The Caged Queen

by Kristen Ciccarelli

  “Roa.”

  Pressing her hand to the half-open door, she gently pushed it open farther, peering into the room.

  Except for the warm glow of a lamp spilling across his canopied bed, it was cloaked in shadow. But all Roa needed to see was the bed.

  Which was empty.

  She let out a breath.

  “I need to speak with you,” she said, stepping inside.

  Dax let the laces come undone again. As if there was no point. As if the effort of looking his best would be entirely lost on his wife. He shut the door behind her.

  Roa turned back to find him running a hand through his brown curls.

  “The palace gate is locked.”

  Dax nodded. “Remember the meeting? What part of we’re locking the palace gate didn’t you understand?”

  “They refused to open it for me.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Because no one’s allowed in or out until Safire is certain it’s safe.”

  “Not even the queen?”

  Dax studied her, his brow furrowing. “Why is this suddenly so urgent?”

  “Because I need . . .” Roa paused. But it was too late. Dax saw what she was going to say before she said it.

  His face darkened. “You need to see Theo.”

  Roa didn’t deny it.

  “And the nature of this need?”

  Roa burned beneath the question.

  Not that, she thought.

  But what else could she tell him? She couldn’t tell the truth, that she was complicit in the plot against him. That she needed to tell Theo about the secret way into the palace—which Dax himself had shown her.

  So she lied.

  “If you think I don’t have the same needs as you, you’re mistaken.”

  Dax’s lips parted in surprise. And then his jaw went rigid.

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll convince Safire to open the gate . . . on one condition.”

  Roa crossed her arms. “And what condition is that?”

  He nodded to the wall above his bed, where the two ceremonial swords they’d fought with last night hung. “You’ll have to beat me first.”

  He wants to spar?

  “Right now?” she asked, looking to the windows, where the sun was beginning to set behind the city walls. She needed to report to Rebekah by midnight.

  “Why wait?” growled Dax, rolling his shirtsleeves up to his elbows and sliding off his boots.

  From the look on his face, Roa could see she had wounded his pride. He wasn’t going to open that gate, no matter how she begged.

  She would have to beat him quickly.

  “Hurry, then.”

  Dax fetched both swords and tossed her one. Roa caught it, then kicked off her sandals.

  He raised the blade. “I’ve been dying to know: what’s so special about the heir of Sky?”

  Roa raised her own blade in response and fell into her fighting stance, ready to finish him. “Theo doesn’t flirt with half the kingdom,” she said. “Nor does he sleep with my friends.”

  Dax lowered the sword to his side. “Those are low standards, I must say.”

  Roa lunged. Dax barely blocked her, falling back as she thrust again.

  “Is it a joke to you?”

  “Is what a joke?” he asked as their swords clashed.

  “Sleeping with my friends.”

  Dax threw her off, his brow furrowing. “Are you accusing me of such a thing?”

  Roa lowered her sword, remembering their last night in the House of Song. The sound of Dax and someone else outside the door.

  “I heard you,” she said, her anger pulsing through her. “In my father’s house. You were in the corridor, bringing her back to our room.”

  “Bringing who?”

  “Lirabel!”

  His eyes widened then. “You think”—his voice sounded strange—“you think I slept with Lirabel?”

  Roa gripped her sword hard, glaring at him. “The entire kingdom thinks it.”

  “I don’t care what the entire kingdom thinks,” he said, his gaze boring into her. “I care what you think.”

  “It is what I think.”

  He stared at her like the words gutted him. “I wasn’t with Lirabel. I wasn’t even in the house that night.”

  Roa narrowed her eyes, thinking of all the time Dax and Lirabel spent in private together. Lirabel didn’t spend that kind of time with anyone else.

  “And in the sand sea, when Theo came to our aid . . . you weren’t in her tent?”

  He ran a hand roughly over his eyes. “Stars, Roa. Is this really how you think of me?”

