The Last Namsara (Iskari #1)(67)

Asha stared at him.

Was everything she knew a lie?

And if Jarek wasn’t really a threat to her father, why would he offer to cancel the wedding?

“You never intended to cancel the wedding,” she realized aloud, hardly daring to believe it, wanting him to refute it. It was so twisted. So cruel. “You only told me that so I would kill Kozu.”

And in doing so, destroy the old stories. And with the stories went all trace of the Old One. Any resistance to her father’s reign would die off.

“Look at you, Asha. Look at your brother. What am I supposed to do with a fool for a son and a disgrace for a daughter? How could either of you rule a kingdom?” He shook his head at the disappointing sight of her. For so long, she’d craved this man’s approval that, in spite of everything, she still felt shamed by that look. “Jarek is the heir I always wanted. He’s the heir I shall have.”

Her father motioned for the temple guardian to begin. The young woman trembled at the closeness of the Iskari—the death bringer. What her father had turned her into.

“Tomorrow morning, once your marriage is consummated, I will revoke Dax’s birthright. As an enemy of Firgaard, he will forfeit any claim to my throne. Instead, Jarek will be king after me.”

In his eyes Asha saw only cold, honed hate.

“Guardians!” The young guardian’s voice rose up, a little shakily, to replace the dragon king’s. “We gather here tonight to bear witness. To bind this couple together for life. What is bound here tonight can never be unbound.”

Asha looked from the young woman to the silent, robed guardians beyond. Their hoods were pushed back. Asha glanced at each of them, until she came to the last one: Maya, the guardian who hid Torwin in the room with the scrolls.

Their gazes met and held.

“By the power given to me by the dragon king himself . . .”

Those weren’t the binding words. The power to bind a pair together came from the Old One, not the king.

Maybe her father didn’t need Kozu’s death to usher in his new era. Maybe he could simply seize it for himself.

“I weave these lives together as one! Only death can break my threads and tear them asunder!”

Normally the bride and groom refuted this last line by reciting vows taken from Willa’s story. Because the line was wrong. Willa had proven that Death couldn’t break the bond between her and her beloved. Love was stronger than death.

“Only Death himself,” Jarek recited, “can tear this bond asunder.”

Those weren’t the vows. They were butchering Willa’s words.

She stared at the guardian, wanting her to protest. But the young woman simply stood there, waiting for Asha to repeat the words.

Jarek reached for Asha’s arm and drew her in close. His grip tightened. Always tightened. “What do you think will happen to you if you don’t say the words, Asha?”

My father will give me to you anyway. It was the worst punishment she could think of.

“Say them.”

She never would. Not to Jarek. The words belonged to Willa. Saying them to Jarek was a desecration. A mockery of Willa’s fierce, unyielding love.

Asha looked to the guardians beyond the circle of flame. Six sets of eyes looked back at her, watching. As if she were nothing more than a slave being sold and locked in a collar.

She thought of the people gathered outside. Thought of how, before her mother died, she could hear the chant of prayers all the way from the market.

Asha didn’t have any prayers. But she had something else.

“Once there was a king, rotting from the inside out!” Asha threw her voice so hard and so high, she imagined it reaching beyond the stained-glass windows hidden behind her father’s banners. Imagined it reaching all the way to the sky. “He tricked his own daughter into betraying the First Dragon! He turned Kozu against her, letting her burn, all so he could use her! So he could twist her into a tool for his own dark purposes!”

Beyond the circle of flames, the guardians exchanged startled glances.

“The dragon king convinced his daughter it was her fault; she burned because she was the rotten one. He showered on her false kindnesses, to make her feel indebted to him. To use her to usher in a new era—one without dissent.”

“Silence!” her father commanded.

Jarek squeezed, crushing her bones.

But Asha didn’t stop.

“She believed the lies he told. She hunted down monsters because he asked her to, never realizing the most wicked monster of all stood right behind her.”

From outside, Asha thought she heard murmurs turn to shouts. Thought she heard the crash of lanterns dropped on the stones.

“Bind them,” commanded the dragon king.

“But, my king, she hasn’t said the—”

“BIND THEM!”

The temple guardian stepped forward, her hands trembling as she did. She took the white silk and, as Jarek laced his fingers with Asha’s, tied it around their wrists.

“Your worst fear has come true, Father.” Asha stared down the dragon king. “I am corrupted. The Old One owns your Iskari. You have nothing left to use against her, nothing to make her do what you want.”

The guardian said the binding words. A moment later, Jarek ripped off the silk. It fluttered to the stones at their feet. He grabbed Asha and yanked her out of the circle of torches.