Lying down, she closed her eyes and let Torwin’s song lull her to sleep.
The smell of smoke and ash woke her. When she sat up, Elorma crouched over a fire just big enough to illuminate his face.
Too tired to protest whatever it was he wanted from her now, she went to sit next to him.
“Aren’t you done with me yet?” Curling her knees up to her chest, she hugged them hard to keep from shivering. “I did what the Old One wanted. What else is there?”
Elorma smiled, his eyes reflecting the fire. The hollow places of his face were darkened by shadow. “Much more, I’m afraid. Your work is just beginning, Namsara.”
Namsara.
That name. It would take some getting used to.
Elorma cracked his knuckles and rose to his feet. “I’m here to bestow your final gift. The gift of a hika.”
Asha’s grip on her knees loosened. A hika. Like Willa was to Elorma.
“W-what?” she stammered.
Elorma ignored her. “A hika is formed just for you. Like your slayers were formed for your hands. Like the sky was formed for the earth. Come and look upon his face.”
But Asha stayed where she was, hugging her legs harder. “I’m an outlaw,” she said. “I’m guilty of regicide. Whoever you choose will be sentenced to a life of danger. I’d rather you leave him be.”
Beneath all these things, though, lay a deeper truth: Asha loved someone else.
She rose to her feet.
She never meant to look into the fire. She only meant to walk away.
But her gaze snagged on a face in the flames.
Asha stepped closer. A boy peered out at her. He had stars etched into his skin. He had eyes as sharp as her own two slayers.
Asha’s heart slammed against her ribs.
She stepped back.
The Old One knew just as well as she what happened when draksors coupled with skral. Those kinds of stories only ever ended in tragedy.
“You can’t do this to him.” Asha looked to Elorma. “It’s a death sentence.”
Being with Asha meant putting his life at risk.
“Death is no stranger to this one.” Elorma rose to face her. “And doesn’t he get a choice in the matter?”
He has no choice, she thought. If the Old One commands it, there isn’t a choice.
And Torwin had spent his whole life being forbidden from making his own choices.
“I can’t,” she whispered. “I won’t be another master he has to submit to.”
She turned away, her footsteps sinking into the cold sand.
“Ask him who he dreams of at night,” Elorma called after her. “Ask him who he’s dreamed of every night for the past eighteen years of his life.”
Asha stopped walking.
Torwin’s voice rose up in her mind. I used to think she was some kind of goddess, he’d told her in the temple room, explaining his recurring nightmare. I used to think she appeared to me because she was choosing me for some great destiny.
And then, again, in her brother’s war camp: They’re always about you.
Elorma stood behind her now. She could feel his shadow stretch across her back.
“Do you know why I recognized Willa the first time I saw her?”
Asha turned and looked up into the First Namsara’s eyes.
“Because I’d spent my life dreaming of her.”
When he smiled, it was as if two suns burned warm and bright out of his eyes. “Willa chose love in the end.” Very gently, he placed one strong hand on Asha’s shoulder. “Now it’s time for you to choose. Because, despite what you think, you do have a choice. And so does he.”
Asha thought of something her brother told her once. If Rayan hadn’t been selfish, Dax said, if he hadn’t pursued Lillian, they’d both be alive today. But saying that denied Lillian’s choice in the matter. It denied Lillian her power. And what’s more: saying that meant the only thing to be learned from their story was that death is stronger than love.
Asha didn’t believe that.
“And afterward,” Elorma said, “there’s more work to be done. Stories to be hunted down. A realm to be made whole again.”
The fire roared behind Elorma as he smiled tenderly down on Asha.
“You and I will see each other again soon, Namsara.”
The fire went out, plunging Asha into darkness.
She stood still for a long time, lost in the swirling storm of her thoughts.
Namsara.
The rare desert flower that could heal any ailment.
That’s what Asha was.
Fifty-One
Asha woke to the sound of a song swelling in the air. She lay still for several heartbeats, letting the sound melt inside her, filling her up with longing.
With the First Namsara’s words in her heart, she rose and followed the song.
Asha found the lute player in the sand, a silhouette against a sky so full of stars, it looked silver. She watched the roll of his shoulders, the dip of his head.
The sight of him held her transfixed.
He must have sensed someone watching, because the song stopped and he looked up from his strings, casting his gaze into the darkness.
“Asha? Is that you?”
Asha remained where she was.
He started to play again. A different song. Its familiar tune jolted her. It was the same unfinished song he’d been humming in the Rift. The same song he’d been trying to work out while Asha fell asleep in his tent.
At some point, he’d finished it and he was playing it now. As he played, Asha could feel him staring into the spot where she stood.
“Greta used to say,” he said as he played, “that every one of us is born with a song buried deep in our hearts. A song all our own. And our mission in life is to find that song.”
His song was sharp like a knife and tender as his fingers stitching up her wounds. It dived into darkness, then soared toward the light. It was itself a kind of story—one that lured Asha out of the shadows.
Slowly, Torwin moved toward her.
“Tell me again about your nightmares,” she said.
Fingers still plucking strings, he took another step and obliged her.
“They weren’t always nightmares. They were just dreams, once.” She felt him smile in the darkness, thinking about them. “Dreams about a scarred girl who rode a black dragon.”
The music stopped as he lowered his lute. It fell to the sand with a soft thud.
“And then you got burned. That’s when I knew, for certain, the girl I’d been dreaming about was you. That’s when the dreams turned into nightmares.”
Asha swallowed.
“I know what it means,” he said. “I’ve always known what it means.”
Asha felt her eyes burn with tears.
“I’ll put you in danger,” she said, admitting her deepest fear.
“Haven’t we been through this? I love danger.”
“Torwin.”
“Asha.” His voice went soft and careful. “I’ve only ever wanted three things. A lute of my own, to make music with. A life of my own, to do what I want with. And the girl I’ve been dreaming about for as long as I can remember. A girl who was always out of reach. . . .”
He reached for her, his fingers curling around her arms, closing the gap between them, tying up their loose and fraying threads.
“You could die,” she whispered.
“Everything dies,” he whispered back. “I’m afraid of so much more than dying.”