“Iskari.”
Their stares made Asha want to walk herself back to her cell and lock the door behind her. She’d saved them from a monster, and still they feared her. There had never been any hope of redeeming herself. In her people’s eyes, she would always be Iskari.
Well, it wouldn’t be long before they never had to look upon her face again. Very soon, Asha would be dead.
Torwin too was nowhere to be found. Feeling his absence, she gripped the balustrade. Asha didn’t know if Torwin was dead or alive, living in the city or long gone to the scrublands. Over the past few weeks, whenever her guards mentioned yet another skral attack, Asha found her chest constricting. Her hands tightening on her chains. She hadn’t seen Torwin since the night her brother led her to the dungeons and, with tears streaming down his cheeks, locked his own sister in a cell.
No matter how many times her gaze scanned the courtyard, there was no sign of him.
Above the din of conversation, just beyond the walls, the trilling birdcalls announced the approach of the night. Asha leaned over the balustrade, letting the hard, cold marble bear her up as she stared out across the lantern-lit court, still searching for Torwin. But all she found amid the potted kumquats and hibiscus hedges were colorfully clad scrublanders and collarless skral all mingling peaceably with draksors. It was a vision of the future. Of what Firgaard was capable of becoming.
Dax stood on the white-tiled terrace. At his side, Roa gleamed in a blue and gold kaftan that belted high at the waist and moved like water even when she stood still. A crimson flower sat tucked behind her ear. One with seven petals. She looked like a girl born to be queen, outshining even Dax, who stood at her side, matching her blue and gold. Their father’s medallion hung across his chest. Dax looked tired and a little sad, but the set of his shoulders and the rise of his chest said these feelings were inconsequential to the work that lay ahead.
When he spotted Asha, his smile broke. A shimmering grief fell over him as their gazes met and held. He raised his fist to his heart in a solemn scrublander salute. Asha returned it.
The courtyard fell silent, looking where their new king looked. A chill crept up Asha’s spine as the eyes of every scrublander, draksor, and skral fixed on her. In their sparkling kaftans and silk tunics, they gawked at Asha’s chains and dirt-streaked garments.
She still didn’t belong here. Would never belong here.
Asha was a blemish on her brother’s new reign.
A soft shadow fell over her then. When she turned her back on the courtyard, she found her eldest guard standing before her. He had a perpetually wrinkled brow and a graying beard in need of a trim.
“Time to leave, Iskari.”
Asha nodded, letting him take her arm.
As the other guards fanned out, ahead and behind, he led her down the stairwell and into the court below.
Whispered voices rose up as the guards walked through the arcades, keeping their charge away from the staring revelers. Asha fixed her attention on the towering entrance, its archway bordered by yellow and red mosaic tiles.
Halfway there, her guards halted, forcing Asha to halt too. In the space between the guards ahead, her gaze caught on slippered feet, then trailed up a shimmering blue and gold kaftan all the way to the dragon queen’s face.
Roa stood directly in their path, blocking the way out of the courtyard.
The guards bowed their heads.
“Step away,” said Roa.
The two guards standing between Asha and the queen exchanged glances. “My queen . . . she’s dangerous.”
Roa arched one elegant brow. “Shall I repeat myself?”
Both guards paused, not sure how much they could test their new queen. Finally, they shook their heads and stepped aside.
“And you.” Roa nodded to the graying guard at Asha’s side.
Obediently, he let go of Asha’s arm and moved away. A heartbeat later, Asha stood alone before Roa.
With every pair of eyes watching her, the dragon queen bowed to the criminal before her.
“Kozu circles the city, night after night, searching for you. Yearning for his Namsara.”
Murmurs and gasps rippled across the courtyard. The hair on Asha’s arms rose.
Her? The Namsara? The life bringer?
Impossible.
Asha had spent her life killing things. She was hated and feared. She was the Iskari. The very opposite of what Roa thought.
“You’re mistaken,” said Asha, staring down at the bowing queen. “My brother—”
“Your brother says you know the old stories better than any of us.” Roa rose from her bow. “Which means you know who the Old One sends to mark his Namsara.”
Asha’s lips parted. The stories glittered in her mind. She sifted through them.
The Old One sent Kozu to Nishran. Just like he sent Kozu to Elorma. Just like he sent Kozu to . . . Asha. All those years ago.
She’d thought it was her wickedness that called to Kozu as a child. Just like her wickedness allowed her to tell the old stories without being poisoned by them.
But the stories weren’t wicked. And neither was Asha.
The proof was right there in the stories: Kozu was the mark of a Namsara. And Asha was Kozu’s rider. She had the link to prove it.
Even if all of that were true, Asha had spent her life hunting dragons and trying to eradicate the old ways. She was no Namsara.
Roa took a step closer, and the court hushed.
“There are other marks, are there not?”
Asha thought of Nishran. The Old One gave him the ability to see in the dark so he could find the enemy’s camp. Just like the Old One gave Elorma the gift of a hika—a girl who saved the city from an imposter king.
Just like the Old One gave Asha gifts to accomplish the tasks he set before her: slayers, a dragon, the ability to be unburned by fire.
She’d been trying so hard to suppress the stories, she’d been so consumed with her hunt for Kozu, she hadn’t put it together. All those years ago, when she’d gone into the innermost cave after her mother’s burning . . .
“The Old One was choosing me?” she whispered, staring into Roa’s eyes.
But what of Elorma? If she was the Namsara, Elorma would have told her.
Except . . . wasn’t that what he’d been doing all along?
I am the Namsara.
She hardly dared to believe it.
Roa’s eyes shone as she lifted the fire-like flower from behind her ear. Seven bloodred petals curled back on themselves as a yellow stamen dropped pollen, flecking the petals with orange. It was the same flower mosaicked into the sickroom’s floors. The same flower carved into a temple door.
A flower so rare, it was almost a myth.
Roa stepped forward. Tucking the stem behind Asha’s ear, she whispered, “The old stories say Namsara is a needle sewing the world together.”
Asha was too startled to respond.