The Caged Queen

by Kristen Ciccarelli

  Dax had inherited it upon her death; and after the coronation, he’d come here several times. It was just a day’s ride from Firgaard and an easy retreat from palace life. The last two times Lirabel had accompanied him, on her way to the scrublands as emissary. Roa had never set foot here before. The only reason they were staying tonight was because Dax needed to retrieve something he’d left behind on his last visit.

  A horse pulled up beside Lirabel. Both of them looked to see the king himself, staring straight ahead.

  “Race you,” he said.

  Lirabel looked queasy at the thought and shook her head. “Not me.”

  So Dax leaned forward, looking around her. “Roa?”

  At first she thought it was a joke. But then he smiled a strange smile. It reminded her of rainy afternoons, playing gods and monsters with him. She knew that smile. It was the one that slipped out when he thought he was about to win.

  “What’s the prize?” she asked, despite herself.

  Dax grinned. As if her question meant he was already victorious.

  “The loser has to give the winner a kiss.”

  Roa made a disgusted face.

  His smile faded. “Fine then. If you win, what do you want?”

  Roa was about to say Nothing, because she wasn’t going to race him. Except there was something she wanted.

  “I want you to call an Assembly as soon as we return to Firgaard.”

  The next scheduled Assembly—where Dax and his council made decisions, passing or overturning laws before a public audience—wasn’t for three weeks. Roa didn’t want to wait that long. She wanted the treaty terms imposed as soon as possible.

  Dax cocked his head, studying her. “Fine,” he said, turning to squint into the distance. “But if I win, you owe me a kiss.”

  “Fine,” she agreed. After all, Oleander was a lackluster horse who did as she was told only half the time.

  Roa didn’t wait for him to count them down. She dug her heels into Poppy, who lurched forward. Her hooves kicked up a plume of gold dust that bloomed through the air as they galloped away from Dax and Lirabel.

  Roa kept her eyes on the white walls ahead, following the path carved through yellow grass. Essie soared high above, trailing her.

  Suddenly, the hooves of a second horse drummed the ground behind her, coming up on her right side.

  Roa threw a look over her shoulder. The dragon king kept low to his horse, gaining ground fast, covered in a thin layer of dust.

  Roa slowed long enough to ask him where the finish line was.

  “The stables!” he called, as the wind whipped through his curls. “Around the back of the house!”

  Roa nudged Poppy, who pulled ahead.

  There was no gate in the walls, just an opening wide enough to fit a wagon. It reminded Roa of home, where doors were always open or unlocked. Where gates were unnecessary.

  She rode Poppy past the walls crawling with green ivy. A hill rose before them, painted in reds and greens, sloping with gardens and jagged with rock.

  Amina’s house stood at the top of the hill, half-hidden by jacaranda trees.

  This was the dragon queen’s abode, and yet it felt nothing like the close confinements of Firgaard. It felt wild and fierce and free. Like the scrublands from which they’d come.

  When the path diverged, Roa had to slow. Dax said the stables were around the other side, but which path would take her there?

  Essie flew higher. Help, Roa pleaded. But before her sister could see the clearest path, the clatter of hooves made Roa turn. Wind rushed into her face as Dax raced past them. Looking back over his shoulder, he gave Roa a mock salute.

  Follow him! Essie swooped after the king. I’ll find you a shortcut!

  Roa dug her heels into Poppy, who lurched forward.

  But the path twisted and turned around thorny angular trees, then broke off—again and again—in different directions. She lost Dax. She halted Poppy twice, looking for Oleander’s hoofprints, waiting for Essie’s directions, before gritting her teeth and racing on.

  Finally, through the trees, she saw a long white stable with a thatched roof.

  When they entered, Poppy’s hooves clopped on the stone floor. Their echo broke through the quiet. It was cool and dim inside. It smelled like dust and old hay.

  Roa scanned the aisle of stalls for Dax, but found no sign of him.

  Letting out a breath, she relaxed.

  The moment she dismounted, a shape materialized out of the shadows.

