“A skral. And while most draksors in this camp are friendly with skral, there aremanywho aren’t. And there are just as many skral who won’t think twice about hurting him simply because of the way he looks at you.”
Asha’s arms fell to her sides.
“In this camp and beyond it, if people think you care about him, they’ll use him to hurt you. To make you do things you don’t want to do.”
“I fell in the lake,” she said. “Torwin gave me dry clothes. He was just being kind.”
“Asha,” Dax said. As if he were the adult here and she were the child. As if he’d just caught her in a lie.
Asha scowled. “What.”
“You—you of all people—know how these stories end. I don’t wanteitherof you getting hurt.”
Unable to look Dax in the eye, Asha stared over his shoulder at the canvas walls of the tent, lit up by the morning sun.
“Lillian wouldn’t have died if Rayan hadn’t pursued her,” Dax said. “If he’d put her safety first, above his own selfishness, they’d both be alive today.”
And Safire wouldn’t exist.
The mere thought of it broke her heart.
Dax stepped toward her. “If you want to keep him safe, you must keep him at a distance.”
Asha dropped her gaze to her bare feet. Her slippers were probably washed up on the shore by now.
“I know,” she whispered. “I’m trying.”
Dax sighed. He reached for Asha’s shoulder and gently squeezed, making her look up into his face.
Whatever his affliction had been, it was receding, if not gone altogether. His eyes were starry again and he was putting weight back on, easing those sharp edges he’d developed. He was almost back to his regular handsome self.
But there was something still tugging at Asha. This plan of his was a sound one: getting into the city, seizing it with the help of the scrublanders—it could work. But as for the throne... as long as their father lived, no one would consider Dax the dragon king. Dax could lock their father in a prison forthe rest of his life, but as long as the true king lived, he was the rightful ruler of Firgaard. Not Dax.
Their father had to die. And Dax wouldn’t leave a task as dire as this to someone else. He would consider it his responsibility.
Yet the ancient law against regicide was unbendable. If Dax killed the king, Dax too would die. And if that happened, who would rule Firgaard?
Roa was a scrublander. No draksor would submit to her solitary rule.
Asha was the former Iskari, hated and feared by her people.
Safire was half skral and an abomination in the eyes of Firgaard.
That left... no one.
Dax couldn’t die. He needed to rule. But if he couldn’t die, then he couldn’t kill the king.
Which meant someone else had to.
Thirty-Nine
Asha spent the days before the weapons caravan arrived calling dragons. Torwin found her a dozen riders—mostly draksors and scrublanders, along with two skral. Asha raised an eyebrow when he brought the skral boys forward and Torwin shrugged. “You asked for riders. I found you the best.”
Asha told the old stories aloud and out of earshot, high above the tree line. She didn’t want them poisoning those in the camp, the way they poisoned her brother and her mother.
More than this, ever since the night of her binding, she’d noticed Torwin’s hands shaking. He was thinner than he had been, and there were dark half-moons under his eyes. When she asked him about it, he attributed it to exhaustion.
But Asha couldn’t shake the feeling that it was more than that.
