“Asha.”
He’d never said her name before. The sound of it clanged like a bell inside her, filling up her hollow places.
“Do as I say.”
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 theyhated 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. “Youneed 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.
Hewas trying to protecther?
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.
