The Last Namsara (Iskari #1)(48)

She lowered her voice. “The stories on those scrolls. Did you write them?”

His eyebrows shot upward. “I’m surprised you think me capable.”

That wasn’t an answer.

She studied him. His cheekbones jutted out too far. His clothes hung too loosely. As exasperating as her brother was, she couldn’t bear to lose him.

“You look just like she did,” said Asha. “Right before she died.”

A wild emotion flickered across his face. But it was gone as soon as it arrived.

“Not everything is as it appears, Asha.” His gaze flicked over her shoulders, checking for soldats and slaves. Satisfied that they were alone and unwatched, he stepped in close and lowered his voice. “When darkness falls, the Old One lights a flame.”

Asha stepped back. “What?”

“It’s what Roa says.”

Roa? The girl who betrayed him?

Was he serious?

Asha didn’t have time for this. Her brother was a lost cause. She needed to steal the sacred flame so she could get back to hunting Kozu.

She moved past her brother, heading deeper into the palace.

Dax’s footsteps rang out behind her.

“The realm is divided against itself!”

She ignored him and kept walking—through shady galleries and bright courtyards, through gardens full of date palms and vines of white jasmine creeping up the walls.

Dax followed her.

“You don’t see it,” he persisted, “because you’re forever in the Rift, doing Father’s bidding. Things are bad and getting worse. A reckoning is coming.”

When they reached the throne room, Asha turned to him.

“What does that have to do with you?” she demanded. “Since when do you care, Dax? About anything?”

He stepped back. As if she’d shoved him. Beneath the wounded look in his eyes she could see a war waging. Could see the reckless, careless Dax fighting to come out. To hide the truer, softer Dax and his myriad of hurts.

She shouldn’t have said that. Of course he cared. About too many things.

They were just the wrong things.

“The Old One hasn’t abandoned us.” He stared her straight in the face as he said it, forcing her to look him in the eye. “He’s as powerful as ever, waiting for the right moment and the right person. He’s waiting for the next Namsara to make things right.”

Asha froze just beyond the throne room’s archway, out of sight of the soldats within.

Did he realize how he sounded?

Insane. Traitorous. Just like a scrublander.

Asha stared at her brother. Dax had always been recklessly heroic. Like Namsara and Iskari, he was the tenderhearted hero and Asha was the destroyer.

But unlike Namsara and Iskari, Asha had never hated her brother, only worried about him.

Enough of this. I’m running out of time.

Turning from Dax, Asha looked to the bright, eternal flame. She watched it burn in an iron bowl on the black pedestal.

Even though the dragon king’s throne sat empty, his guards held their positions all around the walls. Asha counted sixteen of them. Sixteen pairs of eyes all watching her as she stepped through the archway and into the enclosed space, her footsteps echoing up to the domed ceiling. Her gaze swept over the room. There was no balcony level and only one doorway from which to enter and exit. The only other opening was through the skylight in the roof. The soldats and their watching eyes guarded the throne all day and night, changing their posts at dawn and dusk. Yet Asha was supposed to steal the flame and not be seen.

At a loss, she stared at the sacred flame itself, which twisted eerily, bright white and making no sound. The flame didn’t need to be fed; it simply burned on and on, ever since Elorma brought it here from the desert a thousand years ago.

No, she thought. Not here. Elorma brought it to the caves beneath the temple.

You will take the sacred flame from the thief who stole it and return it to where it belongs.

Asha pressed her palms to her temples, trying to crush the command out of her head.

What should she do?

Her father would want her to focus on her hunt. Once Kozu was dead, it wouldn’t matter where the flame burned. Kozu’s death would end the Old One’s regime once and for all. With their god proven false, the scrublanders would come to heel and her brother’s yammering about the Namsara would cease.

But if she ignored Elorma’s task—what price would she pay?

She thought of her paralyzed arm—the cost for using her slayers unwisely.

To ensure her strength was not diminished, she would have to steal the flame. And then she would end Kozu. Once and for all.

But she couldn’t complete this task alone.

Asha needed an accomplice.

A large, fire-breathing one.





Twenty-Two


Asha took her mare, Oleander, and raced down narrow, cobbled alleyways through the city’s largest market. Lengths of freshly dyed silk hung across the space between buildings, forming a canopy of indigo and saffron above her. Open-fronted stalls lined the walls, spilling their wares into the street.

As carts and horses hurried to get out of the Iskari’s way, Asha looked for one stall in particular. In her rushing, she nearly passed it. Oleander reared as Asha drew her to a halt, turning back to the display of wooden musical instruments.