The Last Namsara (Iskari #1)(20)

“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 fold the 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 jutted out 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.

“I need you to help him.”

Asha shook her head in disbelief. “You’re the heir to the throne, Dax. You don’t need to do anything for him. He’s a slave.”

Safire looked at her.

“What?” She met her cousin’s eyes. Here, with Dax, it was safe. “You’re not a slave, Saf.”

If Dax had a weakness, this was it. Worse than his reckless fighting and flirting and gambling, Dax didn’t think like a king. He thought like . . . a hero. He was too kind. Too good. Too soft on the inside. It was going to get him hurt.

“Asha.” Dax stepped toward her. “I’m begging you.”

Kings don’t beg.

“If I ask Jarek to spare Torwin’s life, he’ll kill him for sure. But if you ask . . .”

“You’re seriously asking me to get a dangerous skral out of a punishment he deserves?” Asha studied her brother. Dax had spent the past month in the scrublands, eating and drinking with religious fanatics who refused to take slaves.

What if instead of winning over the scrublanders, the scrublanders had won over her brother?

“He’s not—” Dax shook his head, curling his hands into fists. Then uncurling them. He looked like he wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her. “He’s being punished because of you, Asha. Because he touched you in front of Jarek. In front of everyone.” Dax breathed in, nostrils flaring elegantly. “If he didn’t catch you, you would have been hurt.”

“He did more than catch me,” she growled, thinking of the way he raised those steely eyes to hers. One dance, he’d demanded. In a place and time of my choosing.

“He’ll go to the pit tomorrow and never come out,” Dax said. As if a slave dying in the pit was supposed to elicit her sympathy. Slaves died in the pit all the time.

Asha shook her head in disbelief. “That is where criminal slaves belong.”

But even as she said it, she thought of the beat of a heart, thrumming against her cheek. Thought of the way it felt to be cradled in strong arms.

It had been eight years since she’d heard the beat of someone’s heart. Eight years since anyone held her with such gentleness and care.

“It costs you nothing, Asha.”