“Come on.”
He pulled her onward, through the stone-flagged darkness to another, older, door. One with rusted hinges and weak, rotting wood. Torwin pressed his eye to the sliver of light carving a line through the dark, peering into the room beyond, checking to see if it were occupied.
Asha leaned against the cold, damp wall. As her heart slowed and her breath came easier, reason came crashing down around her. They were surrounded; every soldat in the city was looking for them now; and once caught, she would lose him all over again.
“Torwin, there’s nowhere to go.”
Didn’t he realize that? They were deep in the palace, with every soldat alert and looking for them.
Keeping his eye pressed to the slit, Torwin said nothing.
“Even if we manage to elude them, even if there were someplace safe to escape to, my brother would be obligated to hunt me down. He can’t just let me go.”
Torwin whirled on her then.
“Listen to me.” He took her shoulders in his hands. “We’re in this together now. So we can give up and hand ourselves over, or we can run. But whatever we do, we’re doing it together.”
Asha looked up into his shadowed face. Lifting her fingers, she traced his cheekbone and jaw.
“Okay,” she said. “I guess we’re running.”
He grabbed her wrist and kissed her palm, then turned back to the door.
“Ready?” he asked, sliding the rusty pins out of the hinges, then dropping them to the floor.
“Ready for what?”
“The door’s locked. We have to break it open.”
Asha froze. “What?”
“On the count of three,” he said, coming to join her against the wall.
“One . . .”
“Torwin—”
“Two . . .” He twined his fingers through hers.
“I don’t think—”
“Three!”
They ran at the door, charging it with their shoulders. It broke open on the first try. The rusted hinges gave and the rotten wood cracked away from the lock. The door fell flat to the floor with Asha on top of it and Torwin on top of her.
“By the skies, did you crawl here?”
A familiar, silhouetted form leaned against the wall. Arms crossed. Knee bent.
“I left you in that dungeon ages ago.”
Torwin grinned up at Safire as he hopped to his feet, grabbed Asha’s hand, and hauled her up.
“Come on.” The new commandant pushed away from the wall. “We need to hurry.”
They were in one of the orchards. Safire led them through the silhouetted trees, their twisted branches reaching for the lightening sky.
Dawn had arrived.
“Roa convinced the scrublanders you’re the new Namsara,” Safire explained as they approached a door on the other side of the orchard. She slid the key into the lock. The lock clicked. The door creaked open. “They’ve offered you sanctuary. You’ll be safe there . . . for a little while, at least.”
Torwin stepped into the stairway first. Asha went after him, followed by Safire, who locked the door behind them. Together, they climbed the steps to a dark room, where Torwin grabbed some kind of pack and hoisted it over his shoulder.
When they walked out onto a rooftop terrace, a night-black dragon with one yellow eye prowled before them. Waiting. Waiting for a long time. Black talons gleamed in the dawn’s light.
“Kozu.”
A rumbled growl answered her.
Torwin opened the pack and pulled out two flight coats, two pairs of gloves, and two sandskarves.
Asha turned back to her cousin.
“Torwin has everything you need,” Safire said, then pulled her into a hug, squeezing the breath out of her. Asha squeezed back, her vision blurring with tears.
“I miss you already,” Asha whispered. Safire squeezed even harder.
Sounds in the distance wrenched them apart. They turned to look over the city, where torches floated through the streets, gripped in the fists of soldats, already searching for the escaped Iskari.
“I have to go,” Safire said. “Before they realize I’m helping you.”
Asha turned to find Torwin already dressed for flying and holding out a coat for her. She threaded her arms through the sleeves, then quickly did up the clasps and wrapped the cotton sandskarf around her neck, pulling it over her head. Asha mounted Kozu first, with Torwin following.
“Don’t do anything reckless, Namsara,” Safire said from the ground.
Asha didn’t know whether to smile or cry.
“Don’t you do anything reckless.”
A shout rang out from much too close. Safire turned to look as Torwin slid an arm around Asha’s waist.
“I have to go . . . ,” said Safire, catching sight of her soldats below.
Not ready to let her go yet, Asha reached for Safire. Despite her fear, Safire reached back, clasping Asha’s hand hard.
“I love you,” said Asha.
When Torwin clicked to Kozu, their fingers slid apart. Kozu spread his wings. Safire stepped back into the terrace archway, concealing herself. Kozu took a running start and dived into the air. Asha lurched forward as the wind whistled past, then quickly looked back, but the shadows had swallowed Safire. Asha looked beyond her, to the flat rooftops and copper domes of the palace, then to the royal quarters. A lamp burned in one of its windows. If Asha squinted, she could see someone standing there, looking out into the night, watching as a criminal and a skral escaped into the early morning sky.
Fifty
They didn’t stop flying until the sky darkened again that night and the stars clustered above them. Even then, Torwin seemed agitated. Like he wanted to fly straight to the scrublands without stopping. Despite the creases of exhaustion next to his mouth, despite the dark smudges beneath his eyes, despite the way he hunched over a paltry meal of nuts and too-hard bread, he wanted to keep going, to put as much distance between them and the horrors they’d left behind.
As Asha watched him, she thought of Shadow. Torwin would have seen Jarek strike that killing blow. He would have felt the moment Shadow’s life winked out. He would be feeling the absence of his dust-red companion even now.
Asha didn’t know how to soothe such a hurt. Didn’t know if it could be soothed.
She sat close to him while they ate. Let her thigh fall against his. Smiled at him when he looked at her.
But even when he laced his fingers through hers or brushed his thumb across her cheek or stared at her like he couldn’t believe they were free, the silence still shimmered. And the space between them felt littered with loose threads. Threads streaming from an unfinished tapestry.
“I’ll stay up and watch,” she said after they set up the tent.
Torwin shook his head. “I won’t sleep anyway. You get some rest.” He grabbed his lute, then kissed her scarred cheek before heading toward a grassy dune. “Tomorrow will be another long day.”
Asha watched him walk away until the darkness swallowed him up.
She climbed into the tent.
After a moment, she heard a familiar sound. The glossy, golden sound of his lute. Asha sat perfectly still, listening. And then exhaustion overcame her.