The Last Namsara (Iskari #1)(60)

Asha stared at him. “You’re mad,” she whispered.

Above them the gates creaked. Just a little longer and the way for Shadow would be clear.

“Am I?” Keeping his arrowhead pointed at her chest, he motioned with his chin to the spectators above, their faces crammed together at the bars, staring down at the Iskari they hated and feared. “How many of them want me to put this arrow in your heart?”

Asha swallowed. All of them.

“And your father?”

Asha burned at this question, thinking of the king beneath the crimson canopy. Her father would have seen everything. Would have realized the truth: his daughter was corrupted.

At that thought, she stepped away from the slave.

“Please,” she said. “Go.”

Torwin’s gaze trailed over her face. “No one is going to forgive you for this.”

Not at first, no. But her father needed her to hunt down Kozu. Her father and everyone else would forgive her as soon as she brought back Kozu’s head. That one act would absolve her of all her crimes.

“I need to make things right,” she said. “You need to take care of Shadow. That was our deal.”

The bars shrieked in protest, then stopped rising. From the crank room above, Safire cried out. The bars started to lower.

Fear flared hot and bright inside Asha. If those bars lowered completely with Torwin and Shadow still beneath them, there’d be no saving them again.

“If you die here, after I’ve just saved your life, I will hunt you past Death’s gates and kill you a second time.”

“You can kill me a hundred times,” he said, raising his last arrow over her shoulder, taking aim at his master. “If I can’t free you from him, I’m not leaving him alive.”

Asha stared at him.

He was trying to protect her?

Madness.

“Torwin.” Above them, his chance of escape was slipping away. “I still owe you a dance, remember? You can’t dance with me if you’re dead.”

He glanced at her, surprised..

“Promise me you won’t bind yourself to him,” he said, muscles straining against the pull of the bow. “Being owned by him”—his eyes were suddenly feverish—“it will kill you, Asha.”

She stared at his knuckles, clenched hard from his grip on the bow. He still wore her mother’s ring.

“I’m not leaving until you promise me.”

“I promise,” she whispered.

Accepting this, he clicked to Shadow, then threw himself up between the dragon’s wings.

Released from the threat of Torwin’s arrow, Jarek advanced swiftly now. Like a sandstorm sweeping across the desert. His gaze locked on his slave, who was about to escape him a second time.

From the crank room, Safire screamed, turning Asha’s blood to ice.

The gust of Shadow’s wingbeats snatched at loose strands of her hair. She didn’t look. Didn’t dare take her eyes off the commandant. All she had time for was a silent prayer, begging the Old One to get them safely out.

Jarek raised his hands to signal his soldats. But he never finished the command, because Asha charged him first—disregarding every rule Safire ever drilled into her.

He caught her blades easily. But when he tried to cast her off, Asha held her ground. She didn’t have to beat him in combat. All she had to do was hold him back.

“Out of my way, Iskari. Or I will make you regret it.”

Asha gritted her teeth, holding off the strength and weight of his saber. Her body screamed. Her legs buckled. Jarek roared in her face.

Asha roared right back. Screaming out her fury.

Holding fast.

When he looked up over her head, whatever he saw made his mouth contort with rage. The force of him lifted as he stepped back, casting his saber into the sand.

Asha turned and looked skyward just as the bars clanked closed. Beyond the crisscrossed bars, the empty sky stretched cloudless and blue above her.

They’re gone.

And with that thought came a loneliness so sharp and cruel, it felt like an axe cleaving her heart in two.





Twenty-Nine


Above the bars, the crowd hissed at Asha, cursing her name. Shame crept around her heart like a poisonous vine.

She didn’t resist when Jarek took her slayers, then gave the order to empty the arena. She didn’t meet the gazes of the soldats pulling arrows from their fallen comrades’ chests, all of them looking like they wanted to put a dozen arrows in her.

Under the weight of what she’d done, Asha sank to her knees in the sand.

Somewhere in the arena above, her father was making his way down to the pit. She should be thinking about what she needed to tell him.

Instead, she thought of Torwin saying her name.

Asha. The name her mother gave her. Not Iskari, the name of a corrupted god.

What if I never see him again?

It shouldn’t have mattered.

At the sound of Safire’s moan, Asha looked to find two soldats dragging her into the pit. Asha went to rise, but three soldats moved toward her at once, and the look of pure hatred on their faces stopped her.

Jarek dragged Safire to Asha, throwing her into the sand, where she collapsed in a battered heap.

“Asha!” Her father’s roar rumbled through the empty arena as he entered the pit. Sand scattered as he walked toward his Iskari. “You’ve made me into a fool!”