Safire visited Asha’s cell as often as she could, but when Dax promoted her to commandant, her visits stopped almost entirely. Not everyone was happy with Dax taking the throne. They were less happy with his scrublander wife. So when Dax presented his skral-blooded commandant, there were riots. Draksors took out their aggression on the skral, who began fleeing the city in droves. And when there weren’t any skral left to scapegoat, draksors turned on draksors.
Which kept Safire more than a little occupied.
The dragons helped. They and their riders acted as peacekeepers, watching from the rooftops. But they could only see so much.
Asha was all but forgotten about as Dax, Safire, and Roa tried to keep control of a capital falling apart at the seams. Asha learned to tell time by the changing of the guards. She gleaned information by eavesdropping. She learned that soldats refusing to obey the orders of the new commandant were banished from their positions, effectively cutting the army in half. She learned that the loss of slave labor meant people were struggling to subsist.
Most important of all, she learned her execution was three days away.
The day before they sent Asha to the chopping block, they made Dax king.
Normally, when a new ruler took the throne, he or she was paraded through the streets, followed by trumpets and the steady beat of drums, while the citizens of Firgaard threw rose petals and sang coronation songs. Dax’s coronation was nothing like that. It was a much more modest affair, set in the smallest of the palace courts, near the olive groves. The rains came in the afternoon and by evening the palace smelled of cool, damp plaster.
It was the only time they allowed Asha out of her cell. She was kept under guard, her ankles shackled with heavy chains, and confined to the upper terraces, away from the crowds who—upon seeing her—began to whisper and point.
“Life taker,” they said.
“Death bringer.”
“Iskari.”
Their stares made Asha want to walk herself back to her cell and lock the door behind her. She’d saved them from a monster, and still they feared her. There had never been any hope of redeeming herself. In her people’s eyes, she would always be Iskari.
Well, it wouldn’t be long before they never had to look upon her face again. Very soon, Asha would be dead.
Torwin too was nowhere to be found. Feeling his absence, she gripped the balustrade. Asha didn’t know if Torwin was dead or alive, living in the city or long gone to the scrublands. Over the past few weeks, whenever her guards mentioned yet another skral attack, Asha found her chest constricting. Her hands tightening on her chains. She hadn’t seen Torwin since the night her brother led her to the dungeons and, with tears streaming down his cheeks, locked his own sister in a cell.
No matter how many times her gaze scanned the courtyard, there was no sign of him.
Above the din of conversation, just beyond the walls, the trilling birdcalls announced the approach of the night. Asha leaned over the balustrade, letting the hard, cold marble bear her up as she stared out across the lantern-lit court, still searching for Torwin. But all she found amid the potted kumquats and hibiscus hedges were colorfully clad scrublanders and collarless skral all mingling peaceably with draksors. It was a vision of the future. Of what Firgaard was capable of becoming.
Dax stood on the white-tiled terrace. At his side, Roa gleamed in a blue and gold kaftan that belted high at the waist and moved like water even when she stood still. A crimsonflower sat tucked behind her ear. One with seven petals. She looked like a girl born to be queen, outshining even Dax, who stood at her side, matching her blue and gold. Their father’s medallion hung across his chest. Dax looked tired and a little sad, but the set of his shoulders and the rise of his chest said these feelings were inconsequential to the work that lay ahead.
When he spotted Asha, his smile broke. A shimmering grief fell over him as their gazes met and held. He raised his fist to his heart in a solemn scrublander salute. Asha returned it.
The courtyard fell silent, looking where their new king looked. A chill crept up Asha’s spine as the eyes of every scrublander, draksor, and skral fixed on her. In their sparkling kaftans and silk tunics, they gawked at Asha’s chains and dirt-streaked garments.
She still didn’t belong here. Would never belong here.
Asha was a blemish on her brother’s new reign.
A soft shadow fell over her then. When she turned her back on the courtyard, she found her eldest guard standing before her. He had a perpetually wrinkled brow and a graying beard in need of a trim.
“Time to leave, Iskari.”
Asha nodded, letting him take her arm.
As the other guards fanned out, ahead and behind, he led her down the stairwell and into the court below.
Whispered voices rose up as the guards walked through the arcades, keeping their charge away from the staring revelers. Asha fixed her attention on the towering entrance, its archway bordered by yellow and red mosaic tiles.
Halfway there, her guards halted, forcing Asha to halt too. In the space between the guards ahead, her gaze caught on slippered feet, then trailed up a shimmering blue and gold kaftan all the way to the dragon queen’s face.
Roa stood directly in their path, blocking the way out of the courtyard.
The guards bowed their heads.
“Step away,” said Roa.
