After a moment, she heard a familiar sound. The glossy, golden sound of his lute. Asha sat perfectly still, listening. And then exhaustion overcame her.
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.
