When she didn’t respond, he did something even worse. He raised his eyes to hers.
A startling heat surged through her as their gazes met. His eyes were as piercing as freshly sharpened steel. He should have looked away. Instead, that steely gaze moved from her eyes—black, like her mother’s—to her puckered scar, trailing down her face and neck until it disappeared beneath the collar of her shirt.
People always looked. Asha was used to it. Children liked to point and stare, but most eyes darted away in fear the moment they settled on her scar. This slave, though, took his time looking. His gaze was curious and attentive, as if Asha were a tapestry and he didn’t want to miss a single thread of detail.
Asha knew what he saw. She saw it every time she looked in a mirror. Mottled skin, pocked and discolored. It started at the top of her forehead, moving down her right cheek. It cut off the end of her eyebrow and took a chunk out of her hairline. It stretched over her ear, which never recovered its original shape and was now a deformed collection of bumps. The scar took up one-third of her face, half her neck, and continued down the right side of her body.
Safire once asked Asha if she hated the sight of it. But she didn’t. She’d been burned by the fiercest of all dragons and lived. Who else could say that?
Asha wore her scar like a crown.
The slave’s gaze moved lower. As if imagining the rest of the scar beneath her clothes. As if imagining the rest of Asha beneath her clothes.
It snapped something inside of her. Asha sharpened her voice like a knife.
“Keep looking, skral, and soon you’ll have no eyes left to look with.”
His mouth tipped up at the side. Like she’d issued a challenge and he’d accepted.
It made her think of last year’s revolt, when a group of slaves took control of the furrow, keeping draksor hostages and killing any soldats who came near. It was Jarek who infiltrated the slave quarters and ended the revolt, personally putting to death each of the slaves responsible.
This skral is just as dangerous as the rest of them.
Asha suddenly wanted her axe again. She pushed herself off the table, putting space between them.
“I’ve decided on payment,” he said from behind her.
Her footsteps slowed. She turned to face him. He’d folded the extra linen and was now scraping the remaining salve from the bottom of the pot.
As if he hadn’t just broken the law.
“In exchange for my silence”—the wooden spoon clanged against the terra-cotta as he scraped—“I want one dance.”
Asha stared at him.
What?
First, daring to look her in the eye, and now, demanding to dance with her?
Was he mad?
She was the Iskari. The Iskari didn’t dance. And even if she did, she would never dance with a skral. It was absurd. Unthinkable.
Forbidden.
“One dance,” he repeated, then looked up. Those eyes sliced into hers. Again, the shock of it flared through her. “In a place and time of my choosing.”
Asha’s hand went to her hip—but her axe was still on the floor on top of her armor. “Choose something else.”
He shook his head, watching her hand. “I don’t want something else.”
She stared him down. “I’m sure that’s not true.”
He stared right back. “A fool can be sure of anything; that doesn’t make her right.”
Anger blazed bright and hot within her.
Did he just call her a fool?
In three strides, Asha grabbed her axe, closed the distance between them, and pressed its sharp, glittering edge to his throat. She would slice the voice right out of him if she had to.
The pot in his hand crashed to the floor. The line of his jaw went tight and hard, but he didn’t look away. The air sizzled and sparked between them. He might have been half a head taller than she was, but Asha was used to taking down bigger prey.
“Don’t test me, skral,” she said, pressing harder.
He lowered his gaze.
Finally. She should have started with that.
Using the butt of the axe handle, Asha shoved his left shoulder, sending him stumbling. He hit the shelves full of jars, which rattled precariously.
“You’ll keep this a secret,” she said, “because not even Jarek can protect you if you don’t.”
He kept his eyes lowered as he steadied himself, saying nothing.
Turning on her heel, she left him there. Asha had better things to do than drag this slave before Jarek and list his offenses. She needed to find her silk gloves, hide her bandaged hand, and pretend everything was fine while she spoke with her father—who was still waiting for her.
She would deal with Jarek’s slave later.
Dawn of a Hunter
Once there was a girl who was drawn to wicked things.
Things like forbidden, ancient stories.
It didn’t matter that the old stories killed her mother. It didn’t matter that they’d killed many more before her. The girl let the old stories in. She let them eat away at her heart and turn her wicked.
Her wickedness drew dragons. The same dragons that burned her ancestors’ homes and slaughtered their families. Poisonous, fire-breathing dragons.
The girl didn’t care.
Under the cloak of night, she crept over rooftops and snaked through abandoned streets. She sneaked out of the city and into the Rift, where she told the dragons story after story aloud.
She told so many stories, she woke the deadliest dragon of all: one as dark as a moonless night. One as old as time itself.
Kozu, the First Dragon.
Kozu wanted the girl for himself. Wanted to hoard the deadly power spilling from her lips. Wanted her to tell stories for him and him alone. Forever.
Kozu made her realize what she had become.
It scared her. So she stopped telling the old stories.
But it wasn’t so easy. Kozu cornered her. He lashed his tail and hissed a warning. He made it clear if she refused him, it would not go well for her.
She trembled and cried, but stood firm. She kept her mouth clamped shut.
But no one defied the First Dragon.
Kozu flew into a rage; and when the girl tried to flee, he burned her in a deadly blaze.
But that wasn’t enough.
He took out the rest of his rage on her home.
Kozu poured his wrath down on its lime-washed walls and filigreed towers. He breathed his poisonous fire as her people screamed and wept, listening to their loved ones trapped within their burning homes.
It was the son of the commandant who found the wicked girl, left for dead in the Rift. The boy carried her burned body all the way back to the palace sickroom while his father saved the city.
His father rallied the army and drove off the First Dragon. He ordered the slaves to put out the fires and repair the damage. The commandant saved the city, but he failed to save his wife. At the sound of her dying screams, he rushed into their burning home—and did not come out.
The girl, however, survived.