The Caged Queen

by Kristen Ciccarelli

  Roa caught her before she fell, sinking down to the ground, pulling her into her arms.

  The hum flared up, loud and fierce between them. The silver bled out of Essie’s eyes, leaving those ebony irises. Essie held Roa’s gaze, unwavering.

  “I’m sorry,” Roa whispered.

  Essie reached to touch her sister’s face. “No,” she whispered back. “Thank you.” She smiled faintly, as grateful tears shone on her cheeks. “Thank you for setting me free.”

  There was a sound like a sigh as Essie closed her eyes . . . and dissolved into silver-bright mist.

  The mist swarmed Roa, kissing her hands, her face, her hair. And in it Roa heard her sister’s laugh, light and happy and free.

  Just for a moment, the mist fastened itself into the shape of a hawk, soaring high, circling Roa once.

  And then it was gone.

  Forever.

  Grief clawed its way through Roa. A soul-splitting sound erupted out of her. Dax stared, not quite understanding what just happened, only hearing that it had broken Roa’s heart.

  He fell to his knees before her.

  Dax was so concerned about Roa, he forgot the men at their backs. Forgot who’d brought them here.

  Steel flashed behind him.

  Roa looked up to see Rebekah gripping the executioner’s sword in both hands, raising it above the king, about to deal a killing blow.

  Roa let out a warning cry, but it was too late.

  The sword came down.

  Roa pushed Dax out of the way, putting herself in its path instead.

  But someone stepped between. Steel clashed against steel. Roa looked up to find . . . Theo. Intercepting the blow.

  The heir to the House of Sky drew his second blade, defending Roa and Dax.

  Beyond him, more members of Sky came out of the crowd, drawing their weapons against Rebekah’s men. With them came Safire, her crest of a namsara flower blazing bright, and at her back were a myriad of soldats.

  A roar rumbled from above—like thunder from the sky—as a huge black dragon with wings spread wide descended. The earth shook under the weight of him, and Rebekah’s men cowered beneath the gaze of his one slitted eye.

  Kozu.

  On the First Dragon’s back sat Asha, with Torwin behind her. As one, they dismounted. The former Iskari drew her twin slayers from their sheaths at her back, her gaze deadly as Kozu snapped his needle-sharp teeth and slammed the closest of Rebekah’s men into the trees with his tail. Armed with a bow, Torwin nocked an arrow just as Lirabel stepped up to his side, drawing her own. Together, they kept their aim trained on Rebekah.

  As the First Dragon prowled, they all formed a protective circle around the king and queen. Beyond them, Safire’s soldats and the House of Sky kept Rebekah’s men at bay.

  The next time Roa looked, Theo had Rebekah disarmed and was forcing her to her knees.

  The commandant sheathed her weapons and came forward to where Rebekah knelt with Theo’s steel at her throat. Safire crouched low, forcing the baron’s daughter to meet her gaze, and though she spoke quietly, Roa heard the words she said.

  “You were right, Bekah. My place will never be among you.” Safire looked up to Torwin on one side, to Asha on the other, then behind her to Dax. She turned her gaze on Roa last. “My place is right here—defending the ones I love.”

  As Safire rose to her feet, Asha stepped up to her side, snaking a comforting arm across her cousin’s shoulders.

  “Take her away.”

  Thirty-Seven

  In the weeks following Essie’s passing, Roa felt like a soldier who’d come home from battle without a limb, convinced she could still sense it.

  But it wasn’t a limb she sensed. It was her sister. The hum had been glowing faintly inside Roa ever since she drove the Skyweaver’s knife into Essie’s heart. It wasn’t as bright or as warm as it once was, but it was there. As if Roa’s bond with Essie—now gone forever from this world—was still, somehow, unbroken.

  She told this to Lirabel in the letters she wrote almost daily.

  Her friend had returned to the scrublands weeks ago to prepare for her wedding. A celebration would take place tomorrow in the gardens of the House of Song.

