Asha frowned. The dragon king never interrupted her hunts.
She looked to the riderless mare. It was Oleander, her own horse. Her russet coat glistened with sweat, and a smudge of red sand covered the white star on her forehead. In the presence of her rider, Oleander bobbed her head nervously.
“I can help finish up here,” said Safire. Asha turned to her. Safire didn’t dare look up into her face. Not under a royal slave’s watchful gaze. “I’ll meet you back at home.” Safire undid the leather ties on her borrowed hunting gloves. “You never should have given me these.” She slid them off and handed them over. “Go.”
Ignoring the scream of her raw and blistering skin, Asha pulled on the gloves so her father’s slave wouldn’t see her burned hand. Turning from Safire, she took Oleander’s reins and swung herself up into the saddle. Oleander whinnied and fidgeted beneath her, then sped off at a gallop when Asha’s heels gave her the slightest prod.
“I’ll save the heart for you!” Safire called as Asha raced back toward the city, kicking up swirls of red sand. “In case you change your mind!”
In the Beginning . . .
The Old One was lonely. So he made for himself two companions. He formed the first out of sky and spirit and named him Namsara. Namsara was a golden child. When he laughed, stars shone out of his eyes. When he danced, wars ceased. When he sang, ailments were healed. His very presence was a needle sewing the world together.
The Old One formed the second out of blood and moonlight. He named her Iskari. Iskari was a sorrowful child. Where Namsara brought laughter and love, Iskari brought destruction and death. When Iskari walked, people cowered in their homes. When she spoke, people wept. When she hunted, she never missed her mark.
Pained by her nature, Iskari came before the Old One, asking him to remake her. She hated her essence; she wished to be more like Namsara. When the Old One refused, she asked him why. Why did her brother get to create things while she destroyed them?
“The world needs balance,” the Old One said.
Furious, Iskari left the sovereign god and went hunting. She hunted for days. Days turned to weeks. As her fury grew, her bloodlust became insatiable. She killed mercilessly and without feeling and all the while, her hate swelled within her. She hated her brother for being happy and beloved. She hated the Old One for making it so.
So the next time she went hunting, Iskari set her traps for the Old One himself.
This was a terrible mistake.
The Old One struck Iskari down, leaving a scar as long and wide as the Rift mountain range. For attempting to take his life, he stripped her of her immortality, ripping it off her like a silk garment. So that she could atone for her crime, he cursed her name and sent her to wander the desert alone, haunted by stinging winds and howling sandstorms. To wither beneath the parching sun. To freeze beneath the icy cloak of night.
But neither the heat nor the cold killed her.
An unbearable loneliness did.
Namsara searched the desert for Iskari. The sky changed seven times before he found her body in the sand, her skin blistered by the sun, her eyes eaten by carrion crows.
At the sight of his sister, dead, Namsara fell to his knees and he wept.
Two
Normally after a kill, Asha bathed. Scrubbing the blood, sand, and sweat from her body was a ritual that helped her transition from the wild, rugged world beyond the palace walls to a life that tied itself around her ribs and squeezed like a too-tight sash.
Today, though, Asha skipped the bath. Despite her father’s summons, she slipped right past her guards and headed for the sickroom, where the medicines were kept. It was a whitewashed room smelling of lime. Sunlight spilled through the open terrace, alighting the flower pattern mosaicked into the floor, then painting the shelves of terra-cotta jars in yellows and golds.
She’d woken in this room eight years ago, after Kozu, the First Dragon, burned her. Asha remembered it clearly: lying on a sickbed, her body wrapped in bandages, that awful feeling pressing down on her chest, heavy as a boulder, telling her she’d done something horribly wrong.
Shaking the memory loose, Asha stepped through the archway. She unbuckled her armor and gloves, shedding them piece by piece, then laid her axe on top of the pile.
One of the dangers of dragonfire—besides melting your skin to the bone—was that it was toxic. The smallest burn would kill you from the inside out if treated poorly or too late. A severe burn, like the one Asha suffered eight years ago, needed to be treated immediately and, even then, the victim’s chances of survival were slim.
Asha had a recipe to draw the toxins out, but the treatment required the burn to be covered for two days. She didn’t have that kind of time. Her father had summoned her. News of her return had probably reached him already. She had a hundred-hundred heartbeats, not days.
Asha opened cupboards and pulled down pots full of dried barks and roots, looking for one ingredient in particular. In her haste, she reached with her burned hand, and the moment she grabbed the smooth terra-cotta jar, pain seared through her and she let go.
The jar shattered across the floor in a burst of red shards and linen bandages.
Asha cursed, kneeling to pick up the mess one-handed. Her mind was so hazy with pain, she didn’t notice when someone dropped to his knees beside her, his fingers picking up shards alongside hers.
“I’ll get this, Iskari.”
The voice made her jump. She glanced up to a silver collar, then a tangle of hair.
Asha watched his hands sweep up her mess. She knew those freckled hands. They were the same hands that brought out Jarek’s platters at dinner. The same hands that served her steaming mint tea in Jarek’s glass cups.
Asha tensed. If her betrothed’s slave was in the palace, so was her betrothed. Jarek must have returned from the scrublands, where he’d been sent to keep an eye on Dax’s negotiations.
Is that the reason for my father’s summons?
The slave’s fingers went suddenly still. When Asha looked up, she caught him staring at her burn.
“Iskari . . .” His brow furrowed. “You need to treat that.”
Her annoyance flared like a freshly fed fire. Obviously she needed to treat it. She’d be treating it now if she hadn’t been so careless.
But just as important as treating her burn was securing this slave’s silence. Jarek often used his slaves to spy on his enemies. The moment Asha dismissed this one, he might go running to his master and tell him everything.
And once Jarek knew, so would her father.
The moment her father heard of it, he’d know she’d been telling the old stories. He would know she was the same corrupted girl she’d always been.