  “You retired before everyone else did that night,” she said. “And when I came, you weren’t there.”

  “No, you weren’t there.” His grip tightened on his hilt. “You didn’t come to bed, so I went to see if you were all right.” He looked away from her, jaw clenched. “I shouldn’t have bothered. You were with Theo. You were more than all right, weren’t you?”

  Hurt flickered in his eyes, as if Roa wasn’t a girl but a knife that wounds.

  Roa thought back to that night, to the moments before she’d gone to bed. How Theo asked her to stay. How he’d wrapped his arms around her waist and planted kisses down her throat.

  How she’d let him.

  If Dax wasn’t in Lirabel’s tent, nor in his own . . .

  He saw, she thought. She could see it plain on his face. He was remembering the two of them—Roa and Theo—alone in Theo’s tent. He saw all of it.

  Roa looked down to her bare feet. “If you weren’t in our room the night before we left Song . . . who was?”

  “Jas and Lirabel.”

  Roa glanced back up, startled. “What?”

  “I knew you wouldn’t be sleeping with me. And they needed . . . somewhere to go. So I let them stay in our room.” He shook his head. “I was sleeping on the roof of the garden shed that night. Alone.”

  Roa stared at him.

  Jas . . . and Lirabel? That can’t be.

  “Lirabel can’t stand my brother. Whenever they’re in the same room, she flees his presence.”

  He shook his head incredulously. As if he couldn’t believe he had to explain this to her. “Her three younger siblings are wards in your house, Roa. She’s at the mercy of your father’s generosity. What is she supposed to do?”

  Roa frowned. “What are you saying? That my parents would disapprove of them?”

  Silence was his answer.

  Roa fell back, out of her fighting stance.

  “Are you saying,” she said, “that all this time, Lirabel has been secretly in love with my brother?”

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

  Roa had dismissed her friend’s fear as nonsensical at the time. What reason would her parents ever have for sending Lirabel and her siblings out to starve?

  This was Lirabel’s reason. The one she was afraid to tell Roa.

  Lirabel, who had nothing to offer Jas—the heir to a Great House—was in love with him. She had no wealth, no connections, no family except her younger sisters. Nothing to convince Roa’s parents she was more than just a destitute girl trying to secure a higher social standing for herself and her sisters.

  Is this why she always spurned and ignored him? Roa wondered. Because she thought if it came to the attention of our parents, they would do exactly as she feared?

  Roa’s parents would disapprove—that was certain. But only at first. Her parents would come around because they taught Roa and her siblings to think for themselves and make their own decisions. They would respect Jas for making this one.

  And if they didn’t . . . well. Roa would change their minds.

  Another thought struck her. She looked to Dax.

  “Does this mean the baby is his?”

  That’s exactly what it means, said the look in his eyes.

  Roa stood motionless, trying to absorb it.

  “This is wh
y she never told me,” she realized aloud, remembering the argument they’d had in Baron Silva’s home. “She thought I’d consider her unworthy to one day be mistress of Song. She thought I would side with my parents.”

  That her friend could think such a thing, that she would keep such a secret from Roa because she was frightened . . . it hurt. And it made Roa angry—but only at herself.

  How could I fail her so utterly?

  “You haven’t been paying attention,” said Dax.

  And then he lunged.

  Dax beat her, moving fluidly through the steps she’d shown him and finishing with the flat of his sword smacked hard across her shoulder bones.

  She winced and reached for the bedpost.

  “Roa . . . .” He set down his weapon and took her shoulders gently in his hands. “Did I hurt you?”

  “No,” she lied, gritting her teeth at the sting and turning to face him. She narrowed her eyes. “That was well executed.”

  Dax stared down at her, his gaze searching her for a trace of the pain he knew he’d caused.

  “It took me a week to learn that move,” she said.

  A small smile tugged at his mouth. “I have a better teacher than you did.”

  The compliment loosened something in her, and when he saw it, Dax leaned in and kissed her.