  Roa pushed the thought of it out of her mind, trying to focus instead on the Assembly meeting before her. Because when she thought about it, the sorrow welled up like blood from a cut. She wanted to be there, watching her brother and her oldest friend bind themselves to each other beneath the mighty jacarandas of Song. Roa wanted to be the one braiding flowers into Lirabel’s hair and dabbing rosewater behind her ears and helping her into her dress.

  But Roa needed to be here, in Firgaard. Because today the new council—one representative of the kingdom instead of purchased by the wealthy—had gathered to vote on the ancient law against regicide. They were here to decide whether it should be allowed to stand or if it was time to strike it down.

  The king and queen needed to be present for the vote.

  The sunlight streaming through the windows turned golden in the encroaching dusk and the round Assembly room brimmed with spectators, making the air hot and stuffy. Roa counted a dozen people falling asleep in their chairs or leaning against walls. It had been a long day of arguing and debating, and with one council member absent due to illness, the vote kept ending in a draw.

  In order to break it, the council decided to give the king a vote.

  Which was when the snoring started.

  Horrified, every person in the room looked in the direction of the sound. Roa sighed, looking too.

  Dax sat hunched in his pale marble chair, the image of a crown chiseled into the headrest. His cheek sat propped on his fist, his brown curls tumbled into his eyes, and his chest rose and fell with his snores.

  Roa had spent enough nights in his bed now to know the sound of his snoring by heart.

  These were fake.

  Dax had been a bundle of coiled energy all day. His knee hadn’t stopped bouncing from the moment he sat down in that chair to the moment the vote came back a draw for the third time. In fact, if Roa looked close enough, she could see his knee bouncing now.

  Something had him excited. And an excited Dax was not a sleepy Dax.

  He was feigning sleep. And Roa knew why.

  This new council deferred to their king, always. It was Dax’s opinion they sought both in and out of Assembly meetings, never Roa’s. And here they were again, looking to Dax.

  But if he was asleep, he couldn’t cast his vote.

  “My queen?” The eldest councillor looked to Roa. She was a skral woman with long gray hair that fell loose down her back.

  The queen glanced away from her snoring husband, fixing her attention on the ten men and women now awaiting her decision.

  “What is your vote?”

  A memory bloomed within Roa. She thought of the day of her earning. Of standing in the mist at her sister’s side, gripping her blade as her sister refused her own.

  “The old stories say we belong to each other.” Roa spoke Essie’s words from that day to the room. “If that’s true, then our enemies are not our enemies, but our brothers and sisters.”

  She paused, looking over the crowd of skral, draksors, and scrublanders. All of them enemies at some point, gathered together under one domed roof. There was so much work still to be done.

  “Unless we treat all lives as sacred,” Roa continued, thinking of Rebekah and the others, guilty of treason, awaiting their sentences in dreary dungeon cells, “even those who’ve done unspeakable harm . . . we will never have peace.” She scanned the faces of Firgaard, all of them looking to her. Their queen. “So I vote to strike the law down.”

  The room fell into silence. For a moment, Roa braced herself for dissent. For the room to erupt in outrage.

  Instead, the silence turned to whispers. The whispers to murmurs. The murmurs to quiet conversation. No one shouted. No one accused her of trying to sabotage Firgaard or the king or the throne.

&nbs
p; The elderly councillor nodded. “Then it’s done.”

  Roa loosened, falling back against her own marble chair as the council members turned to each other, speaking quietly together as they wrote the declaration down and signed it. Beyond them, the audience rose and began to leave. The room hummed with conversation.

  When Roa noticed the snoring beside her had ceased, she turned to find Dax sitting upright, watching her.

  “You are incorrigible,” she said.

  He smiled that charming smile of his.

  Roa felt herself weaken, falling prey to him. She narrowed her eyes. “Don’t look at me like that.”

  He leaned over her chair, propping his elbow on her armrest. “You mean, like this?” His gaze softened, hooking into hers.

  “Yes,” she murmured, leaning into his warmth.

  “I’m merely admiring my queen.” He kissed her brow, where a gold circlet rested. “Truly, she has no equal.”

  That night, just before snuffing the lights, Roa walked out onto the balcony. Her nightdress brushed her knees and her bare feet padded on the cool tiles. It had rained all evening and though a fog had turned everything silver, Roa could just make out the balcony directly across the garden.

