The Last Namsara (Iskari #1)(2)

Asha nodded. Except she hadn’t brought supplies for a burn treatment. She’d never needed them before.

To keep up appearances, she moved for her pack. From behind her, Safire said very softly, “I thought they didn’t breathe fire anymore.”

Asha froze.

They don’t breathe fire without stories, she thought.

Safire got to her feet and dusted off her leather armor. Her eyes dutifully avoided Asha’s as she asked, “Why would they start breathing fire now?”

Asha suddenly wished she’d left her cousin behind.

But if she’d left Safire behind, there wouldn’t just be remnants of a bruise on her jaw. There would be far worse.

Two days before Asha had set out on this hunt, she found Safire cornered by soldats in her own room. How they’d gotten in without a key, she could only guess.

As soon as Asha entered, they panicked, scattering in the presence of the Iskari. But what about next time? Asha would be hunting for days, and her brother, Dax, was still in the scrublands, negotiating peace with Jarek, the commandant. There was no one to keep a watchful eye out for their skral-blooded cousin while Asha hunted. So she’d brought Safire with her. Because if there was anything worse than coming home empty-handed, it was coming home to Safire in the sickroom again.

Asha’s silence didn’t dissuade her cousin in the least.

“Remember the days when you would set out at dawn and bring a dragon down before dinner? Whatever happened to those days?”

The searing pain of her blistering skin made Asha dizzy. She fought to keep her mind clear.

“Maybe things were too easy back then,” she said, whistling at her hunting slaves, signaling them to start the dismemberment. “Maybe I prefer a challenge.”

The truth was, dragon numbers had been dwindling for years and it was getting harder to bring their heads back to her father. It was why she’d turned to telling the old stories in secret—to lure them to her. The old stories drew dragons the way jewels drew men. No dragon could resist one told aloud.

But the stories didn’t just lure dragons. They made them stronger.

Hence, the fire.

It went like this: where the old stories were spoken aloud, there were dragons; and where there were dragons, there was destruction and betrayal and burning. Especially burning. Asha knew this better than anyone. The proof was right there on her face.

Sighing, Safire gave up.

“Go treat that burn,” she said, leaving her halberd upright in the sand as she started toward the hulking form. While the slaves advanced on the dragon, Safire walked a complete circle around the body, scanning it. The dragon’s dusty gray scales were perfect for blending into the mountain, and its horns and spines were flawless ivory, none of them broken or cracked.

In Safire’s absence, Asha tried to flex her burned fingers. The sharp pain made her bite down hard. It made the lowlands around her blur into a smudged landscape of red sand, pale yellow grass, and a gray speckle of rock. They were on the seam here. Not quite in the flat desert to the immediate west, nor in the dark and craggy mountains to the immediate east.

“It’s a beauty!” Safire called back.

Asha strained to focus on her cousin, who was starting to blur along with everything else. She tried to shake her vision clear. When that didn’t work, she reached for Safire’s halberd to steady herself.

“Your father will be so pleased.” Her cousin’s voice sounded thick and muffled.

If my father only knew the truth, thought Asha, bitterly.

She willed the landscape to stop spinning around her. She clutched the halberd harder, concentrating on her cousin.

Safire navigated through the slaves, their knives glinting. Asha heard her grab the handle of the embedded axe. She heard Safire use the heel of her boot to brace herself against the dragon’s scaly hide. Asha even heard her pull the weapon out while blood glugged onto the sand, thick and sticky.

But she couldn’t see her. Not any longer.

The whole world had gone fuzzy and white.

“Asha . . . ? Are you all right?”

Asha pressed her forehead to the flat steel of the halberd. The fingers of her unburned hand curled like claws around the iron shaft as she fought the dizziness.

I should have more time than this.

Hurried footsteps kissed the sand.

“Asha, what’s wrong?”

The ground dipped. Asha felt herself tilt. Without thinking, she reached for her skral-blooded cousin. The one who, under the law, wasn’t allowed to touch her.

Safire sucked in a breath and stepped back, out of reach, widening the gap between them. Asha struggled to regain her balance. When she couldn’t, she sank onto the sand.

Even when Safire’s gaze slid to the hunting slaves—even when Asha knew it was their judgment Safire feared and not her—it stung. It always stung.

But slaves talked. Her cousin knew this better than anyone. Gossiping slaves had betrayed Safire’s parents. And right now, they were surrounded by slaves. Slaves who knew Safire wasn’t allowed to touch Asha, wasn’t even allowed to look Asha in the eye. Not with skral blood running through her veins.

“Asha . . .”

All at once, the world settled back into place. Asha blinked. There was the sand beneath her knees. There was the horizon in the distance, a red-gold smear against a turquoise sky. And there was the slain dragon before her: clear and gray and dead.