safire waited on the other side.
“They’re always about you,” he whispered.
The words wrapped around her heart and squeezed.
Torwin reached for her wrist, his fingers gentle. Asha let him turn her. Let him draw her in close. When she didn’t pull away, his forehead fell against her shoulder, as if Asha—only Asha—was the balm for a hidden wound.
“Over and over again, I watch them hunt you down.” He shuddered. “And I can never stop them.”
She looped her arms around his neck, holding him tight, the way her mother used to do in the face of her own nightmares.
“I’m right here,” she said, pressing her cheek to his. “I’m safe.”
Asha ran her fingers through his hair, trying to soothe him. But her fingers caught. And when they came free, a sick feeling coiled like a snake in her belly.
Very slowly, she pulled her hand away. Stepping back, out of his arms, she stared down at her hand.
A thick clump of his hair lay in her palm.
The past rose up before her. Asha suddenly remembered stroking her dying mother’s hair. Remembered the way her fingers caught the dark strands coming out in clumps.
Asha choked on a startled sob. She raised her eyes to Torwin’s thinning face.
“No . . . ,” she whispered. But Torwin only stared at her, confused.
A fierce and desperate anger swept through her.
“Are you telling the old stories?”
He frowned at her, his confusion deepening. “What?”
“The stories!” she demanded, her hand closing around his hair. “Are you telling them?”
He shook his head no. “I don’t know them well enough.”
“Then it must be the dragons.” She started to pace, tried to think. “I’ll get someone else to train the riders. You can stay in the camp. . . .”
He reached for her. “What are you talking about?”
Asha let him take her hands in his trembling ones, stopping her pacing footsteps.
She looked down at their interlaced fingers. His were flecked with freckles, hers were hardened with scars. He still wore her mother’s ring.
The ring.
It was the same ring Asha’s mother wore on her deathbed, carved and given to her by the dragon king. The dragon king was always carving things out of bone for his wife to wear.
It should have been burned with her other possessions, but it wasn’t. Her father kept it. And then he gave it to Dax.
Dax, who shared all their mother’s symptoms . . .
. . . until he gave it to Asha.
But Asha had only worn it a day before giving it to Torwin as a promise. And Torwin had been wearing it ever since.
Now he too was showing signs.
Father carved it out of bone, she thought. Why would . . . ?
A story flickered in her mind. A story about a queen who poisoned her guests with dragon bone ash. The slaves found the guests dead, their bodies like hollow shells.
The horror of it dawned on her. Asha grabbed Torwin’s wrist, needing to get the ring off.
“Ouch! Asha, you’re—”
She twisted, then pulled hard.
The ring came free.
Asha had spent eight years hunting dragons. She knew how to bring one down. Knew how to skin one. Knew what all the various parts could be used for.
And she knew one thing most of all: when someone was burned by dragonfire, the only thing strong enough to draw the toxins out was the poison of dragon bone. But used alone, in small amounts, it was just as deadly as dragonfire, slowly leaching the body of life.
As she stared down at the ring, Asha thought of the queen who had killed her enemies by putting a pinch of dragon bone ash in their food at night. The ring on Asha’s palm—the ring her father made for her mother—was made of that same deadly substance.
“He murdered her,” she realized aloud. “And then he tried to kill Dax.”
Torwin stared as if she were speaking an unknown language.
“Come with me,” she said, taking his hand in hers.
Torwin obliged, letting her lead him out of the tent.
She found Dax and handed him the ring. With Torwin looking on, Asha explained: it wasn’t the stories that killed their mother. It was the ring. And maybe more than that. Everything their father ever carved for his wife to wear, Asha was willing to bet, was made out of the poisonous dragon bone. It only seemed like the stories killed her, because that’s when the symptoms started.
Thanks to the eavesdropping slaves, everyone knew the dragon queen had been telling her daughter the old stories. Everyone knew she was committing a criminal act.
“And what better way to prove the stories were wicked than with the death of a storyteller?”
Dax stared at her, his jaw hardening, his hands turning to fists. She could see the thoughts churning in his eyes. The pieces of a puzzle coming together.
“What if it wasn’t just one storyteller?” he whispered, as if to himself.