The Caged Queen

by Kristen Ciccarelli

  Roa stared into the deep shadows of her hood. “How do I know Essie’s safe? Or that you won’t kill her the moment you get what you want?”

  Rebekah motioned to one of the men behind her. He stepped forward and lifted a familiar cage. Inside a one-winged hawk cowered, her silver eyes flashing in the night.

  “I’ve been betrayed once tonight. I’m not risking a second time.”

  “And I’ve risked everything tonight,” Roa countered. “So you need to trust me with this one small thing.”

  Rebekah was silent. After a long moment, she growled: “Fine. Keep it. Just take us in.”

  Roa’s heart felt heavy as a stone as she led them toward the gate. She swung it open and went in first. Rebekah stared into the darkness ahead, breathing deep.

  “I’ve been waiting a very long time for this day,” she said.

  The men at her back followed them in.

  This is wrong. The thought beat through Roa’s mind like a pulse. All wrong.

  She shook her head. She couldn’t afford to think like that. She’d always known what the consequences were.

  There was no going back.

  When they arrived at her rooms, Roa pushed open the hidden door and stepped inside. Rebekah stepped in after her. The night was blue-black beyond the windows. The lamps burned low. Wilting jacaranda flowers still littered the floor.

  “How many guards stand outside your door?” asked Rebekah.

  Roa told her.

  A dozen men took up position along the wall next to Roa’s bedroom door.

  They needed to do this quietly and covertly. They couldn’t draw any attention from the commandant or her army, who would be fully occupied with Firgaard’s security on the eve before the Relinquishing. They needed to take the palace one step at a time.

  Rebekah drew her dagger and pressed it to Roa’s throat. “Call them,” she said.

  Roa hesitated, wondering what Rebekah would do once Celeste and the others entered.

  Rebekah pressed harder and Roa felt the sharp steel prick her flesh.

  So she called.

  But nothing happened.

  Several heartbeats passed and . . . silence.

  “Again,” Rebekah commanded.

  Reluctantly, Roa called for Celeste, and then Saba, and then Tati. Wishing there was a way to warn them.

  Again, silence answered her.

  Rebekah motioned for someone to go look. One man opened the door and stepped out, then came back in.

  “There’s no one out there.”

  The hair on the back of Roa’s neck rose. Her guards never left their posts. Safire would dismiss them in a heartbeat if they did.

  Something was wrong.

  But even as she thought it, a tiny spark of hope flared to life inside Roa. If her guards weren’t here, Rebekah’s men couldn’t hurt them.

  Rebekah lowered the blade from Roa’s throat and went to look. The moment she came back, her gaze fixed on Roa, and for maybe the first time, there was something like fear in her eyes.

  “Where are they?”

  The palace was empty. No soldats stood on watch. No servants walked the halls. Rebekah had opened the unguarded gate and let in her men without any resistance. They searched every shadowed corner and garden and hall, but there was no sign of the king—or anyone else.

  Meanwhile, Roa searched Dax’s room.

  All was quiet and still, the bed loomed large and empty. The faces in the tapestries hanging from the walls seemed to watch her, making her skin prickle with wariness.

  The Skyweaver’s knife was sheathed at Roa’s calf beneath her dress, right next to Essie’s earned knife. Gripped hard in her hand was the hilt of her scythe. She was sufficiently armed. And yet Roa trembled as she called Dax’s name into the darkness.

  No answer came.

  She trod softly to the terrace. But there were only the stars, winking above her. The sky was lightening. It would be dawn soon. The day of the Relinquishing.

  Once the sun set, Roa could make the exchange. She could save her sister for good.

  She just needed to find Dax.

  A sudden sound issued from below, like the thud of a punch being thrown. Roa heard the loud snickers of multiple men and looked down, scanning the garden.

  Near the wall of the arcade, she saw their silhouettes.

  Two of them had weapons drawn. They stood in a ring around a young man on his knees. The one who’d been punched.

  Roa leaned over the balustrade, looking harder. She saw the tallest one start to undo the buckle of his belt. Then the buttons of his pants.

