It was this man she woke to in the sickroom almost eight years ago. The sight of him now brought on a memory.
Kozu’s red-hot flames engulfing her. The awful smell of burning hair and flesh. The barbed screams snagging in her throat.
It was the only part Asha remembered: burning. Everything else was lost to her.
“That was your longest hunt yet,” he said. Asha stopped before the gilded steps of his throne. “I was beginning to worry.”
She looked to the floor. The shame of it made her throatprickle. Like she’d swallowed a handful of cactus spines.
Her father had too many things to worry about without Asha adding to them: war brewing with the scrublanders, the ever-present threat of another slave revolt, tension with the temple, and—though her father never spoke of it with Asha—the growing power of his commandant.
Asha’s bandaged hand throbbed beneath the silk glove, screaming of the crime she’d committed that very morning. As if it wanted to betray her. She held it against her side, hoping her father wouldn’t ask about the gloves.
“Don’t worry about me, Father. I always find my prey.”
The dragon king smiled at her. Behind him, an ornate mosaic was etched into the golden throne, a pattern of shapes within shapes and lines crossing back over lines. Just like the city’s labyrinthine streets or the palace’s maze of hallways and secret passageways.
“Tonight I want you to publicly present your kill. In honor of our guests.”
She looked up. “Guests?”
Her father’s smile broke. “You haven’t heard the news?”
Asha shook her head no.
“Your brother returned with a delegation of scrublanders.”
Asha’s mouth went dry. The scrublanders dwelled across the sand sea and refused to acknowledge the authority of the king. They didn’t agree with killing dragons almost as much as they didn’t agree with keeping slaves. It was why her father had had such trouble handling them in the past—that, and the fact that they kept trying to assassinate him.
“They’ve agreed to a truce,” her father explained. “They’re here to negotiate the terms of a peace treaty.”
Peace with scrublanders? Impossible.
Asha stepped closer to the throne, her voice tight. “They’re inside the palace walls?” How could Dax bring their oldest enemies into their home?
No one had expected Dax to succeed in the scrublands. If Asha were honest, no one expected Dax tosurvivein the scrublands.
“It’s too dangerous, Father.”
The dragon king leaned forward in his throne, looking down at her with warm eyes. His nose was long and thin and his beard neatly trimmed.
“Don’t worry, my dear.” His eyes traced the scar marring her face. “One look at you and they will never cross me again.”
Asha frowned. If they didn’t fear the chopping block—which was the punishment for attempted regicide—why would they fear the Iskari?
“But that isn’t why I summoned you.”
The dragon king rose from his throne and descended the seven steps to the floor. Knotting his hands behind his back, her father made a slow tour of the tapestries up the left side of the room. Asha followed him, ignoring the soldats standing guard in between each one, their eyes hidden by crested morions and their burnished breastplates gleaming in the dusty sunlight.
“I want to talk about Jarek.”
Asha’s chin jerked upward.
When the people of Firgaard lost lives and homes and lovedones in the wake of Kozu’s fire, they called for the death of the wicked girl responsible. The king, unable to put his own daughter to death, offered her a chance at redemption instead. He promised her hand in marriage to Jarek—the boy who saved her. The boy who’d lost both his parents in the fire that was her fault.
Their union, he said, would be the last act of Asha’s redemption. When they came of age, Jarek would bind himself to Asha and in doing so, prove his forgiveness. Jarek, who lost the most because of Asha, would show all of Firgaard they could forgive her too.
Furthermore, in exchange for Jarek’s heroism, the king groomed him to take over his father’s role as commandant.
