Just a dream.
Asha held up her bandaged hand. She pulled back the linen to reveal blistered skin. She could still flex her fingers, though the pain of it made her dizzy. If she could flex her fingers, she could wield her axe once the skin healed. And until then, there was always her other hand. Because all that mattered now was finding Kozu as quickly as she could.
Once she killed him, she wouldn’t have to hide anything anymore.
“Tell me one thing . . . ,” said a familiar voice.
Asha’s gaze snapped to the sill of an arching window, where a shadow perched.
“Why did that dragon breathe fire?”
Safire jumped down from the sill and shoved aside the sheer veils of the bed. She didn’t bother avoiding Asha’s eyes. Not here, in private.
“It’s been fifty years since the Severing,” said Safire. “Fifty years since the stories disappeared.”
Fifty years since the dragons stopped breathing fire.
Except for Kozu, the First Dragon, who was the wellspring of stories. Who didn’t need one told aloud in order to set a city ablaze.
Safire grabbed a match from the bedside table and lit the candle there. Instead of answering her cousin, Asha deflected. “Have you been here all night?”
“I’m asking the questions,” Safire said, turning and grabbing Asha’s wasters from the wall. “Now get dressed. We’re going to the roof.”
“Saf, I can’t today. My hand . . .”
She lifted her bandaged hand, realizing as she did that someone had slid off her gloves. Fear jolted through her. Whoever had done it would have seen the bandage.
Did they see what was beneath it?
“Do you think Jarek will go easy on you because you have a burned hand?”
Asha looked to her cousin. Safire met the Iskari’s gaze. Her eyes blazed in the light of the candle.
Safire would know what happened. She would know who undressed Asha.
If Asha sparred with her cousin, she could discover who, exactly, knew about her burn. And then, after determining whether her secret was safe, she could hunt down Kozu.
Tossing aside the covers, Asha slid out of bed and shivered as her bare feet touched the cold marble tiles. She glared at her cousin as she undid the buttons of her nightdress. It was times like these Asha was grateful she’d dismissed her house slaves years ago. They always trembled in her presence, which made everything take twice as long.
Holding both wasters in one hand, Safire tapped the ends of them impatiently against her boot. When Asha was fully dressed, they stepped out onto the latticed terrace, where narrow steps led to the rooftop. Below them stretched a garden of dusty date palms, blossoming orange trees, and hibiscuses. It once belonged to Asha’s mother. Date palms always reminded the late dragon queen of her home in the scrublands.
Asha breathed in the sweet smell.
But the night was waning, and with it, her time. She had only six days to hunt down Kozu.
“Let’s get this over with,” she said, taking her waster from Safire and starting up the steps.
At least her cousin would beat her quickly.
When Asha wasn’t hunting, sparring was their early morning routine: practice for Safire and helpful for Asha—who was a hunter more than a fighter—to learn how to defend herself. Mainly from Jarek.
Safire shrugged off her hooded saffron mantle and threw it down to the pebble-laden rooftop. Asha noticed its fraying seams and ragged hem. Her cousin shouldn’t have to wear something so tattered.
I’ll order a new one from the seamstresses and pretend it’s for me.
All around them, the rooftops of the palace stood empty. Over Safire’s shoulder, the horizon glowed a hazy gold and the sky shifted from dark blue to purple. With the sunrise came slaves going about their daily chores. These rooftops would be full of activity soon.
For now, though, there was just Asha and Safire.
“Why didn’t you tell me the dragons are breathing fire again?”
Safire swung her waster hard and Asha caught it with her own, the thud of wood on wood vibrating through her.
Her cousin might be useless in the face of a dragon, but she was far better than Asha at hand-to-hand combat. To survive in a world that preferred she didn’t exist, Safire had to be strong. And she was—her arms were knotted hard with muscles, and beneath the sheer force of her, Asha was buckling.
“Because . . . you’d worry . . . over nothing,” Asha said through gritted teeth.
Unable to hold her stance any longer, she ducked away, spinning her wooden waster out of the fall of her cousin’s.
“It seems I have reason to worry.” Safire recovered, then settled back into her fighting stance. “Considering you fainted in the middle of your father’s court. Don’t tell me it had nothing to do with your burn.”
Asha’s grip tightened around her waster’s smooth hilt. She’d hoped the fainting was part of the dream. “Did my father see?”
“Of course he saw.”
“What did he say?”
Safire circled Asha, planning her next attack. “Nothing. Jarek did all the talking. Or rather, the screaming—at his slave. Who caught you, by the way. If he hadn’t, they might still be scraping your brains off the tiles.”
Asha rolled her eyes. It wasn’t that far of a fall.
Suddenly Safire was there, her waster whistling through the air as she brought it down hard and fast. Asha barely had time to raise her own, barely managed to catch the blow—which still sent her backward.
“And if I hadn’t convinced the physician you were just dehydrated, he would have insisted on taking a closer look, and then he would have seen that burn.” She nodded toward Asha’s bandaged hand. “So you owe me.”
Asha lowered her waster.
Her father didn’t know, then.
Asha wiped the sweat off her forehead, relieved.
“Thank you.”
“Why does it need to be a secret? No one thinks you’re weak, Asha. You’re the Iskari. You killed that dragon. Like hundreds of others before it.”
But the burn didn’t mean she was weak—at least, not in the way Safire meant. It meant she was corrupted.
With her cousin’s waster lowered, rendering her vulnerable, Asha saw her moment. She took it, charging.
Safire’s eyes flashed as she blocked and blocked again. Like lightning.
The clack of wood on wood cracked in Asha’s ears as she circled, battering her cousin’s defenses, looking for a way in. But Safire was always there, like a door slamming in Asha’s face.
“And anyway,” said Safire, panting as she blocked, “who would I tell?”
“Dax. Obviously.”
Her brother would be horrified to learn his little sister was telling the old stories aloud, preserving the very things that killed their mother. And while Dax and their father weren’t exactly on good terms, out of worry for Asha, he might go to the king.
Dax couldn’t know. No one could know.
A gap opened up. Asha took her chance, driving hard at her cousin with her weapon.
She got nothing more than a swift kick in the shin before the gap closed up again.