  Though it was her room, she hadn’t slept there since the night she saved her sister. Now, when the ache of loneliness threatened to swallow her whole, she pressed her back to Dax’s and fell asleep to the beat of his heart. When she dreamed of Essie only to wake and find her gone, Dax held her while she wept.

  He held her every time.

  The sudden smell of peppermint engulfed Roa, bringing her out of her thoughts. She turned her head and listened.

  Silence.

  Roa waited, a smile creeping across her lips.

  More silence.

  When she could feel the warmth of him against her back, she said, “I know you’re there.”

  The air rushed out of him in an exasperated sigh. “How do you always know?”

  His warm arms came around her waist. Roa leaned back against him.

  “I wanted to surprise you,” he whispered into her neck. “My star.”

  Roa was about to tell him he’d have to try a lot harder, but those words stopped her.

  My star.

  “Why do you call me that?” She leaned back against him, touching her cheek to his stubbled one.

  His arms tightened around her.

  “Before the revolt, I knew what I wanted: to protect my sister, and Safire, and our people. I knew what it would take: that I would have to pit myself against my father. But every time I thought of what I must do, I doubted myself. I convinced myself I would never be strong enough or smart enough or brave enough to steal the throne from one of the most powerful dragon kings in history.”

  He turned his face into hers, brushing his forehead against her temple.

  “It was in those times—when I felt the most lost, when I felt like giving up and letting the dream of a better world die—that I thought of you, all the way across the sand sea. I would imagine us sitting down at a gods and monsters board, and as we played, I would ask what you would do—and what you would want me to do—and whenever I did that, I wasn’t lost anymore. I could see the path clearly.” He nuzzled the spot just behind her ear, then looked to the sky again. “Like a sailor who needs the heavens to find his way home, you were my own star, burning in the night. Helping me find my way.”

  Roa went very still. No one had ever told her anything as beautiful as that.

  She turned, reaching for him. But the moment she faced Dax, her hands paused. She frowned at the dark blue sandskarf wrapped around his throat, then reached to touch the fitted leather jacket buttoned up tight.

  “Why are you dressed like this?” she asked, when she found his hands too were covered in dark leather gloves.

  His gloved fingers twined through hers. “I told you,” he said, pulling her through the curtains and back inside the room. “I have a surprise. Come and get dressed.”

  She let him pull her but glanced over her shoulder to the night sky now blocked by the curtains.

  Now? She’d just changed into her nightgown.

  “Why? What are—”

  A loud thud came from above, shaking the room and interrupting her question.

  Roa glanced to the ceiling. “What was that?”

  Dax shrugged, grinning a little.

  Someone jumped from the roof to the balcony, their boots echoing loudly on the terrace tiles. Roa eyed Dax warily, then started in the direction of the sound.

  Pushing back the curtains, she found Safire leaning against the balustrade, her legs crossed, her hands gripping the marble edge. The commandant wore a black jacket and gloves and her dark hair was pulled back.

  “Roa,” Safire looked her nightgown up and down, clearly disappointed by something. “You’re not dressed.”

  A cool shadow slid over Roa. She looked up to find Kozu’s onyx head staring down at her, jaws closed tight, one slitted yellow eye fixed on both of hers. Beside the First Dragon, at the roof’s edge, crouched Asha—her hair bound in its usual braid and her face half hidden by a sandskarf. Her black eyes peered down at Roa.

  “Seriously, Dax?” Asha called at the sight of Roa’s nightgown. “We gave you one task!”

  “What’s going on?” Roa asked them.

  “I was supposed to make sure you were dressed when they got here,” said Dax stepping out, holding clothes all folded neatly in a pile: jacket, gloves, wool leggings, boots, and one of Roa’s sandskarves. A faded yellow one. “If you put these on, we’ll tell you everything.”

  Roa stuck out her chin in defiance. “Tell me everything and I’ll think about getting dressed.”

  Suddenly, a second serpentine face looked down over the roof, startling Roa. It was the golden dragon Dax had escaped on, the morning of the Relinquishing. Smaller and more elegant than Kozu, its scales rippled in the misty starlight.

