The Girl with the Dragon Heart

by Stephanie Burgis

  ‘“Little market stall?”’ New creases popped up in the shirt my brother was holding as his hands clenched.

  I shrugged. ‘Well? If you compare it to the Chocolate Heart –’

  ‘This “little market stall” is the only inheritance our parents left us!’ Dieter shook his head as he stared at me. ‘Do you really not even care about that any more? Or …’ his voice dropped, ‘… about them?’

  Oh. Oh. My stomach gave a sudden, sickly twist.

  Dieter and I had fought plenty of times before. He wanted to keep me trapped where he could see me; I’d never been able to stay put. Over the last few years, I had started to feel as if we couldn’t even speak to each other any more without leaving verbal bruises. Still, there were some words that neither of us had ever uttered.

  He’d never dared make that accusation out loud, to my face, before. Blood roared into my ears, but I wouldn’t let myself show any reaction. Not to him.

  ‘Our parents wanted a better life for us,’ I said quietly. ‘That’s why we got on that wagon train all those years ago. This market stall was just an accident of the friends they happened to make along the way.’

  … Before we lost them.

  But I never, ever let myself think about that. Not any more.

  How could he?

  ‘And now you’re ready to throw it all away.’ He shook his head, his thin face pinched in disapproval. ‘Now that you’ve wormed your way into that fancy chocolate house so that you can use the people there –’

  ‘Enough!’ I grabbed the cold table with both hands, gripping it hard as I glared at him.

  I hated that I could never stay calm with him any more.

  I hated that I couldn’t forget a time, long ago, when my big brother had looked at me with love instead of furious disapproval … and when I’d clung to his hand for safety as our wagon had rolled into our new city in the dark.

  Most of all, I hated everything I felt bubbling in my chest as his words sank like poison into my skin.

  ‘So that you can use the people there …’

  I wasn’t. I never would.

  Was that what I was doing?

  No. I wouldn’t even think about that now, in front of him. And I would not give him the last word, no matter what.

  ‘If you say one more word about the chocolate house or our parents,’ I told him, ‘I’m walking away right now. And I might not come back!’

  My brother’s jaw tightened, his tall, skinny body as rigid as a spike.

  For a long moment, we stared at each other.

  Then he took a deep breath, patted the shirt he’d been holding and set it down carefully.

  ‘Next time,’ Dieter said as he turned to walk away, ‘try to wear something that won’t scare off the customers. Like a dress.’

  Argh! I had to stuff my hand into my mouth to hold back a scream of rage that would have followed him all the way off the riverside. I would not give him that victory …

  But I was shaking as I spun around, facing the back of the patchwork canopy that sheltered our market stall to hide my expression from the rest of the world.

  ‘Once upon a time …’ I whispered to myself.

  It was the way my mother had started all of her stories, every single evening of my childhood. Just the sound of those words had been enough, back then, to fill me with comfort as I’d lain safe and warm in my own bed, waiting to find out what would happen in someone else’s exciting story.

  Now I whispered the words to myself for strength.

  I was calm. I was confident. I was the heroine of my own story, not the villain. And no matter what Dieter thought, our parents would be proud of me if they could see me now, travelling across the city every day to hunt down my own happy ending.

  Hadn’t they done the same thing all those years ago, when they’d bundled us into that wagon full of strangers in search of a better future? I was only standing here safely now because they’d been willing to take that risk for all our sakes.

  I would succeed, just like they’d wanted. I’d fulfil all of their dreams by trying harder than ever – and no matter how much it might hurt, I would stop wasting so much time at the Chocolate Heart, pretending that it was my real home.

  Even Dieter could tell that that wasn’t true.

  My throat tried to close up at the memory of his words, but I sucked in a deep breath and locked them away where they couldn’t hurt me, along with the memory of my parents and the way I’d lost them all those years ago.

  This was a new story for a new day. And I was determined to take charge of it.

  Now.