  Focus, she told herself, pulling away to look at the sky. The sun had slipped below the garden wall. But she still had time. She didn’t need to report to Rebekah until midnight.

  Dax pulled off his shirt and tossed it aside. The bruised skin around his stitches looked hideous, but was starting to heal. And the key . . .

  The key.

  Roa stared at the pattern at the end of the shaft: two intertwined dragons. The same as on the gate that led out of the palace.

  Dax wiped his sweat-soaked curls across his forehead and then stretched, rolling his shoulders.

  She needed that key.

  But first, she needed to beat him so she could report her findings to Rebekah.

  Roa thrust and nearly had him, but he parried quickly and escaped out from under her. He grinned and dropped back into the stance he’d now memorized. How had he learned so quickly? Just last night, he carried a sword like it was a foreign object. And now Roa couldn’t even beat him once?

  It was too strange.

  Smiling at her, he flicked his wrist, spinning the blade in a way Roa had seen somewhere before. But where? It wasn’t a trick she’d taught him.

  Because he isn’t as helpless as he pretends to be.

  It was still just suspicion, though. Roa needed to prove it. So she used a move she knew wasn’t fair. One her father would frown at, if he saw. One that would render Dax beaten.

  She rushed him, thrusting. When he blocked her, she thrust again, and as he parried, she hooked her ankle behind his knee and sent him stumbling. Miraculously, he caught himself. But before he could recover completely, Roa quickly disarmed him.

  His blade clattered to the floor at their feet. Roa was about to deal the finishing blow, except Dax slammed his heel down on the tip of the sword, and when the hilt bounced up, he caught it and came back swinging in a move Roa certainly hadn’t taught him.

  Just as his blade came down, Roa caught the flat of it against her palm.

  “Who showed you that?”

  Dax blinked at her. “What?”

  “What you just did. Who taught you that move?”

  Dax lowered the sword, staring at her. “You . . . did?”

  Roa pressed her palm to his chest and shoved. The backs of his knees hit the bed and he sank into it.

  “You’re a liar.”

  His eyes flashed at that. “I never lied to you.”

  “You’re lying to me right now!”

  “I told you it was a waste of time. It’s not my fault you were too busy looking at me the way everyone else does.”

  Roa stared at him. “What do you mean?”

  “My cousin is the commandant, Roa. My sister was once the fiercest dragon hunter in the kingdom. I grew up with both of them. Do you think they would have let me become a helpless king?”

  Roa opened her mouth, but no words came out.

  He’d played her. He’d been playing her, a daughter of the House of Song, like a common fool.

  “If you already know how to wave a sword around, then what have we been doing? Why pretend to let me teach you?”

  “Why do you think?” he said softly, looking away from her.

  “I don’t know!” she cried. “That’s why I’m asking!”

  Softly, he said, “I hate watching you go to him, Roa.”

  The howling anger inside her died. “To . . . Theo?”

  That’s what this is about? Theo?

  Anger sparked in Roa. “Well, I hate watching you court every pretty girl who walks your way. Charming them. Basking in their smiles. Taking them to bed with you.”

  His eyes darkened. “That’s not what I do.” He shook his head. “You love him.”

  Those words seemed to take all of his strength.

  Roa opened her mouth. And then shut it.

  I don’t. The thought surprised her.

  She had loved Theo once. Or she thought she had. But . . . those feelings were gone.

  Roa whispered, “You flirted with nearly every girl in my household while we were home.”

  Dax covered his face with one hand. “That was . . . unkind.” He set down his sword. “My only defense is that I was angry with you. Stars, I feel like I’m always angry with you.” He rose from the bed and moved to the fireplace, staring into the embers. “You rode off to Theo every night.” His fists clenched. “You only married me because you didn’t trust me. Because you thought I couldn’t protect the scrublands.”

  Roa stared at him. Those things were true.

  “You only married me because you needed an army,” she pointed out.