  “That’s one pokey horse you have.”

  Roa spun. The dragon king leaned against the door of a stall farther down, arms crossed over his chest. The evening’s lazy sunlight slanted through the narrow windows, casting him in warm, golden light.

  Oleander poked her nose out of the stall, already untacked.

  Surely, he hadn’t had that much time . . .

  “It was an unfair race.”

  His eyebrow quirked upward. “Unfair how?”

  “You’re familiar with the grounds.” She tipped her chin up. “Whereas I’ve never even been here.”

  “Two facts you were aware of before you agreed to race me,” he said, taking Poppy’s reins from Roa. “But I’ll take pity on you.” He rubbed Poppy’s velvet nose. “Even though you lost, I’ll still call the Assembly. I’ll do it the moment we return to the palace.”

  He stepped in close then. So close, Roa could see the dust on his lips. It made her want to lick her own, to see if they were dusty, too.

  She thought of the one and only time she’d ever kissed him. So long ago now.

  The memory sliced her with sadness, and she stepped back. Her shoulder blades hit the stable wall. Swallowing, she said, “Let’s get this over with before the others arrive.”

  Dax let go of Poppy’s reins. He closed the distance between them, pressing both palms to the stone on either side of Roa’s head.

  Caging her in.

  Roa was about to growl a warning, but before she could, the tips of their noses brushed, and that snapping, growling creature went silent and soft.

  “Silly girl,” he murmured, his breath warm on her lips. “I don’t want to kiss you right here.” Lifting his thumb, he slowly swept the dust from her lower lip. “I’ll come to collect when it suits me.”

  The impertinence of it scorched her. Roa lifted her angry gaze to his. If he thought she was anything like his mistresses, if he thought she would happily receive him any time it pleased him, he was . . .

  He was . . .

  It was difficult to think, with Dax looking at her like that, his gaze fixed on her mouth. It made Roa wonder if he might change his mind. Might lean in and devour her right here.

  But the sound of clattering hooves broke the quiet. As a dozen horses trotted into the stable, Dax stepped immediately away, linking his hands behind his neck.

  Cool air rushed between them, making Roa realize just how warm she was.

  Dax reached for Poppy’s reins and, without a word or backward glance, led the horse into the stall next to Oleander’s.

  Roa’s eyes lifted to Jas and Lirabel, the first two riders to come through the doors, and then behind them, to Theo.

  Their gazes met. Roa looked instantly away. She felt ashamed. Then angry for being ashamed.

  With them came Essie, who was at her shoulder now. Claws digging gently into Roa’s skin. Roa turned her face into her sister’s feathers, taking comfort in their softness.

  What happened?

  Nothing.

  Then why are you trembling?

  As the rest of the caravan poured into the stables, filling it with noise and commotion, Roa took her sister and left. They walked past quiet fountains and still pools. Through rows of highland roses buzzing with bees. Stopping at the edge of a hill, Roa hugged herself hard, staring out over the gardens below. Gardens that had once belonged to another outlander queen.

  Slowly, Roa raised her fingers to her lower lip, where Dax had touched it.

  S
illy girl, he’d said.

  Perhaps he was right. Perhaps that was why, just for a heartbeat, Roa had wanted him to lean in and take what she owed him.

  Before

  Roa was nine years old on the day of her earning. She stood with her sister in the middle of the threshing floor. The sky was storm gray and the air was misty. Beside her, Essie’s unruly black curls shone with raindrops and her hands were restless: clenching and unclenching, tapping her thighs.

  Essie took the responsibility of earning more seriously than Roa. She’d been in constant debate with their teachers these past few months over who had the right to earn a weapon. Several times Roa woke to find her sister pacing their room late at night. When she asked what was wrong, Essie would come back to bed and say strange things. Like “Define the term enemy,” and “What came first, do you think, the weapon or the adversary?”

  Most of all, Essie studied harder and practiced more than Roa. She deserved to earn her weapon today.

