All of New Haven moved out the next morning. They couldn’t stay—the commandant knew their exact location. So they packed the tents and readied the dragons. It should have been Asha who led the dragons and their riders down into the lower Rift, close to the entrance of her secret tunnel. But Dax forbade her from flying—in case she decided to fly straight to the palace. So Asha chose the best rider and put her in the lead.
Once they reassembled in the lower Rift, Dax called a meeting. They gathered in a makeshift tent where he and Jas outlined the plan. Dax would go in alone, as a decoy. While he entered through the north gate, Jas and Safire and a handful of other Haveners would make their way through the tunnel below the temple. While Dax negotiated with the dragon king, Jas and Saf would take over the gate and hold it open long enough for the army waiting just beyond the wall. Essie was still the signal to advance. Jas would bring the hawk. The moment the gate opened, he would send her skyward.
Asha would not be setting foot anywhere near the city. She had too much at stake, and no one trusted her to stick with the plan.
“I know it seems unfair,” Dax said after everyone but he, Asha, and Safire had left the tent. Asha sat in the dirt, with her lower back against a wooden tent post and her forehead pressed into her drawn-up knees. Safire sat next to her, sharpening her knives. Dax sank down between them. “But I need you to wait here with the army until it’s safe.”
Without looking at her brother, Asha said, “You mean, until you’ve killed the king.”
Silence descended. When Asha looked up into her brother’s warm eyes, she found them shining with tears.
“I have to, Asha.”
Safire paused her sharpening.
“No,” said Asha. “What you need to do is stay alive, so you can be a better king than he is.”
Dax shook his head. “So long as our father draws breath, no one will consider me king.”
“Think of Roa, then. You’ll leave a scrublander to hold the throne alone? Firgaard will devour her.”
“Trust me,” he said, his jaw tight. “Roa can take care of herself.”
“What about what I want?” Safire demanded. “What about what Asha wants?”
Dax wiped his eyes with the hem of his sleeve.
“I want you to live,” said Safire, a little angrily.
“And I want you to rule,” said Asha.
He pulled away from them both. Asha let him go. Let him get to his feet.
“This is what good leaders do,” he said, not daring to look either of them in the eye. He seemed every bit a hero in his dirty scrublander clothes and his tearstained cheeks. “They make sacrifices for their people.”
Asha thought of the day she burned the scrolls, when Dax told her the Old One hadn’t abandoned them. He was just waiting for the right moment. The right person.
He’s waiting for the next Namsara to make things right.
Asha thought Dax a fool that day. Now, though, as her brother turned and left the tent, she thought something very different.
There. There is our Namsara.
Safire stayed behind, continuing to sharpen her throwing knives while she waited for the signal.
“You have to stop him,” said Asha the moment Dax left the tent.
Without looking up from her work, Safire said, “I’m planning on it.”
Asha leaned her head back against the wood post, listening to the drawn-out hiss of steel on the whetstone.
Safire stopped suddenly, lowering the sharpened knife in her lap. “Whatever happens, I want you to know I love you.”
Asha looked into her cousin’s eyes. “What?”
“As much as I want you at my side in there”—she nodded toward the tent entrance, toward the city—“I can’t bear the thought of what Jarek will do to you if this all goes completely wrong.”
Asha stared at her cousin, horrified. “What he’ll do to me? Think of what he’s already done to you, Saf.”
Her cousin held up the knife edge, examining it. “All I need is one clear shot.”
Asha didn’t like this thought. She looked away, angry. They should be going in together. But as the tent darkened around her and Safire’s departure crept closer, Asha let her head fall against her cousin’s shoulder.
They sat in silence for a long time, both of them thinking of what would happen if it did all go wrong. They were still sitting there, with Asha’s head on Safire’s shoulder and Safire’s knife lowered in her lap, when footsteps crunched on the hard, dry earth.
“Safire?” Jas entered the tent. “It’s time.”
Just before she rose, Safire leaned in close. “Don’t you dare do anything reckless.”
Asha stared as her cousin pushed herself to her feet, tucking the sharpened knife into her belt.
“Don’t you do anything reckless,” Asha countered as Safire walked past Jas, who held up the tent flaps for her to step through. When she did, Jas turned to Asha, solemnly fisted his hand over his heart, then dropped the tent flaps, cutting them both off from view.
Reaching for the whetstone her cousin left behind, Asha drew the axe at her hip. She’d taken it from the weapons caravan almost as soon as it arrived in New Haven. Made of acacia wood, the unadorned handle was worn and smooth.
Slowly, carefully, Asha started to sharpen it.
Forty-Six
Asha couldn’t tell how much time had passed. Only that it grew dark shortly after Safire left with Jas, and it was still dark.
Too dark.
And too quiet.
Footsteps rose up, crunching the dry pine needles littering the ground outside the tent. Asha rose from the dirt floor and tucked her axe into her belt.
This is it. They’ve secured the gate.
The tent flaps whispered open. Roa stood in the entrance, alone, with a torch in her hand. The tent flaps fell shut behind her, sealing them in together.
“Something’s wrong.” Her dark gaze sliced into Asha. “Essie’s returned, but the gates are shut tight.”
“What?”
“I think they’ve been captured.”
Fear spiked in Asha. Everyone she loved was in the city. They couldn’t be captured. Because that meant everyone she loved was in the hands of the two people who wouldn’t think twice about hurting them—in order to hurt her.
“Maybe there are too many soldats guarding the gate,” Asha said, wishing she was still leaning against the tent pole. Wishing she had something to bear her up. “Maybe they’re regrouping.”
“They’ve had all night to return and collect more soldiers. It’s almost dawn.” Roa lifted the tent flap, waiting for Asha. “We’re going in.”
They couldn’t go in on dragonback—not with the commandant in possession of so many hostages. Roa feared the sight of dragons would push Jarek to start taking lives, beginning with the least important.
Asha didn’t like to think about who the least important would be.
“The tunnel, then?”
Roa nodded, her eyes glittering in the torchlight.
A familiar craving curled like smoke in Asha’s belly. She wanted to hunt. Not a dragon, though. Never again would she hunt a dragon. Tonight she would hunt her own husband.
Roa whistled, holding up the torch. Out of the darkness two young women materialized. Asha recognized both of them from the night of Dax and Roa’s binding.
“This is Lirabel,” said Roa, touching the shoulder of Jas’s friend and then the girl beside her. “And Saba.”