  The sight of it made her frown. From here, it looked like they were . . . like they were going to urinate on him.

  Or worse.

  Suddenly, she knew exactly who knelt in the middle of the circle.

  Dax.

  Roa didn’t think about how they outnumbered her four to one. Just bit down on the steel of her scythe, keeping it securely between her teeth.

  Hoisting herself over the balcony, she dropped to the earth below.

  Thirty-Three

  Rage thundered through Roa as she moved quickly down the garden’s dirt path toward the voices. With her hilt gripped hard in her hand again, she advanced on the men.

  “If you value your lives,” she growled when they came into view, “you’ll walk away. Now.”

  The men looked up, their laughter dying. The smiles falling from their faces at the sight of the scrublander queen.

  Dax looked up, too, staring at his wife from where he knelt on the ground. A bruise was forming on his jaw. His curls were a mess. And his eyes were dark with betrayal as he stared at the key hanging from Roa’s throat.

  “Go back inside, scrublander.” In the light of the few torches lining the garden walls, she saw it was Garnet. The scar through his lip giving him away. “You don’t want to watch this. We’ll bring him to you and Rebekah when we’re done.”

  “Did you not hear what I said?” She glared at Garnet even as her heart pounded an erratic tattoo, her body coiled to spring if he challenged her again.

  The other three stepped in closer, their hands going to their hilts.

  Roa’s senses flared with warning.

  She couldn’t fight them all. Nor could she leave Dax at their mercy.

  “Drop your weapon, scrublander. Or you’ll join him.”

  Roa looked to her husband, who was rising to his feet behind her. Their gazes caught and held. In a heartbeat, something swift and silent passed between them. Dax nodded—the motion so slight, it was almost imperceptible.

  “I said,” Garnet growled, “drop your weapon.”

  Roa threw down her sword. The tip landed near Dax’s left foot.

  “Good girl.”

  Before the words were even out of his mouth, Dax slammed his boot down onto the steel. The hilt of her sword bounced against the dirt path and swung upward.

  Dax caught it. Roa drew her sister’s knife.

  The two men directly before them stared in disbelief. Like everyone else, they’d been completely taken in by Dax’s charade of a useless swordsman.

  As they hesitated, Roa and Dax lunged. With a fierce cry, her knife plunged into Garnet’s heart while Dax opened the chest of the one beside him using Roa’s scythe.

  That’s for my sister, thought Roa as Garnet’s eyes widened in shock.

  The smell of hot, coppery blood filled the air. Both men went down.

  Roa drew Garnet’s saber. She and Dax turned to face the second set of Rebekah’s men, who were only now recovering from their confusion and drawing their weapons.

  “Where is everyone?” she asked Dax quickly. “Why is the palace empty?”

  “We knew an attack was coming,” he said, keeping his eyes on the enemy. “Safire evacuated the palace.”

  Roa frowned. The whole palace? That wasn’t possible. Rebekah had eyes everywhere. She would know if an entire palace’s worth of soldats and staff had left through the front gate in the middle of the
night.

  Unless they didn’t leave through the front gate . . .

  “On the count of three,” Dax murmured, snapping Roa’s attention back to the danger at hand.

  As one, they thrust. Roa’s opponent was twice her size but also twice as slow. She slashed and lunged, again and again. A heartbeat later, the man was disarmed and backed against the wall beneath the arcade, his eyes pleading, his hands raised in surrender.

  Roa heard the thump of a body hit the earth behind her.

  “I’ll finish him,” said Dax, stepping up to her side.

  “You think I can’t?”

  “No . . .” Dax said, taking the saber from her and giving the man a quick death. Roa watched the dark red blood streak down the plaster wall as his body slid to the ground. “ . . . I just didn’t want you armed when I did this.”

  Raising both blades, Dax turned on her.

  It was Roa whose back hit the wall now, two bloodied blades turned against her.

  Dax’s thoughts were diamond clear on his face. He was remembering the way she’d stepped into his room earlier tonight. The way she’d come into his bed.