  Most people wouldn’t have been able to hear the sounds of approach on the grassy riverbank, but I’d lived there for years, and my ears were attuned to every sound. So when I heard the creak of leather and the soft sound of footsteps on the grass behind me, I spun around with my best saleswoman’s smile.

  ‘The best clothing on the riverbank!’ I said as I turned. ‘And the cheapest prices … ah?’

  Two men and two women in silver-and-blue guards’ uniforms stepped into place around my table, closing me in.

  The one who stood directly in front of me put one hand on the hilt of his sword as he leaned across the piles of neatly folded second- and third-hand clothing, his dark eyes hard and fixed on me.

  ‘Orders from the crown princess,’ he said. ‘You’re coming with us.’

  Of course I tried to talk my way out of it. As soon as the first bright burst of shock faded, a dozen different explanations and excuses jostled for position on the tip of my tongue, each of them better than the last. But none of the crown princess’s guards would listen to a word I said and, less than a minute later, I was being marched through the crowded river market like a criminal, leaving my family’s market stall unattended and completely unprotected behind me.

  If robbers stole our precious stock of clothing while I was gone, Dieter would never forgive me. At least I’d managed to snatch up the moneybag from behind the table and stuff it into an inside pocket of my thick black jacket. But the thought of his expression when he came back to find our table empty and both me and our moneybag gone …

  I staggered, my chest burning as if I’d been knifed. The guard behind me forced me forward with a hard jerk of her knees, pushing me relentlessly ahead.

  How could I have let this happen?

  The guards had been so fast, hemming me in and marching me away before I could even try to run. Most people wouldn’t have seen what happened. But the market was so crowded that someone out of all the traders in the stalls around ours must have witnessed it – so at least they could tell my brother I hadn’t left our stall defenceless on purpose.

  No, I’d been marched away by the crown princess’s own guards …

  … So of course he would assume that I’d committed some unspeakable crime and been arrested for it.

  I would have groaned if I could have forced any air through my lungs. But for once, my voice had completely deserted me. Dieter had always said it would get me into trouble one day.

  How could I have been so stupid? Using the crown princess in my story yesterday in front of at least a dozen yammering traders … how could I not have expected that she would hear about it?

  Was it actually a crime to tell stories about her? Or to pretend to be working for her when I wasn’t?

  There had to be something I could say to make her forgive the insult. But no one was giving me any time to stop and think.

  The guards’ tall bodies closed me inside a tight, sweaty square as they marched in lockstep off the riverbank and on to the cobblestones beyond. I couldn’t see past their broad shoulders in any direction, and no one outside the square could see me. At least that meant that none of the Chocolate Heart’s customers would be scandalised by the sight of their waitress being marched off in disgrace to the palace to be lectured on her unforgivable impudence and then thrown into a grimy prison cell and …

  Wait.

  Even in a pani
c, I still knew my city. We were definitely going the wrong way.

  I poked the dark blue back of the guard in front of me. ‘Hey! The palace is that way!’

  He didn’t even grunt in answer. But the woman on my left was smirking.

  Uh-oh. I hadn’t liked the idea of being marched off to the palace, but I liked this new turn even less … especially when I realised, twenty minutes later, that we were marching into the grimy seventh district. What would the crown princess be doing here?

  The guard in front of me unlocked the front door of a tall, sagging, wooden building that looked as if it might fall over any day now. The lightless staircase was too narrow for the guards to keep their box formation around me, so they spread out, two in front and two behind, and kept me moving quickly up the creaking stairs.

  Inside a building like this, there should have been dozens of families living in tiny, cramped flats, sending noise rocketing through the thin walls. But I didn’t hear a single sound as we travelled higher and higher.

  Someone had cleared this place out. And there was only one explanation I could think of: someone needed a safe place to hold meetings that no one else in the city could know about.

  Or maybe … a safe place to get rid of awkward people in secret?

