The Caged Queen

by Kristen Ciccarelli

  “Very,” Roa and Lirabel said in unison.

  In the scrublands, weapons were earned, not given. They were symbols of skill as well as belonging. Scrublander children went through years of training before receiving the honor and responsibility of bearing one. This training was as important as learning their letters and numbers.

  Roa knew—from the summers he’d spent living in her house—that Dax avoided swords the way he avoided vegetables. Roa and Essie and Lirabel used to regularly beat him in the lessons they shared.

  Maybe he’s improved, thought Essie.

  Hmm, thought Roa.

  “And Dax?” Lirabel asked, putting a voice to Essie’s hope.

  Torwin kept his eyes on the king’s son. “Let’s just say he’s better at talking his way out of problems.”

  Theo drew his second sword and held it out, hilt first.

  Dax didn’t take it. “I’m not going to fight you.”

  Theo threw the blade on the ground at Dax’s feet, where it clattered on the cracked stone.

  “Pick it up,” Theo said.

  “I don’t think—”

  Theo threw a punch, his fist cracking against Dax’s cheek.

  Lirabel and Roa sucked in a collective breath.

  Torwin moved to intervene.

  “No,” said Roa, grabbing his arm, holding him back. Theo wouldn’t stop until Dax accepted the challenge. “You’ll do him no favors by rescuing him. Let him defend himself.”

  Torwin stared at her like she’d lost her mind.

  But Theo had plenty of reasons to challenge the son of the king. And if Dax wanted scrublander support in this war he was plotting, he needed to prove himself the scrublander way.

  “You take.” Theo shoved Dax, who staggered back. “And you take.” He shoved again. Dax shook his head, still trying to recover from the shock of the punch. “And you take.” The final shove made Dax nearly crash into the wall.

  “You dare come here asking our people to fight your war? Prove you know what you’re doing. Prove you deserve our help.”

  Theo kicked the sword at him.

  “Pick. It. Up.”

  Dax picked up the sword.

  But as he turned to face his opponent, his grip on the hilt was all wrong.

  Oh, Dax, thought Essie.

  He held the weapon too hard and too close.

  Seeing it, Theo smirked, then kicked him in the stomach, knocking the wind from him. Dax stumbled back, his arms swinging as he tried to keep his balance. Which was when Theo parried, easily disarming him.

  Once more, the sword clattered to the ground.

  Theo stepped in, nose to Dax’s. “Pathetic as ever.”

  “All right,” said Roa. “You’ve proven your point.”

  Theo ignored her, ramming Dax hard into the wall with both hands. Weaponless now, Dax grunted as his back hit stone. Theo pressed his blade to Dax’s throat, keeping him pinned.

  Roa slid Essie’s knife from its sheath at her calf and advanced. Essie flew from her shoulder to Lirabel’s.

  “I should do us all a favor . . . ,” Theo said into Dax’s ear, “and kill you right here.”

  “Now where have I heard that before,” Dax said bitterly.

  Roa pressed the tip of the knife to the spot just above Theo’s kidney, piercing through the shirt. Pricking his skin.

  Theo went immediately still.

  “Enough,” she warned.

  “It’s all in good fun,” Theo said, keeping the steel of his blade against the heir’s throat. “Isn’t it, Dax?”

  Roa looked to Dax, who met her solemn gaze over Theo’s shoulder.

  “Dax doesn’t appear to be having any fun. Let him go.”

  Theo didn’t move.

  “Theo,” she hissed, pressing harder, “I’m not some damsel who needs you to save her.”

  Immediately, his hands came up.

  “Drop the sword. And step away from him.”

  He did as she said, but glared as he did it. Roa stared him down, not breaking her gaze until he looked away first.

  “Go home,” she said.

  Picking up both swords, Theo sheathed them. He didn’t look at her again. Nor did he look at Dax. Just walked out of the ruins, shoulders hunched like a man who’d just lost everything.

  “Thank you,” said Dax from where he stood against the wall.

  “Don’t thank me,” she said, watching Theo’s silhouette bleed into the night. “Just . . . do better next time.”

