The Last Namsara (Iskari #1)(34)

“Thief,” she growled, planting her hands on either side of the door to pin him in place. “Tell me where they are.”

His eyes flashed like sharpened steel and his hands grabbed the loose fabric of her kaftan, pulling her in close, reminding Asha that he wasn’t innocent. He was a skral. She would need to guard herself much more carefully from now on.

“Tell me how you get past the wall without being seen.”

“I don’t,” she lied.

He stepped in close, stealing her air. So close, the tips of their noses nearly touched. “The soldats let you pass knowing you’re hunting alone? Your betrothed would never allow it.”

“Allow?” Her hands fell to her sides, turning to fists. “Jarek is not my master.”

“He will be,” said the slave.

Asha opened her mouth to snarl at him, except . . . wasn’t that what she was afraid of?

Wasn’t that why she needed Kozu dead?

Asha lowered her gaze. She stared at his throat, where a frantic pulse betrayed his racing heart.

“You’re right,” she said in the end. “I don’t always use the gate.”

“It’s only a matter of time before my master finds me,” he said. “If I stay here, I’m as good as dead.”

Asha’s fists uncurled. “Are you asking me to show you the way out?”

He nodded.

What did it matter? He wouldn’t survive the Rift on his own.

“Give me back my slayers and I’ll show you.”

“When?”

“Tonight.”

She’d left everything but her armor out in the Rift. She needed to get fresh hunting clothes, a new sleeping pack, and an axe.

“Tonight then,” he said.

She looked up to find his eyes softening, his gaze tracing her face.

Asha suddenly felt like a dragon drawn into the thrall of an old story, knowing it was a trap, but drawn nonetheless.

You must take great pains to steel yourself against wickedness.

There had always been something wrong with Asha. Something easily corrupted. Her childhood addiction to the old stories—the very things that killed her mother—was the first sign. The horrible incident with Kozu was the second. And now . . .

This inability to say no to the skral who, for some reason, was important to her brother.

The corner of his mouth lifted, making her pulse quicken.

“I’ll be waiting, Iskari.”





A Dragon Queen’s Betrayal

A realm stood divided by a sea of sand. On one side rose Firgaard, walled and cobbled and refined. On the other sprawled the scrublands, wild and fierce and free. They were old enemies. Bitter rivals.

In the wake of his mother’s death, the dragon king wanted peace. Everyone knew it. No one thought he’d win it.

But he did.

In one of the five Great Houses across the sand sea lived Amina—a scrublander girl, and a daughter of the House of Stars. Amina would be his bridge between the old and the new, between a world of cobbled streets and a vast expanse of sand.

The dragon king bound himself to her there in the desert. He brought her home with him to the capital, thinking he was bringing home peace.

Amina was gentle and wise. It didn’t matter that she was a scrublander. The people of Firgaard loved her.

Soon, Amina gave birth to two heirs: a boy and a girl. The boy was just like his mother. But the girl was defiant and wild.

“A wicked spirit infects her,” the slaves whispered behind closed doors.

“Her scrublander blood has corrupted her,” the court said behind their hands.

Amina saw the narrowed eyes. She heard the clucked tongues. But Amina loved her daughter’s spirit. Her daughter reminded her of home.

When the nightmares started, when the girl screamed and wept for fear of them, Amina sent for the best physicians in Firgaard. They gave her instructions. They made her remedies. But the nightmares only worsened. And soon the physicians began to look at Amina’s daughter the same way everyone else did.

Wicked, Amina saw in their eyes. Infected.

So Amina took matters into her own hands.

When the lanterns turned down and the candles were snuffed and her husband fell to snoring, Amina slipped out of bed and crept down the palace corridors and locked herself in with her daughter.

There, with no one to see her, Amina chased her daughter’s nightmares with stories. Old stories. Forbidden stories. She told them aloud, all through the night, until the girl stopped crying and slept.

But every night, as the dragon queen crawled into her daughter’s bed and spoke the ancient tales aloud, she grew a little sicker. A little weaker. The stories were poisoning her, just as they’d poisoned the raconteurs before her. The stories were deadly, which is why they were outlawed.

But even as the stories poisoned Amina, they made her daughter stronger. The girl’s nightmares stayed away. She slept more soundly than ever.

When the dragon king found out, when he realized the danger his wife had put herself in, he moved to intervene. But it was too late. The stories were draining Amina’s life away.

Before the next moon rose, Amina was dead.

It broke the dragon king’s heart.

For her treachery—for breaking his own law and putting their daughter in danger—he couldn’t give her a proper burning. He couldn’t give her the last rites. He could only watch as the guardians abandoned her body outside the gates of the city, to rot in the sun like every other traitor before her.