Despite being in the women’s wing of the royal quarters, the room was cramped and dreary. The plaster walls were cracked and yellowed; there was no terrace; and despite the glassless windows, very little light reached in. Before the revolts, the dragon queen’s slaves lived and slept here. Now they were confined to the furrow each night, under lock and guard.
“I wish you would tell me how this happened.” Safire’s eyebrows crept together as she frowned over Asha’s limp arm. She was trying to pad her burned hand with extra linen to see if Asha could use it—at least a little. Asha watched her cousin foldthe linen, then tie it around and around her hand. She thought of long-lost days when they would hide in the garden under the honeysuckle plants, watching Asha’s nursemaid frantically call her name, their hips and elbows touching as they held in their giggles. She thought of late nights lying side by side on the roof, putting names to all the stars.
That was before Asha’s mother died. Her mother had been more lax about the laws governing those with skral blood.
“There,” said Safire, tying off the linen. “How’s that?”
Asha’s hand was a bulge of white, completely swallowed by the bandage. She reached for the axe lying on the floor of the alcove. Her skin protested as she picked it up, but she could bear it. She wouldn’t be able to hold it long, or even well, but it was better than nothing.
Asha was about to thank her cousin when a loud banging at the door interrupted.
“Saf!”
At the sound of Dax’s panicked voice, Safire and Asha looked up.
Safire leaped to her feet and crossed the room.
When the door opened, Dax stumbled inside, looking haggard and ill. Sweat dampened the curls around his temples and made his skin gleam. Blood stained the front of his pale gold tunic.
And that was all it took: Asha suddenly knew who he reminded her of.
Mother.
In those last days before she died, her mother’s bones juttedout and her eyes were dark hollows. Asha remembered the sound of her coughing through the night. Remembered all the blood she coughed up at the end....
Whole cups of blood.
Asha got to her feet—a difficult task with a badly burned hand and a useless arm in a sling.
“What’s wrong?” Safire demanded. “Are you hurt?”
“I’ve made a terrible mistake.” His eyes were hollow. Haunted.
Seeing the look on Asha’s face, he glanced down at the blood on his shirt. “It’s not mine.” And then he caught sight of her sling, her bandaged hand.
Before he could ask about them, Safire interrupted. “What’s happened?”
He met Asha’s gaze. “I need your help.”
Had the scrublanders done something? Had they hurt him?
Asha rose to her full height, ready to take down whoever had done it.
“It’s Torwin.”
Asha didn’t know that name. “Who?”
“Jarek’s slave,” Safire explained.
Asha remembered him. Eyes that pierced. Freckles like stars. Long fingers plucking the strings of a lute.
Torwin.
“I thought I could stop it.” Dax’s hands slid behind his neck, gripping hard. “You know how Jarek is. As soon as you show him you care...”
“He hurts the thing you care about,” Asha finished.
Dax’s arms fell to his sides. He stepped toward her.