  From across the ruined court, Lirabel said, “Maybe we should go home.”

  Roa nodded.

  As the rest of them headed for the horses, though, Roa lingered behind, tracing her sister’s delicate wing bone with her fingertip.

  How is he going to win a revolt if he can’t even wield a sword?

  That’s why he needs you, said Essie. That’s why we all need you.

  Seven

  Their horses halted at the same time.

  Sand bloomed through the air as Theo pulled Roa to him, crushing her to his chest. The beat of his heart raced to the same tempo as hers.

  As his caravan thundered past them, heading for the king’s, Roa breathed in his warm, familiar scent. Like honey and wheat. She looped her arms around his neck and hugged him hard.

  “Essie found me,” he said against her cheek. Gripping her shoulder, he pulled her away so he could look at her. “I was terrified we wouldn’t reach you in time.”

  Roa studied her former betrothed. His strong, unyielding jaw. His dark hair pulled back. His wheat-colored eyes set into a sun-kissed face.

  In her silence, Theo reached for his water skin and uncorked it, handing it to her. Roa drank deeply.

  “Are you all right?” Theo asked, assessing her for injury.

  Roa didn’t know how to answer that question. So, after wiping her mouth on her sleeve and handing back the water skin, she said, “You never responded to my letters. You never came to the ruins.”

  “I’m here now,” he said, still watching her.

  Suddenly, the air shifted. They both looked up to find Dax coming out of the dark and into the glow of Theo’s torch. He sat atop Oleander, with Essie now perched on his fist. The fire made her white wings glow almost orange.

  Dax stared at Theo’s hand. The one resting on Roa’s hip.

  Theo didn’t flinch.

  “Dax,” he said through his teeth. In Firgaard, Theo would never get away with being so informal with the dragon king. “It’s a rare man indeed who risks not just his own safety but that of his whole caravan.”

  Dax smiled a cold smile. His voice, though, lacked any chill. In fact, it was irritatingly warm. “You were sorely missed at the treaty negotiations. I suppose you had more important matters to attend to? Sulking, perhaps?”

  Roa stared at Dax. Was this his idea of diplomacy? Insulting the one they owed their lives to?

  “You think this is funny?” Theo didn’t smile. “You have no provisions. No tents. No food. How did you plan on surviving till morning?” He looked down to Roa, his grip tightening on her. “You’ve put enough lives in danger tonight. Let my household and me take it from here.”

  Dax looked from Theo’s protective grip to Roa’s face. His eyebrow lifted slightly, asking a silent question.

  Roa lifted her chin.

  “We owe him our lives,” she said, holding Dax’s gaze.

  In the distance, she heard the hammers already driving stakes into the sand. New tents were rising quickly due to the strong, deft hands of their rescue party. Theo had brought provisions. Proper ones. They’d survive until morning because of him.

  “If Theo hadn’t come—”

  “There’s no world in which I wouldn’t have come, Roa.”

  She looked up into Theo’s face to find him staring down at her.

  Dax rolled his eyes as he turned Oleander around, nudging her toward the tents. “Why don’t you bat your eyelashes at each other while you’re at it. I’ll see you both back at camp.”
>
  His horse kicked sand in their faces as he left, taking Essie with him.

  Roa and Theo glowered at the retreating king.

  “Best not underestimate the sand sea again!” Theo called to his back. “She’s not a merciful mistress!”

  Roa lifted her hands to the fire. The rest of the caravan had long since gone to sleep, but she, Lirabel, Jas, and Theo were still up. Theo’s tent was open on one side so they could look out over the camp but closed on the other three sides to keep out most of the cold.

  In Roa’s lap, Essie slept with her head tucked beneath her wing. She’d seemed distant tonight, just like the hum. Quiet and exhausted. As if finding her way back to Roa had taken all her strength.

  When she looked up from her sister’s sleeping form, Roa noticed Lirabel glance toward Dax and Roa’s tent—the one Theo had brought for them—which glowed warmly from the inside, throwing Dax’s shadow across the canvas. Roa looked where she looked, watching the king’s silhouette as he unlaced his shirt, then tugged it off.