  “Roa.” His hands uncurled. “That isn’t why I married you.”

  She was about to ask him why, then. But something stopped her.

  The hum flared up, bright and stark. The bond she shared with her sister reverberated through her.

  Essie’s white-hot fear flooded Roa as she looked to the terrace.

  The sun was gone. The moon was rising.

  I still have time. . . .

  And then: pain burst inside her, like a sword slicing through her shoulder. Like a fire blazing down her arm.

  Essie’s pain.

  Roa screamed with it. Startled, Dax came toward her. Roa staggered back, away from him, and tripped over the hem of her dress. She plummeted hard to the stone floor, cracking her elbows. But the pain of it was nothing compared to that of her sister’s.

  It split Roa in two.

  She heard Dax’s guards call out. Heard them burst into the room, their frantic footsteps thundering across the floor. Heard Dax’s voice murmuring. But just like Essie, they seemed a world away.

  Essie. Something’s happened to her.

  What had Rebekah done?

  Roa tried to rise and fell again.

  This time, instead of cold stone against her cheek, two strong arms caught her. A voice spoke her name. The sound of it brought Roa back.

  As Dax’s concerned face came into view, she realized she was sobbing.

  “What is it?” Dax peered down at her, eyes wide with fear, the crease between his eyebrows deeper than ever. “Are you hurt?”

  Not me, she thought. My sister.

  “Please, Dax. Open the gate.”

  Thirty

  The next morning, Dax told Safire to open the gates. Safire advised against this. Dax insisted. So Safire refused.

  What followed was an argument that spanned nearly three halls of the palace and took up the entire morning.

  Finally, at midday, Safire gave in and reluctantly ordered the palace gate opened for the queen. Roa and her guards rode straight to the guesthouse where Theo was staying—a trip that took twice as long as usual. Due to the crowds gathering fo
r the Relinquishing, the main streets of Firgaard were packed from wall to wall. And when Roa got to the guesthouse, she found no trace of Theo.

  Her shoulder still burned like fire, and the ache of it drove her on. She needed to find out what happened to her sister. Desperate to get to Essie, she climbed back into Poppy’s saddle and set out for the only other place he could be. This, too, took far longer than it should have. At one point, Roa screamed at the teeming crowd of visitors to get out of her way—to no avail. There was nowhere to move.

  Safire could have made them, Roa was sure. But Safire was back at the palace, overseeing security measures.

  Finally, they arrived at Baron Silva’s stronghold. Roa left her guards in the courtyard and ran inside.

  Two servants led Roa to a room on the second floor. When she knocked on the door, Theo opened it. Dark hollows were carved beneath his eyes and he clutched a brass box in his arms.

  He stepped back, letting her in. Two house guards stepped in after her, shutting the door and taking up position against the wall beside it.

  “What’s happened?” She pushed her sandskarf back from her head. “Where’s Essie?”

  Theo swallowed, his arms tightening around the brass box.

  Roa looked to the thing he was holding.

  “It’s for you,” he said, but he didn’t relinquish it.

  Roa touched the box. It was made of copper, engraved with a repeating feather pattern.

  Very gently, she said, “Let me see.”

  His jaw tightened, but he didn’t prevent her. Just held on to that box as if his own heart lay beating inside it.

  Roa clicked open the clasps, then very slowly swung up the lid.

  On the velvet bottom lay a single white wing.

  Essie’s wing.

  The pure white feathers, the bloody stump where it had been ripped from her body, the bone sticking out of the flesh . . . Roa couldn’t look away, even as the sick horror of it rolled like a wave inside her.

  Roa pressed her fist to her mouth.

  No . . .

  Theo had gone stony. “This is my fault.”

  No, thought Roa. It’s mine.

  “You let yourself get distracted,” said a voice from behind her.

  Roa spun. Rebekah stood before her, dressed in swaths of scarlet, her hair falling loose down her back.