The Last Namsara (Iskari #1)(7)

She would deal with Jarek’s slave later.





Dawn of a Hunter

Once there was a girl who was drawn to wicked things.

Things like forbidden, ancient stories.

It didn’t matter that the old stories killed her mother. It didn’t matter that they’d killed many more before her. The girl let the old stories in. She let them eat away at her heart and turn her wicked.

Her wickedness drew dragons. The same dragons that burned her ancestors’ homes and slaughtered their families. Poisonous, fire-breathing dragons.

The girl didn’t care.

Under the cloak of night, she crept over rooftops and snaked through abandoned streets. She sneaked out of the city and into the Rift, where she told the dragons story after story aloud.

She told so many stories, she woke the deadliest dragon of all: one as dark as a moonless night. One as old as time itself.

Kozu, the First Dragon.

Kozu wanted the girl for himself. Wanted to hoard the deadly power spilling from her lips. Wanted her to tell stories for him and him alone. Forever.

Kozu made her realize what she had become.

It scared her. So she stopped telling the old stories.

But it wasn’t so easy. Kozu cornered her. He lashed his tail and hissed a warning. He made it clear if she refused him, it would not go well for her.

She trembled and cried, but stood firm. She kept her mouth clamped shut.

But no one defied the First Dragon.

Kozu flew into a rage; and when the girl tried to flee, he burned her in a deadly blaze.

But that wasn’t enough.

He took out the rest of his rage on her home.

Kozu poured his wrath down on its lime-washed walls and filigreed towers. He breathed his poisonous fire as her people screamed and wept, listening to their loved ones trapped within their burning homes.

It was the son of the commandant who found the wicked girl, left for dead in the Rift. The boy carried her burned body all the way back to the palace sickroom while his father saved the city.

His father rallied the army and drove off the First Dragon. He ordered the slaves to put out the fires and repair the damage. The commandant saved the city, but he failed to save his wife. At the sound of her dying screams, he rushed into their burning home—and did not come out.

The girl, however, survived.

She woke in a strange room and a strange bed and she couldn’t remember what happened. In the beginning, her father hid the truth. How do you tell a girl of ten she’s responsible for the deaths of thousands?

Instead, he never left her side. He sat with her through the pain-filled nights. He sent for burn experts to restore her to full health. When they said she would never recover her mobility, he found better experts. And, very slowly, he filled in the gaps of her memory.

When the girl made her public apology and her people spat at her feet, her father stood by her side. While she promised to redeem herself and they hissed the name of a cursed god, her father took their curses and turned them into a title.

The old heroes were called Namsara after a beloved god, he said. So she would be called Iskari, after a deadly one.





Three


The throne room, with its double arcades, soldat-lined walls, and precise mosaic work, was built to draw attention to one place: the dragon king’s throne. But whenever Asha stepped through the giant archway, it was the sacred flame that commanded her attention first. A pedestal of polished onyx stood halfway between the main entrance and the gilded throne. Upon it sat a shallow iron bowl, and in that bowl burned a white and whispering flame.

When Asha was a child, the sacred flame was taken from the Old One’s caves and brought here, to keep the throne room alight. It struck such awe in Asha then.

Not anymore.

Now the flame seemed to watch Asha as much as she once watched it.

A colorless flame burning on nothing but air? It was unnatural. She wished her father would send it back to the caves. But it was his trophy, a sign of what he’d overcome.

“I’m sorry I interrupted your hunt, my dear.”

Her father’s voice echoed across the room, snapping up her attention. Asha scanned the gleaming white walls, broken up by tapestries bearing the portraits of dragon kings and queens of old.

“You didn’t interrupt. I killed it just before your message arrived.”

Dressed now in silk gloves that came to her elbows and an indigo kaftan that swished when she walked, Asha made her way across the room while the eyes in the tapestries watched her. Her steps padded softly on the sea of blue and green tiles as sunlight slid through the skylight in the copper-domed roof, lighting up specks of dust floating in the air.

The man waiting for her looked every bit a king: embroidered over the right shoulder of his robe was the royal crest—a dragon with a saber through its heart—and from his neck hung a citrine medallion. Gold slippers with elaborate white stitching hid his feet.

It was this man she woke to in the sickroom almost eight years ago. The sight of him now brought on a memory.

Kozu’s red-hot flames engulfing her. The awful smell of burning hair and flesh. The barbed screams snagging in her throat.

It was the only part Asha remembered: burning. Everything else was lost to her.

“That was your longest hunt yet,” he said. Asha stopped before the gilded steps of his throne. “I was beginning to worry.”