  Lirabel never once looked at Jas across the fire. And Jas, chatting with Theo, never once directed a question Lirabel’s way. It was odd. Jas and Lirabel should have more to talk about than anyone else. Ever since Dax made Lirabel his emissary to the scrublands, she’d been seeing a lot of Roa’s brother.

  When the glow in Dax’s tent dimmed into darkness, Lirabel rose from the carpet of sheepskin and drew her sandskarf tight around her shoulders. Her curls were plaited in a long braid down her back. “It’s getting cold. I’m going to sleep.”

  Roa watched her head off in the direction of the king’s tent.

  Jas didn’t even say good night.

  In Lirabel’s absence, Roa studied him. He was the contemplative sort, her little brother. But it had always been a cheerful contemplation. Lately he was . . . broody. Like a storm cloud had settled inside him, blocking the sun that normally shone out of his eyes.

  Is it because Lirabel has finally put him off? Roa wondered. Or is it because he’s worried about Song’s rift with the House of Sky?

  The latter was her fault. Another consequence of the decision she’d made. If she hadn’t married Dax, there would be no trouble with Sky, and therefore no burden laid across her little brother’s shoulders.

  Not long after Lirabel left, Jas stretched and yawned, rubbing a hand over his face. “I think I’ll retire, too.” Rising, he caught his sister’s eye. “Coming, Roa?”

  Roa shook her head no.

  Her brother’s forehead wrinkled as he gave Roa what Essie liked to call his cautious study. He’d learned it from their mother, who used it whenever Roa and her siblings did something she disapproved of: pinched brow, narrowed eyes, lips pressed firmly together.

  But Jas’s disapproval over his sister sitting alone after dark with a young man who wasn’t her husband was nothing compared to the guilt that racked Roa. She needed to make sure things were right between her and the boy she’d betrayed.

  Seeing his efforts were futile, Jas sighed, then leaned over Roa and planted a kiss on the top of her head. “It’s been a long day,” he said, touching her shoulder. “You should go to sleep soon.”

  Roa caught the warning in his tone.

  If you give them a reason to believe you’re disloyal . . .

  She shook his voice out of her head and said, “I will . . . in a moment.”

  “Good night, Jas,” said Theo. Jas frowned a little, then nodded and stepped out of the tent.

  As soon as Jas was out of hearing distance, Theo rose and walked to where the tent’s fourth side was rolled back and secured to the corner post. He started to unfasten it. Just before he rolled it closed and tied it securely to the canvas roof—keeping the warmth in and prying eyes out—Roa looked out into the darkness, toward Dax’s tent.

  The lamp was out.

  She couldn’t stay long.

  Theo came back and sat down, planting one hand behind Roa, on the sheepskins laid down on the sand. Their shoulders brushed.

  If she had ridden hard, Theo had ridden harder. She could see it in the hunch of his shoulders, the droop of his head. Exhaustion carved deep shadows under his eyes, made deeper by the fire’s light. But in his gaze burned a familiar longing. One that hadn’t diminished in spite of everything she’d done.

  Her brother’s warning flashed through Roa’s mind.

  She looked quickly away, fixing her eyes on Essie, still curled up asleep in her lap.

  Dax might be a vow breaker, but Roa wasn’t.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “For marrying him.”

  Theo stiffened, then grabbed the stick perched on the stones ringing the fire. He prodded the flames with it. “We don’t need to do this. I already know what you’re going to say. I knew it before you ever left.”

  Roa needed to say it anyway.

  “I married him to bring down a tyrant.” She traced her sister’s wings, gently and softly, so as not to wake her. “And solidify an alliance.”

  His grip tightened around the stick. “Marrying me would have solidified an alliance. But I suppose scrublander alliances are less important than Firgaardian ones.”

  The fire crackled and sparked, lighting up his skin and dancing in his eyes. Those soft lips of his were set in a firm, hard line.

  She looked him in the face. “Dax’s father needed to be removed. He tried to kill his own son.”

  Theo shrugged. “I wish he had.”