  Now, though, as they stood on the threshing floor, Essie’s jaw clenched. Her hands fiddled with the buttons down the front of her blue dress. Roa kept shooting her glances, agitated by her sister’s agitation.

  “Stop fidgeting,” Roa hissed while keeping her eyes on their father.

  The master of the House of Song towered over his daughters, gripping the head of his own earning: a staff carved by Roa’s grandmother. His skin glistened with rain and his purple cotton shirt was soaked through, making it look almost black. Beyond him stood the rest of the House of Song, gathered in a circle to bear witness.

  Their father motioned to Lirabel, a girl Roa and Essie’s age and a ward in their house. The House of Song took in Lirabel and her sisters when the white harvest starved their family almost to death, forcing their mother to give them up.

  Lirabel stepped forward now. She wore her hair in a thick braid over one shoulder, and the bow and arrows she’d earned the previous summer were strapped to her back. Inscribed into her bow’s leather were the words: Earned by Lirabel, ward of the House of Song.

  Roa remembered the day of her friend’s earning. How Lirabel burst into tears when she read the inscription. Roa thought they were tears of gratitude, after everything the House of Song had done for her. It was only afterward that Essie corrected her.

  It says ward, Essie explained. Not daughter.

  But she is a ward, thought Roa at the time.

  It would be years before Roa realized what it meant: that Lirabel could never be their equal. Never be their sister. Only a recipient of their charity.

  You gave us a place here so easily, Lirabel told her. You could take it away with just as little effort.

  Now, pelted by rain, Lirabel handed their father the first of two bundles wrapped in silk.

  He unwrapped the first and presented it to Roa.

  It was a scythe—a favorite weapon of Song, hearkening to their agrarian roots. The steel had been skillfully hammered by blacksmiths from Sky. The hilt was fashioned out of wood, inlaid with alabaster, and engraved with the star she and Essie had been born under, as well as an inscription: Earned by Roa, daughter of the House of Song.

  She looked from her father’s gentle gaze to her twin’s bright ebony eyes. The hum glowed warmly between them.

  Essie smiled at her. Roa beamed back.

  From the second bundle, their father drew out a knife. It was the length of Essie’s small forearm. The blade didn’t curve like Roa’s scythe, but narrowed to a needle-sharp point.

  As he presented it to Essie, though, she stepped back, shaking her head.

  Roa’s smile slid away.

  What are you doing? she thought.

  Essie wouldn’t look at her. So Roa glanced to Lirabel, as if she might hold the answer. But Lirabel’s eyes only widened.

  “I’m sorry,” Essie said, staring at her sandaled feet—flecked with mud and chaff. She spoke loud enough for those gathered around the threshing floor to hear. “I can’t accept.”

  Their father drew himself up, his grip tightening on the carved lion head of his staff. “Explain yourself, daughter.”

  Essie looked up into his face.

  “The old stories say we belong to each other,” she said quietly, as if she were afraid but was determined to speak the words anyway. “If that’s true, then our enemies are not our enemies but our brothers.” She looked to Roa. “And our sisters.”

  Roa stared at Essie, her forehead crumpling into a frown.

  She’d been planning this for a long time, Roa now realized, remembering the debates Essie engaged in with their teachers. Remembering the nights Roa woke to find her pacing.

  But why didn’t she tell me? They told each other everything.

  Their father stepped forward. Wiping the rain out of his eyes, he bent down so his face was level with Essie’s. “Do you realize what this will mean?”

  Essie nodded.

  “You’ll be thought of as weak.”

  Essie said nothing.

  “You’ll be seen as a girl who belongs nowhere and to no one.”

  Essie held their father’s gaze. “I know where I belong,” she said. “And to whom.”

  As if that were enough.

  Their father lowered the knife, looking from Essie to Roa, his eyes pleading for her help. But one glance at Essie’s face and Roa knew there would be no convincing her.

  Roa reached to take the blade, staring at the hilt of her sister’s earning. Earned by Essie, the inscription read, daughter of the House of Song. The blades might be different, but the hilts were exactly the same. Both inlaid with alabaster. Both engraved with the same star.