  My heart was beating as quickly as a hummingbird’s wings, but I forced myself to take long, steady breaths as I climbed up the steep stairs in the dark.

  If the crown princess wanted to execute me for my cockiness, she didn’t need to do it in secret. She could have it done in the town square in the sunshine, and at least half of her nobles would applaud her for taking care of an uppity commoner. So …

  ‘Here.’ The guard in front of me stepped off at the second-to-top landing and unlocked a nondescript door to one side. With a jerk of his head, he motioned me into the small, empty room beyond.

  ‘What?’ I raised my eyebrows at him. ‘You mean I’m finally allowed to start walking by myself?’

  His eyes narrowed. ‘Go.’

  ‘In a minute.’ I started to straighten my jacket with care.

  A hard shove from the guard behind me sent me staggering forward.

  Catching myself on the open doorway with both hands, I said, ‘I think I ought to take a moment first to –’

  A second shove sent me tumbling into the room. I landed, sprawling, on a hard wooden floor as the door of the flat slammed shut behind me, leaving me alone …

  Or not.

  ‘Well, well,’ said a familiar voice as a second door opened on the opposite side of the room.

  The most powerful woman in Drachenburg stepped inside. Her long, lavender silk skirts swished against the dusty wooden floor, only three feet from my outstretched hands. Her long black hair was swept up in an elegant, courtly style around her light brown face, leaving a few curls rippling stylishly around her neck. Her dark eyes were filled with sharp, dangerous intelligence … and an amusement that made me burn.

  The crown princess was smiling as she looked down at me on my hands and knees before her.

  ‘You needn’t kneel,’ she said drily. ‘Your name is Silke, isn’t it?’

  The panicked thrumming in my chest slowed down. Everything went still inside me as I suddenly saw myself from her perspective.

  I would not let this pathetic moment be the end of my story. Not even if it meant my execution.

  Never.

  Taking a deep breath, I pushed myself up off the floor and jumped to my feet with a wide, confident smile. I brushed the dust off my jacket with two quick swipes and then I swept an elaborate bow.

  ‘Your Highness.’ I tipped back my head to smile straight into her eyes. ‘I assume that you need my help?’

  CHAPTER 5

  The crown princess’s finely plucked eyebrows did not rise on her smooth brown forehead. The expression on her beautifully symmetrical face never altered.

  But her whole, elegant figure went still for a moment, and I knew I had surprised her.

  I took that moment to jerk my jacket straight with one quick twitch. I would have straightened the cravat around my neck, too, but without a mirror that was nearly impossible – and I didn’t dare let her see me fumble.

  So I locked my hands behind my back to hide their trembling and said calmly, ‘I would have come if you had summoned me, Your Highness. You didn’t need to send out your guards to bring me in.’

  ‘No,’ she agreed. Her famously rich, velvety voice filled the room. ‘Not if I had wanted you to know where you were going … or to tell anyone else about our appointment.’

  Uh-oh. My heart was starting to gallop again. But I wasn’t weak or a victim, no matter how helplessly I’d been brought here. So I narrowed my eyes. ‘The seventh district, you mean? In the block between Herrengasse and Margaretenstrasse?’

  This time, her eyebrows did rise. ‘I ordered that my tallest guards be sent, and that they not allow you any view of your surroundings.’

  I threw my shoulders back and lifted my chin even higher. ‘This is my city, Your Highness. I know every street of it.’

  ‘I see.’ A tiny, worrying smile tilted up the corners of her full lips. It didn’t look friendly. It looked … satisfied.

  Had I just passed a test? Or failed one?

  She didn’t say anything more, so I finally added, ‘And I wouldn’t have told anyone if you’d asked me not to.’ But my voice came out weaker than I’d wanted, and her lips curved into a full smirk.

  ‘Not even in one of your infamous little handbills?’ she asked. ‘Or … in a public marketplace perhaps?’

