“It’s difficult to explain.”
Asha turned back to the dragon, resting her forehead against its rough scales. The moment she did, her mind flickered like a candle flame. Images came in flashes and bursts:a hooded man riding a black dragon, an army advancing across the desert.
Asha pulled away and the images flickered out. She eyed the dragon, which darted around her and the slave, circling excitedly. Finally, it settled in a crouch and looked up into her face. As if anticipating some kind of game.
The slave said something, but Asha didn’t hear him. She was thinking back. Remembering herself from years before—the girl with the butterfly heart. Asha stepped toward the dragon and took its snout in her hands. Once again, images flared up in her mind.
It was the dragon. It was trying to tell her a story, she realized, in exchange for the one she’d told. Only instead of wordsstrung together in a sequence, it sent flashes of images into Asha’s mind. They were like shards of glittering glass, sometimes too sharp to grasp, sometimes out of order.
Eight years had made her forget: dragons liked to tell stories almost as much as they liked to hear them. Asha forced herself to go back, to remember yearswiththe dragons rather than against them.
Kozu’s storytelling was beautiful. Never hard to decipher. But this dragon chattered like a child who hadn’t yet learned how to form proper sentences.
Asha closed her eyes, trying to focus. She struggled to piece the flashes of images together, like assembling a mosaic in her mind.
There was the hooded man—he seemed important. He kept coming up over and over again, riding atop an inky-black dragon. Kozu, Asha realized, before he’d been scarred. But only a Namsara would dare ride the First Dragon. So the man had to be a Namsara.
It was the woman riding next to them, though, who interested Asha most. She wore Asha’s father’s citrine medallion. And while this woman was young, Asha knew her face. She knew those hard, disapproving eyes. They stared out at her from a tapestry in her father’s throne room.
The woman was Asha’s grandmother.
And the story was about the last Namsara, she realized. But the dragon’s story didn’t end where it normally did—with the skral being clapped into irons and turned into slaves. The dragon was telling her the part that came afterward.
The Severing Retold
The Old One granted the dragon queen victory over the skral. He gave her a Namsara who led her straight to the enemy’s camp while they slept. He gave her protection against her enemies. And what did she do in return?
She dishonored him.
She did not chase the skral out of the realm as he had commanded. Instead, she enslaved them.
“Draksors don’t take slaves,” the Namsara told her. “The Old One forbids it.”
“Just think of what we can accomplish!” said the dragon queen. “With our enemies forced to serve us, think of how powerful we will be! No one will dare come against us again.”
“To defy the Old One’s commands will be your undoing,” the Namsara warned.
The queen enslaved the skral anyway.
The city’s narrow, winding streets filled with slaves being fitted for collars. Gold for the palace. Silver for the wealthy. Iron for the rest.
The Namsara came to the dragon queen with a second warning. “The Old One will show mercy, but you must release the enemy. Break their collars and set them loose.”
The queen banished the Namsara from her sight.
The slaves were given roles, and rules were made to govern them: Never look a draksor in the eye or speak their name aloud. Never toucha draksor other than your master. Never drink out of a draksor’s cup or eat off their plate.
The Namsara came a third and final time. This time, he did not beseech the queen. Nor did he offer mercy. Instead, he declared, for all the city to hear:
“This will be a sign the Old One has left you. Your fiercest allies will turn against you. They will burn down your homes and attack your families, and their fleeing shadows will drive a wedge between all of Firgaard.”
And that’s exactly what happened.
Nineteen
The dragon was a liar.
Its story was all wrong. The skral were ruthless. They’d pillaged and burned every city they came across. They left only ruin in their wake. If the dragon queen let them go, their horror would continue. Asha’s grandmother had been protecting her people and everyone else.