  A perfect match.

  “I’ll hold on to it for her,” said Roa. “In case she changes her mind.”

  Nine

  After dinner, Roa and Essie set out for the former dragon queen’s room.

  Roa’s room now.

  With the sun setting, it was cooler in the east wing’s halls. Roa pulled her sandskarf up over her head to keep the warmth in.

  The house had been modeled after the round homes scrublanders were known for, with a terra-cotta roof and a central pavilion. But this house had too many wings for a scrublander home, and in this way it borrowed from Firgaardian architecture, too. The gardens were full of highland roses, juniper trees, jacarandas, and other plants native to both Roa’s home and Dax’s. It was a perfect blend of both, and a reminder that before she’d become queen, Dax’s mother was a scrublander.

  Amina, who’d been born into the House of Stars, was childhood friends with Roa’s mother. Roa remembered the first time the queen came to visit them. She and Jas were playing gods and monsters on the floor of her father’s study and Roa was about to take his skyweaver piece when the queen stepped into the room and lowered herself to her knees at Roa’s side. Roa remembered the way her beautiful layers of blue silk pooled onto the dirt floor. Remembered the thin golden circlet shining above her glittering black eyes.

  She was perfect. Like a painting.

  Now, as Roa’s bare feet padded the tile floors, she wondered what it had been like for Amina, living all the way across the sand sea. Being separated from her loved ones. Being queen.

  Theo had compared Roa to Amina, believing they were both victims whose stories would end the same way.

  I don’t believe that, Essie interrupted from her perch on Roa’s shoulder. Her sister had been quiet and distant all day, but the hum was back. Bright and strong, linking them both.

  As Roa approached a familiar door, she looked to her sister. Believe what?

  That Amina was a victim.

  Roa wasn’t so sure.

  I think she knew exactly what she was walking into, said Essie. I think she had her own reasons for marrying him.

  Maybe, Roa thought. Or maybe she didn’t realize he was a monster until too late.

  A scrublander symbol had been carved into this door: three vertical lines, confined in a circle. It was the same symbol painted above her father’s study. Roa lif
ted her fingers, tracing the lines.

  “We’ve passed this door three times,” she said aloud, sighing heavily. “I think we’re lost.”

  Roa’s tracing fingers must have pressed too hard, because the door creaked and swung slowly in.

  Her fingers paused in midair.

  “Hello?”

  No one answered. So she pushed the door all the way open and stepped inside.

  It was a small, dim room that smelled like candle smoke and parchment. Rough-hewn shelves were built into the walls and each cubby was crammed with scrolls.

  “Is anyone here?”

  Silence answered her. Essie flew off to investigate while Roa stepped closer to the shelves. Most of the scrolls were yellowed and crinkled with age. But some, in a cubby at the end, were crisp and new.

  Roa was reaching for one of these when a bright, startled feeling raced through her.

  Roa. Essie’s voice rang through her mind. Look.

  She turned to find her sister’s hawk form perched on the edge of a desk beneath the window, staring down at crisp white parchment, folded and stamped with a red wax seal. Roa stepped toward it. Impressed into the wax was the shape of an elegant, seven-petaled flower—a namsara. Roa had given this same flower to Dax’s sister, Asha, the night before she escaped the city.

  Roa looked to Essie.

  It isn’t addressed to anyone, said her sister.

  So Roa broke the seal, unfolded it, and read:

  Three days ago, a shipment from Darmoor was due to arrive at Baron Silva’s stronghold. Despite the price on our heads, Torwin insisted on going, determined to intercept it. There’s a weapon in the shipment which, in the wrong hands, could unleash a monster.

  We quarreled about it. He took Kozu and left in the night while I slept. I was furious at first, but he should have returned by now, and I’m worried they expected him. I’m afraid of what they’ll do if they’ve caught him.

  I can’t wait here any longer.

  I’m going after him.

  There was no signature, but when Roa turned it over, touching the namsara flower on the seal, she knew who it was from.