  He was seeing her wait for him to fall asleep, then pick up the key from the floor.

  Seeing her unlock the gate.

  I’ve ruined us, she thought. I’ve ruined everything.

  Or maybe they were ruined long before now.

  Maybe they were ruined the day her sister died in his place.

  “A message arrived tonight,” he said, his voice low, “telling of a threat inside the palace.” He gripped both weapons properly now and held himself like an expert swordsman. “I prayed to every god it wasn’t you.”

  Roa lifted her chin, even as her heart quailed.

  “But the proof is right there, hanging around your throat.”

  He was looking at her like she wasn’t the girl he’d made love to earlier. Like that girl no longer existed for him.

  She doesn’t exist, Roa realized. I can never be that girl again after what I’ve done tonight.

  Dax stepped closer. “Did you plan it all out with her? How to best seduce me?”

  She could hear the sound of his broken heart in his words.

  Roa knew what a broken heart felt like. She’d felt hers shatter into a million pieces the day Essie died.

  She felt it shattering now.

  Roa tried to harden herself against it. You’ve come this far. There’s only a little bit farther to go.

  She thought of Essie locked in that cage. Essie fading away. Essie gone forever . . .

  “What have you done with the girl I love?” Dax came closer. Their gazes locked. “I want her back.” He dropped one blade—Roa’s scythe—in the grass and gently touched her cheek. “Give her back to me.”

  Roa wasn’t sure which was more dangerous: his steel or his touch or his words.

  “That girl is gone,” Roa said, thinking of everything she’d done and still had yet to do. “Don’t waste your love on her.”

  He lowered his sword. “You think love is as fragile as that? Like a stalk of wheat, easily broken in a storm? That’s not what love is.”

  Dax stepped in closer.

  “Real love is the strongest kind of steel. It’s a blade that can be melted down, its form changed with every bang of the hammer, but to break it is a task no one is capable of. Not even Death.”

  Roa stared at him. What was he saying? That he loved her—even now?

  “You’re a fool,” she whispered, the words stinging her throat.

  And then, with his sword lowered, she shoved him hard enough to send him stumbling.

  Roa found her scythe lying in the grass. In a heartbeat, she had her alabaster hilt in her hand, the curved blade raised and ready to strike.

  But Dax struck first. Roa barely caught the flash of steel coming at her.

  Their swords clashed. Dax forced her back, relentlessly thrusting. Roa ducked, forever moving so he couldn’t back her into another wall.

  It was then that she realized just how much he’d been holding back.

  She could barely fend him off.

  His furious blade came down on hers, knocking it out of her hand. He shoved her, just as she’d shoved him. Roa tripped and went down hard. Pain shot through her elbows.

  A heartbeat later, he had her pinned beneath him. One hand kept her wrists trapped above her head while the other held his blade across her collarbone.

  Shocked at the quick defeat, Roa stared up at him. They were nose to nose now, breathing hard.

  “You’re not the kind of girl who grasps at power for its own sake,” he said, the heat of him rolling over her. “Why have you done this?”

  Here, the light of the garden torches made his skin glow gold. Just for a moment, he seemed almost godlike above her. As if Namsara himself, the golden god of day, had come down to this pit of darkness just to interrogate her.

  Roa gave in to him.

  “You weren’t who I thought you were,” she whispered, her gaze tracing his face. And then, suddenly, you were. “I thought you’d broken all your promises. I thought you didn’t care. I thought you were a dangerous king.”

  The pressure on her throat let up—just a little.

  “And even when I realized the truth . . . I still needed to save my sister.”

  He went rigid at those words. “What?”

  “Essie never crossed.” She held his gaze, daring him to disbelieve her. But Dax knew the stories of her people. Knew about the Skyweaver and uncrossed souls and the reason for the Relinquishing. “She’s trapped. I have to set her free.”

  There was a fierce crease in his brow now. With his blade still pressed to her throat, he said, “Go on.”

  She looked beyond him, to the lightening sky, thinking of the Skyweaver’s knife sheathed beneath her dress. Of what she must do once the sun set tonight.