  I knew it. My fingers clenched so tightly behind my back that pain stabbed down my forearms. I took a deep breath. ‘Your Highness –’

  But she interrupted me. ‘This wasn’t the first time you’ve pretended to work for me, was it?’

  Wasn’t it? I blinked rapidly, trying to remember.

  ‘Four months ago …’ she prompted.

  Oh. ‘That’s right.’ I swallowed hard. ‘That was how I got Aventurine in to see you when the dragons came.’

  When Aventurine’s family had first flown here to find her, the city had erupted with panic, certain that we were all about to be burned to the ground in a storm of dragonfire. No one had wanted to let two young girls in to see the king and crown princess while they were in urgent conference with their privy council – until I came up with exactly the right story to talk us past all the soldiers in our way.

  ‘I … I knew you would want to hear what she had to say.’ I didn’t like how small my voice sounded. This is the wrong story. I stiffened my shoulders and started again. ‘Your Highness,’ I said firmly, ‘if you’d wanted to chastise me, you wouldn’t have come all this way to do it. So perhaps you’d like to tell me, instead, what exactly I can do for you now.’

  ‘Indeed.’ Pursing her lips, the crown princess paced in a slow, considering circle around me, her silk skirts brushing gently against the floor.

  I held myself still, my fingers tightly laced behind my back, as I felt her calculating gaze sweep across me from top to bottom.

  ‘Silke,’ she said, as if she were testing out my name. ‘I’ve been wondering how best to make use of you for some time now.’

  ‘You have?’ The words came out as a squeak. Hastily, I cleared my throat. ‘That is … you have, Your Highness?’

  ‘Oh yes. And I believe I’ve finally found the right moment. But it would be a … considerable challenge.’

  Her gaze rested on the spot near the right shoulder of my jacket where the cloth had been mended twice – once before I’d found it on our market stall, and once again afterwards, when the first, weak threads had snapped. I’d mended it in perfectly camouflaged black thread and neat, tiny stitches, but her gaze arrowed in on the imperfection, and I had to fight the impulse, too late, to cover it up.

  ‘You’re quick-thinking even when frightened,’ she murmured, ‘and you can talk your way around almost anyone …’

  Her eyes rose to meet mine, and my thr
oat tightened at the silent message I read in them: I would never be able to talk my way around her.

  ‘But,’ the crown princess continued smoothly, ‘can you pretend to be someone else entirely? And can you talk an entire court into believing it?’

  ‘Your Highness?’ I blinked.

  She tilted her head to one side as she came to a halt at last, looking down on me again. ‘What do you know about Elfenwald?’ she asked.

  And every ounce of my hard-fought calm dropped away as memories swept over me.

  There was one story that I never told anyone.

  It was a story I couldn’t twist, no matter how desperately I wanted to.

  It was a story without a happy ending for any of us.

  Oh, Dieter and I got away, along with the rest of our wagon train. The horses pulled us out the other side of that terrible forest. Two weeks later, we finally arrived in Drachenburg and ended our long journey.

  But my parents were left behind in the darkness.

  And that story was set in Elfenwald.

  I was only seven when it happened. I didn’t know what was going on. But the wagon came to a sudden halt late one night, and I awoke to find that everything had changed.

  Strange lights floated in the darkness all around us. The grown-ups had insisted that we drive through the night once we entered the kingdom of Elfenwald. They’d said it wasn’t safe to stop in those green forests.

  But I didn’t see anything that looked unsafe. I loved the lights floating and shimmering in the air. They were magic – real magic, the kind I’d only heard about in my mother’s stories! I couldn’t understand why Dieter wasn’t excited by them, too, or why his face looked so pinched and frightened in their faint, reflected glow.

  I didn’t even notice, at first, that my father was missing from our wagon, lost in the huddle of adults by the front, talking to someone I couldn’t see.

  But then my mother let out a cry of distress and stood up suddenly, sliding me off her lap. ‘Dieter,’ she said, ‘look after Silke for a moment.’