The Shadow Queen (4 page)

K
OLVANISMIR
A
RSENYEVNEK, SECOND
born prince in the kingdom of Eldr and recent expellee from Eiler’s Military Academy (for what would surely go down in the record books as the single greatest prank to ever have been pulled by a senior cadet) was trying to have the time of his life.

“More mead!” he roared over the deafening noise of a party that had been in full swing in an unused storeroom within the castle’s basement for over an hour.

Servants scurried to the far corner of the room, where an ever-shrinking stack of barrels waited for their turn to be emptied into the mugs of Kol’s friends, acquaintances, and—he squinted in the flickering light of the torchlit chandelier, his stomach sinking—his younger sister.

His parents were already going to be furious that he’d been expelled (for the third time, though the first was for such a minor infraction, Kol figured it hardly counted) and that he’d chosen to celebrate this accomplishment by depleting the castle’s
supply of spiced mead. If he added “got his little sister drunk” to the long list of things-Kol-does-that-disappoint, he’d probably be sent to the front lines of the ogre war before he could get the words “I’m sorry” out of his mouth.

As he moved across the dusty storeroom floor, dodging raised mugs and bodies writhing in time to the thunderous beat of the drummers Kol had hired with the last of his monthly spending stipend, two of his best friends flanked him. Raum was still dressed in his cadet’s uniform, bronze epaulets and all, but Mik had changed into a dress with dainty flowers and enough ribbons to make the royal seamstress jealous.

“Is that Brig?” Mik pointed toward the short girl with auburn hair who had her back turned to them. “Kol, I think that’s Brig.”

“I know.” Kol muscled his way past a fellow senior and quickened his pace as Brig held out her mug to a passing servant.

“When your parents get back, they are going to kill you for this,” Raum said.

“I
know
.”

Kol reached Brig just as she was raising her mug to her lips. Snatching it from her hands, he said, “I’ll take that.”

His sister glared, her golden eyes a match for his. “Give it back, Kol.”

He held it high above his head as she grabbed for it. She settled for smacking his shoulder instead.

“That’s mine.”

He started to laugh, but quickly swallowed it at the look of hurt that flashed across her face. “It’s yours when you turn seventeen, Brigynaske, and not a single day before.”

“I’m nearly seventeen.”

He raised a brow while beside him, Mik crossed her arms over her chest, and Raum began tapping his boots against the floor. “You’re fourteen.”

“Close enough.” Brig’s tone was full of bravado and longing.

Kol remembered when he’d first sneaked into one of his brother’s parties, hoping to pass as far more grown-up than he was. He’d learned two things that day. One, feeling grown-up enough to guzzle mead in a dark corner until one’s older brother caught you wasn’t the same as being grown-up enough to keep the mead down for any respectable length of time. Kol still shuddered when he remembered that particular bout of sickness. And two, Ragvanisnar truly did throw the most boring parties in the entire world. Who else would include a chess tournament and a dramatic reading of
Finlerbenske the Great
but forget to hire a band or invite any girls?

Brig reached for the mug again, and Mik deftly snatched it from Kol’s hand and disappeared into the crowd. Before Brig’s pout could finish forming, Kol looped his arm around her shoulder and steered her toward the storeroom door.

“You know the law, Brig. No mead until you come of age. No parties where I have to constantly watch to make sure you aren’t sneaking some behind my back, either.” He squeezed her close to take the sting out of his words. “Besides, I’m going to be in enough trouble as it is. Do you really want to be the final torch in my funeral pyre?”

She sighed heavily but didn’t resist as he reached for the doorknob. “I just wanted to try it.”

“You have your aerial defense exam tomorrow, right?”

She shrugged.

“I’ll let you in on a secret. We Draconi might be able to shift into our dragons while hungover, but flying in a straight line is torture, and Master Eiler is going to ask much more of you than a simple straight-line flight. You can’t pass your exam if you drink tonight.”

“And
you
can’t pass your final cadet exams when you’ve been expelled.” She smirked at him.

He doubled over, clutching his chest. “You wound me, Brig.”

She rolled her eyes. “Wait until Father hears about this. He was only able to get you reinstated the last two times because he and Master Eiler are friends.”

“And because, sky forbid, we have a prince in the family who doesn’t graduate from Eiler’s.” He deepened his voice to mimic his father’s. “With honors. With honors
upon
honors.”

Brig’s face softened, and she wrapped a hand around his. “You could graduate with honors. You’re smarter than everyone else in your class.”

“I beg to disagree.” Raum sounded offended.

Kol smiled, though it felt stretched too tight as Brig’s words found their mark and burrowed deep. Leaning close, he said, “Why show them what they’ve never bothered to see?”

Before she could answer, he straightened and said sternly. “Now, off to your rooms where you will study for your exam or paint your talons or do whatever it is fourteen-year-old Eldrian princesses do when they aren’t busy trying to sneak some of their brother’s mead.”

