Asha’s lip curled. The thought ofenticingJarek made her stomach prickle.
“Or... not,” Dax said when he noticed the looks on their faces.
“I don’t have time for this,” Asha said, thinking of the waning red moon. She had a dragon to hunt down and only six more days to do it. She needed to get back to the Rift.
Asha moved past her brother, heading for the door.
“Wait....”
She didn’t.
“What if I gave youthis.”
Asha stopped at Safire’s door. The wood, rotting. The brass handle tarnished with age. If someone wanted to hurt Safire,they could easily break down this door. It needed to be replaced.
“It belonged to our mother.”
She turned as Dax tugged something off his too-thin finger, then held it out to her. A ring carved out of bone lay on his palm. But it wasn’t the ring that caught her attention first. It was the calluses on his fingertips. They looked just like the calluses on the fingers of Jarek’s slave.
“Father made it for her.”
Jealousy dug its claws into Asha’s heart. Their mother’s possessions had been burned after her death. Why was this one missed? And why should Dax get to keep it?
“Father gave it to me just before I left for the scrublands.” Dax stepped toward her. “If you get Torwin out of this, I’ll give it to you.”
Asha thought of her mother, dying in bed. Poisoned by the old stories.
She didn’t have anything of her mother’s. Why had her father given their mother’s ring to Dax?
Because I don’t deserve it. Because if it weren’t for me, she never would have told the old stories aloud. If it weren’t for me, she’d still be alive.
Asha might not deserve her mother’s ring, but she wanted it.
And while she would never admit it, while she didn’t even understand it, she wanted something else. Wanted a certain heart to go on beating.
“Fine.”
Dax smiled one of his bright smiles. It didn’t make her feel better. Instead, it highlighted just how thin his face had become,how much weight he’d lost.
What happened out there?she wondered.
She shoved the question away and made for the door.
Safire went to follow her, but Asha threw a warning look. No way was she taking her cousin with her to barter for the life of an insubordinate slave. If Asha were going to interfere with a lawful sentence, she would do it with Safire far away. Asha would not remind Jarek of the most effective way to punish her for crossing him.
Just before Asha stepped into the dimly lit corridor, where torches threw eerie shadows across the walls, she heard Dax say, “What happened to her arm?”
“She won’t tell me,” Safire said.
Asha shut the door tight on them both.
Nine
Jarek’s front door opened on the first knock. A gray-haired slave knotted with age hunched in the archway, her dark cheeks glistening with tears.
The presence of a skral startled Asha. The law dictated that all slaves be in the furrow by sundown.
“I need to see the commandant,” she said, pushing the door open and entering a turquoise corridor smelling like rose water. Finely woven carpets cushioned her feet.