  It clicked at Roa.

  Roa stepped carefully back. Right into Dax.

  “Don’t be scared,” he said, his arm hooking around her waist.

  “Don’t be scared?” she whispered. “Of the dragon staring at me like I’m its next meal?”

  He shook his head. “She’s gentle. And I’ll be flying with you.”

  Roa tensed. Flying with me?

  She stepped away from the king, looking from him to Safire to Asha above.

  “This was your surprise?”

  Dax, who was pulling his sandskarf up over his nose and mouth, stopped and tugged it down. “Don’t you want to see Lirabel get married?”

  Roa’s mouth opened. Then shut.

  “That,” said Safire, “was the surprise.”

  “Oh,” Roa whispered. As the realization sank in, a slow smile spread across her lips. Her heart glowed within her. She looked to Dax, who was watching her with a tender expression. Flinging her arms around him, she kissed him hard on the mouth.

  “There’s no time for that!” cried Asha from the roof.

  “Thank you,” Roa whispered, kissing Dax once more before grabbing the clothes, ducking inside, and getting dressed.

  By the time she reemerged, Asha and Saf were both seated atop Kozu on the roof. Dax and the golden dragon stood waiting on the terrace.

  “This is Spark,” he said.

  Spark stared at Roa with pale slitted eyes. She smelled like smoke and sand. Stepping closer, Roa realized she had no idea how to mount a dragon.

  Seeing it, Dax got down on one knee and cupped his hands for her to step into. The moment she did, he pushed her up, telling her where to step—on the back of Spark’s knee. And where to grab hold—the bump of his shoulder bone. It took several tries, but Spark remained stoically still and eventually Roa pulled herself up.

  Dax lifted himself easily behind her. As if all those days he’d gone missing in the afternoons, this was what he’d really been doing. When his arm came around her, he looked up to Asha and Safire, mounted atop Kozu.

  “R
eady?”

  Before Roa could respond, Spark crouched low, spread her golden wings, and leaped into the sky.

  They flew through the night. Roa fell asleep curled up inside Dax’s jacket, and when she woke, the highlands were rising out of the horizon. Roa could just make out the lights of Song in the distance. Lanterns and candles and heart-fires were being lit. The day was breaking. And though the sky was lightening in the east, the stars were still bright in the sky.

  Roa looked up. Shining directly above them was a star she’d never seen before. One that burned a little more brightly than the rest.

  Roa tipped her head back against Dax’s shoulder, watching it.

  Kozu flew beside them. Roa could hear the muffled sound of Asha laughing at something Safire said. And at some point in the night, they’d been joined by another dragon. The rider’s sandskarf masked his face, but from his tall thin form, Roa knew it was Torwin.

  Spark propelled them closer and closer to the House of Song. The fields rolled beneath them. And all the while, the hum glowed warmly within Roa. Telling her Essie was near. That the bond they shared would always be there, whether Essie was physically present or not. Whether Essie was alive or not.

  Because it was just like Dax said. Love withstands all things. Even death.

  Especially death.

  Acknowledgments

  So much love and gratitude to:

  Heather Flaherty, for always having my back.

  Kristen Pettit, for taking the flailing mess that was this book and corralling it into something better.

  Rachel Winterbottom, for loving this story even when it was a hot mess and helping me fix it at the eleventh hour (or rather, multiple eleventh hours!).

  Everyone at HarperTeen, especially Elizabeth Lynch, Renée Cafiero, Allison Brown, Michelle Taormina, Audrey Diestelkamp, Bess Braswell, Olivia Russo, Martha Schwartz, and Vincent Cusenza.

  Gemma Cooper, without whom I never would have found my way to Gollancz.

  Everyone at Gollancz, for your enthusiastic support and making me feel so at home across the pond. Most especially: Stevie Finegan, the most delightful bookshop crawl buddy; Paul Stark, for making an audiobook that (as my mother likes to say) is “even better than the book-book”; Cait Davies, for marketing my books like whoa (and being my go-to guide for all things London!); and Gillian Redfearn, for being a generous, brilliant badass.