  Roa’s fingers stopped stroking Essie. “Don’t say that.”

  “Can you blame me? Dax took our people and marched them across the sand sea to fight his war. He stole a daughter of the House of Song and made her queen so the rest of us would be compliant.”

  “I marched that army across the sand sea. And Dax didn’t—”

  “Remember what happened to the last scrublander girl who married a king?”

  He was talking about Amina, Dax and Asha’s mother. Roa’s fists tightened. No one stole Amina. She’d done what she’d done, the same as Roa had: of her own free will.

  “She’s dead,” said Theo. After rounding up the wood still left to burn, he nudged it all toward the center. The smoke curled up through the hole at the top of the tent. “Don’t be upset with me for not wanting you to end up like her.” Much more quietly, he said, “Don’t be upset with me for not wanting him to have you.”

  “Nobody has me.” She bristled. “And this isn’t a contest Dax set out to win in order to humiliate you.”

  “Are you sure?” he said, brow darkening. He stopped prodding the flames and lowered his voice. “Dax will become his father. Just like his father became the monster before him. Dax’s heir will do the same. This is the way it’s always been, Roa. Blood is blood. You can’t run from yours as much as I can’t run from mine.”

  A chill crept across Roa’s skin. Her gaze searched his shadowed face. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying Dax’s bloodline has only ever borne monstrous kings. I’m saying so long as a draksor sits on the throne, scrublanders will never be free of their tyranny. We will never have autonomy. We will never have peace.”

  He stared down at her, rigid as stone, as if daring her to contradict him.

  “And?” she whispered. “What’s your solution?”

  “That he give up his crown—by force if necessary.”

  Roa’s blood ran cold.

  Treason. He was proposing treason.

  “Please, don’t say another word.” She pushed up from the sheepskins, getting to her feet. Startled, Essie woke and flapped her white wings, flying up and out of the smoke hole in the roof. Her sleepy thoughts were a confused haze in Roa’s mind. “I’ll pretend I never heard you, because you’re my friend.” Because I love you. “But if you say it again . . .”

  He looked up. “You’ll what?”

  She stopped and stared down at him. His eyes were cloaked in darkness and she couldn’t read them.

  Please don’t, she thought. Do not be so reckless as to plot against m
y husband.

  “You’re tired,” she told him instead. “You don’t know what you’re saying. We’ll talk more in the morning, when both of us are rested.”

  “I know exactly what I’m—”

  Roa headed for the tent entrance. She’d spent too much time alone with him in here as it was.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To sleep.” Roa reached for the tent flap, pulling it back.

  Theo rose from the carpet of sheepskin and stepped up behind her. “Don’t go to him.”

  Roa fell still as his arms slid around her waist.

  “Stay here with me,” he whispered, drawing her against his chest. He smelled like honey and warm sand. “Surely, if the rumors are true, it doesn’t matter where you spend the night.”

  Those words scorched her. The rumors of Dax’s dalliances . . . if Theo had heard them, they’d probably reached every corner of the kingdom.

  Does everyone in the scrublands know? Even my parents?

  It was a humiliating thought.

  “I miss you,” he whispered. “I’ve missed you from the moment you left.”

  She closed her eyes as he kissed the base of her neck. When she didn’t resist, he pulled off her sandskarf. The wide scoop of her collar allowed him to brush his mouth slowly across her bare shoulder, pressing his lips to the tiny scars crisscrossed there from years of Essie’s claws digging into her skin.

  “I need you, Roa . . .”

  She knew it shouldn’t, but it felt good to be touched and kissed and wanted.

  But her brother’s voice was in her head, spiked with warning.

  If you give the court in the capital a concrete reason to believe you’re disloyal . . .

  “I can’t,” she said.

  She’d given herself to him once, before all this started. But so much had changed. She was married to Dax now. And, unlike her husband, she took her vows seriously.

  She couldn’t give herself to Theo again.

  His kisses stopped. She felt him tense against her. “How can you lie there next to him?” he demanded, his voice rough and raised. “A man who cares so little for you, he takes your dearest friend into his bed?”

  What?