  “When someone dies in another’s place, an . . . exchange can be made. But it must happen on the Relinquishing.”

  She could see him trying to recall everything he knew about the Relinquishing. Everything her tutors had taught him, all those years ago.

  “It was supposed to be you,” she whispered, looking up into his eyes. “Not her. You were the one who was supposed to die.”

  “Like Sunder,” he said. It surprised Roa. She hadn’t expected him to remember that story. “The man who eluded Death. So Death took someone else in his stead.”

  Before Roa could answer him, a sound broke the moment. Footsteps rang out through the arcade, and with them came voices. One voice made both Dax and Roa stiffen.

  Rebekah.

  But before she came within view, darkness drenched them. A black shadow flew overhead. Roa felt the rush of wind on her face, felt the earth shudder beneath a great weight. A familiar sound echoed through the garden: several loud clicks in rapid succession.

  She knew of only one creature that clicked to communicate.

  Dax looked back over his shoulder. Whatever he saw made him rise to his feet.

  As soon as the weight of him lifted off her, Roa rose too, grabbing her scythe.

  A dragon loomed over her, his scales dark as polished ebony. One eye was blind; the other slitted and staring her down.

  “Kozu.” Roa stepped back.

  A second dragon stood behind the first. Half the size of Kozu, its golden scales gleamed in the blue twilight and its two ash-gray horns twisted toward the sky.

  Two riders dismounted. The first was Safire, who immediately made for the king, seeing everything—the bloodied blade in his hand, the bruise forming on his jaw, the way he put too much space between himself and the queen. When Roa’s gaze fell upon the second rider, her breath hitched.

  The young woman had dark hair braided over one shoulder and a burn scar took up half her face and neck. Two twin slayers were sheathed across her back.

  Asha.

  “Get on,” the former Iskari told her brother while her black eyes gleamed at Roa.

  Dax obliged—head
ing past Safire and toward the golden dragon, lifting himself easily up onto its back. As if he’d done it a hundred times before.

  Roa should have tried to stop him. Should have called for help. She should have done something—anything—to detain him.

  But as desperate as she was to save Essie, Roa knew now exactly what it would cost her.

  She loved this boy—this king—who wasn’t at all what she’d feared, but rather, everything their people needed.

  In order to save her sister, Roa would destroy far more than just Dax. She would destroy her own self.

  “I know what Essie is,” said Asha, her voice urgent. “I know what she’s becoming.”

  Becoming? Roa turned to face Dax’s sister. What could Asha possibly know about any of it? She was a draksor.

  As if sensing her thoughts, Asha said, “I know something of bonds. And loyalty.”

  Loyalty. That was something Roa once knew. And now? Was there even a single person she hadn’t betrayed?

  My sister, she thought. Staring down at the scythe in her hand, Roa whispered, “I have to save her.”

  Asha shook her head. “You have to relinquish her, Roa. It’s your bond that’s keeping her captive.”

  Roa hardened at those words. She thought of that night on the roof. Of Essie’s curls slipping through her fingers as she lunged to save the son of the king. Of Essie falling instead of Dax.

  Roa clenched her fists so tight, her knuckles hurt.

  Dax was the reason Essie fell from the roof. If her sister’s entrapment was anyone’s doing, it was his.

  The footsteps in the arcade came closer. Asha glanced in the direction of the sound as Kozu spread his wings wide, telling his rider it was time to go. Safire, who was already mounting the First Dragon, called her cousin’s name. But Asha remained where she was, eyeing the scythe in Roa’s hand, as if afraid to turn her back on it.

  And in that moment, more than the burning fire of anger or the piercing blade of grief, Roa felt the shadow of shame. In Asha’s eyes, she saw what she’d become.

  Roa threw down her weapon. “Go,” she whispered. “Hurry.”

  Asha went to Kozu, hoisting herself up behind Safire, then looping her arms securely around her cousin’s waist. As she did, Rebekah’s men flooded into the garden.

  Kozu hissed, crouching low. The moment they advanced, the massive black dragon leaped over their heads and onto the roof.