In his panic, the dragon king turned, keeping the slave between him and the fire-breathing monster, using the slave as a shield.
Asha’s gaze fixed on her father’s back. In one single heartbeat, the past, present, and future wove together like a tapestry.
Her mother ice-cold in her bed.
Her brother failing to win his people’s loyalty.
The boy she loved, walking through the gate of the dead. Alone.
This king had to die.
Her fingers wrapped around the handle of her hunting axe. Lifting it from her belt, Asha drew the axe back. She knew the punishment for regicide. She knew the moment her axe left her hand that her life was forfeit.
And still, she threw it.
“No!” Dax screamed.
Asha’s axe sailed toward the dragon king, whistling through the air before carving easily through flesh and bone. A sickening silence descended.
Jarek stopped mere steps from Asha. His shining saber fell to his side as he stared at his king.
Dark red blood seeped across the dragon king’s golden robe. Asha’s slayer clattered to the stones as he staggered, releasing the skral, and turned to face his daughter. The tip of her axe stuck through the front of his chest, where it sliced through his heart.
Her father touched his crest, blotted with his own blood. He gulped and gulped. Blood spread and spread.
“Asha . . . ?”
His voice echoed against the walls of the court, but not as loudly as it echoed inside her own rib cage, catching there to haunt her heart.
The dragon king fell to the ground at her feet, his body contorted, blood pooling all around him. Just like every dragon Asha had ever killed. His sightless eyes stared up at her. Asha stared back, unable to look away.
Darkness enveloped her then. Torwin pressed her face into his chest, blocking out the sight of her father’s corpse. He cupped her head, holding her tight as she shook, her hands bunching the fabric of his shirt.
“Get away from her, skral,” Jarek growled.
Torwin held her tighter.
And then: the piercing cry of a hawk filled the air.
Torwin loosed Asha as a flurry of flaming arrows sailed through the air above them. Each and every arrow met its mark, sinking into the chests of the archers on the walls.
The courtyard erupted into motion as the scrublander army poured into the court, its ranks joined by draksors and skral, all of them armed to the teeth. Roa led them. The curve of her double-edged blade already shone with blood as her gaze searched the crowd. At her side stood Safire, her eyes blazing.
Roa gave a command. Her hawk flew to Dax.
“Kill them!” Jarek screamed at his soldats. “Kill them all!”
But the soldats were outnumbered and the dragon king was dead. The next time arrows rained down, there were only half as many.
Asha turned to Kozu, who was bleeding and studded with arrows. The First Dragon watched her with a calm, slitted eye. His body arched around her as she pulled the arrows out, thinking of Shadow. Of the blood streaming from the gash in his chest.
But Kozu’s wounds were minor. Kozu was going to live.
Torwin grabbed a dead archer’s bow and caught arrows as they sailed past, quickly shooting back, picking the rest of the balcony archers off, one by one. The clash of metal on metal rose as soldats charged. Asha heard the sickening sound of bodies connecting with blows.
Dax was at Roa’s side. They fought back to back as Essie flew in a tight, protective circle above.
And in the distance was the sound of a multitude of wings.
A moment later, the rooftops lit up with fire, breathed from the bellies of dragons swarming like storm clouds above them. Any archers still on the rooftops were there no longer. The gust of dragon wings rushed through the courtyard as they landed. When the rooftops became too crowded, the others flew in circles above.
The courtyard went silent and still. Overpowered and surrounded, soldats began laying down their weapons and surrendering. All except Jarek, who stared down Dax, both hands gripping his saber.
Dax approached, his footsteps ringing with victory. “You’re finished.”
Jarek spat at Dax’s feet. “If I’m to die, I’ll die defending the true king.”
“So be it,” a voice rang out. A knife hissed through the air, followed by two more. They sailed from Safire’s hands and sank into Jarek’s chest.
His saber fell, clanging against the marble floor. He reached for the hilts, trying to pull them out. Scrublander soldiers rushed in, tackling him to the floor and fastening irons around his wrists and ankles.
Safire stood over him, breathing hard, her last throwing knife gripped in her hand. “I should have done this a long time ago.”
She stabbed the knife in his heart.
Forty-Eight
They burned the dragon king’s body on a pyre. Asha didn’t see it, chained as she was to the damp dungeon walls. But afterward, Safire told her how the fire consumed his body. How the smoke clotted the air. How all Firgaard came to mourn while Kozu watched from the wall.
Safire visited Asha’s cell as often as she could, but when Dax promoted her to commandant, her visits stopped almost entirely. Not everyone was happy with Dax taking the throne. They were less happy with his scrublander wife. So when Dax presented his skral-blooded commandant, there were riots. Draksors took out their aggression on the skral, who began fleeing the city in droves. And when there weren’t any skral left to scapegoat, draksors turned on draksors.
Which kept Safire more than a little occupied.
The dragons helped. They and their riders acted as peacekeepers, watching from the rooftops. But they could only see so much.
Asha was all but forgotten about as Dax, Safire, and Roa tried to keep control of a capital falling apart at the seams. Asha learned to tell time by the changing of the guards. She gleaned information by eavesdropping. She learned that soldats refusing to obey the orders of the new commandant were banished from their positions, effectively cutting the army in half. She learned that the loss of slave labor meant people were struggling to subsist.
Most important of all, she learned her execution was three days away.
The day before they sent Asha to the chopping block, they made Dax king.
Normally, when a new ruler took the throne, he or she was paraded through the streets, followed by trumpets and the steady beat of drums, while the citizens of Firgaard threw rose petals and sang coronation songs. Dax’s coronation was nothing like that. It was a much more modest affair, set in the smallest of the palace courts, near the olive groves. The rains came in the afternoon and by evening the palace smelled of cool, damp plaster.
It was the only time they allowed Asha out of her cell. She was kept under guard, her ankles shackled with heavy chains, and confined to the upper terraces, away from the crowds who—upon seeing her—began to whisper and point.
“Life taker,” they said.
“Death bringer.”