Unless,thought Safire,he’s trying to taunt me.
And then, suddenly, that young soldat’s lilting voice rang through her mind.
How do you know it’s a he?
Safire’s stomach twisted.
She’d been in such a hurry, she’d thought nothing of the girl’s morion—which, now that she was thinking about it, was far too big for her and shielded half her face.
But there were other things, too.
The soldat carried no weapon, and she spoke with an unfamiliar accent. Safire had never heard a lilting voice quite like hers. It was almost... lyrical.
Not to mention that rolled-up bundle tucked beneath her arm.
Safire froze, thinking back to that bundle. The old, fraying threads. The considerable size.
It was a tapestry.
Hertapestry.
The one Asha had given her.
Safire sank down in her chair. “That thieving bastard.”
Safire tripled the guards. She stopped leaving the palace and remained on patrol through the night. The next day, despite her vigilance, the king’s seal went missing from Safire’s drawer. The day after that, Safire left her rooms only to return and find every single one of her uniforms gone. And in their place? Scarp thistles.
It was enough to make a person lose her mind.
Safire now had a collection of the gray thistles sitting in a glass jar on the windowsill of her bedroom. When she was feeling particularly broody, she would lock herself in and glare at them for hours, trying to think of a solution to this infuriating problem.
“I don’t think she’s a threat,” said Asha as she picked out a rock lodged in Kozu’s claw. The First Dragon stood over her like a shadow while Safire lay in the warm grass beside them, staring up at the indigo sky.
Where they sat, the former hunting paths ended in a scrubby field surrounded by forest. To the north, a huge round tent was pitched, and between them and the tent several dragons prowled, all of them being trained by hopeful riders. Safire could hear the clicked commands from where she stood.
These were the dragon fields. Asha hoped to build a school here—one that would simultaneously preserve the old stories while repairing the damaged relationship between draksors and dragons.
“A thief who can walk through the palace halls completely undetected doesn’t sound like a threat to you?” Safire asked, her hands cradling her head.
Asha set Kozu’s foot down, thought about it, then shook her head. “This one doesn’t.”
Safire sat up and crossed her legs. “Please explain.”
Kozu—an enormous black dragon with a scar through one eye—nudged Asha’s hip with his snout, as if to tell her something. But whatever passed between them was a mystery to Safire.
“She sounds... bored,” said Asha, rubbing the First Dragon’s scaly neck. “Like she’s tired of being the cleverest person in the room. What if she’sprovokingyou because she needs a challenge?”
Safire frowned at this. “Do you think I should give her one?”
Asha left Kozu and came to sit in the grass. Her black gaze held Safire’s. “Canyou? Right now she seems three steps ahead of you.”
Safire bristled at this.
Seeing it, Asha leaned forward. “All you need is to getonestep ahead.”
Propping her elbow on her knee, Safire rested her chin on her fist. “And how do you propose I do that?”
In the rising heat, Asha began undoing the brass buttons of her scarlet flight jacket. Dax had it sewn especially for Asha, to mark her as his Namsara. As Asha shrugged it off, the buttons flashed in the sun and Safire leaned in, squinting, to find that each brass orb was impressed with the image of a flame-like seven-petaled flower—the namsara, Asha’s namesake.