“Fine.” She gave him one last glare, though there wasn’t much heat behind it. “But I’m only going because you’re already in enough trouble and I feel sorry for you.”

He opened the door with a flourish, though her pity scraped at something he didn’t want to acknowledge. How was it possible that his fourteen-year-old sister could see him so clearly while his own father never saw him at all?

As Brig disappeared down the hall, Kol wiped his expression clean and turned back to the party. He grabbed the closest mug, drained it, and shouted “More music! More dancing! More mead!”

He had five hours before his parents returned from giving Rag a tour of the war front and called him to task for his actions.

He had no intention of showing up for that conversation sober.

The band played their last song at dawn. Most of the senior cadets had long since left for the dorms located on the spacious academy grounds just west of the castle’s bulky stone exterior. Of Kol’s closest friends, only Jyn and Trugg remained.

Determined to make the most of what would likely be his last hour of freedom, Kol turned toward his friends, executed a proper bow, and held out his hand to Jyn.

“May I have this dance?”

“Skies above, I thought you’d never ask.” Trugg thrust his meaty palm into Kol’s and slammed his shoulder into the prince in what had to be the worst attempt at a pirouette Kol had ever seen.

“Not you, you ugly lizard.” Kol shook his hand free and laughed. “Her.”

Trugg grinned. “I’m a better dancer.”

“Your dancing could take out an entire row of innocent Eldrian maidens in one fell swoop.” Jyn elbowed her way past
Trugg, swatting at him when he pulled on her short dark hair.

“Ah yes, but then I’d have impressed an entire row of innocent maidens, and Kol here would have impressed only the one.” Trugg wiggled his brows at Kol.

“If your goal is to impress girls, save your moves for the sky where you truly shine,” Kol said as he took Jyn’s hand in his and spun her into his arms.

“I am a beast in the sky, aren’t I?” Trugg clapped his friends on their backs, sending Jyn into Kol’s chest, and then wandered over to peruse the sad remains of the mead barrels.

The song was a blend of pounding drums and wailing violins, but Kol couldn’t find the energy to keep up the pace. Not with the weight of his impending confrontation with Father sitting like a rock on his chest. Instead, he closed his eyes, held Jyn loosely, and swayed while his thoughts circled the situation.

Mother would frown, more because Kol had once again fallen short of what was expected of a prince of Eldr than because he’d been expelled, but later he’d make her laugh as he recounted the story of sealing Master Eiler in his toilet closet.

Rag would look silently superior, and Kol would be honor bound to punch him for it later.

And Father . . . Father wasn’t likely to ask Master Eiler to reinstate Kol this time. Not when the chance to redeem himself and graduate with honors was no longer a possibility. No, Kol would be sent to the war front to learn responsibility or die trying. Father had threatened as much before, but Mother had intervened.

Kol was certain no intervention in the sky above could sway Father this time. He should be afraid of what was coming. He should be making plans to plead his case. Instead, there was
relief—a sort of shaky calm at the thought of finally facing the threat that had hung over Kol like a blade for the past two years.

Behind him, the storeroom door flew open with a bang. Kol turned, his stomach rising up to meet the weight on his chest, his shaky calm evaporating, and met the gaze of a harried-looking castle page.

“The presence of His Royal Majesty Prince Kolvanismir is requested in the throne room.”

He followed the page into the long stone hallway that bisected the castle’s basement, his twin hearts pounding miserably in his chest.

What would Father say if Kol admitted he’d pulled the prank—the epic, legendary, worthy-of-record-books prank—because every other honor in the school had already been earned three years ago by Rag?

His boots scraped the steps as he ascended the stairs and entered the hall that led to the throne room. The long stretch of bronze stone, cooled by the breeze that entered through the open balconies lining the hall, overlooked the spacious castle grounds.

When the enormous throne room doors with their carved runes and golden handles loomed before him, Kol’s spine snapped into the ridiculously rigid posture Master Eiler demanded of his cadets. The doors began to open, and suddenly the headmaster himself was there, stepping past the page and wrapping an arm around Kol’s stiff shoulders. Kol jerked back, but the words he wanted to snap at the headmaster for interfering with the meeting Kol was about to have died when he looked into Master Eiler’s face.

“Come with me,” the headmaster said softly as he turned the prince away from the doors. A maid stumbled out of the room,
her hands pressed to her mouth, and ran down the hall.

Kol’s blood felt too thick for his veins, and his knees began to shake.

“What’s going on?” Kol pulled away from the headmaster, his palms slick with sweat, his dragon heart kicking louder than his human heart as if it sensed a threat Kol had yet to identify.

Master Eiler’s green eyes were puffy, his face pale. “You don’t need to go in there.”

“Why not? Father already convinced you to reinstate me?” Kol’s voice was too loud, his breathing too hard as the dragon fire in his chest rumbled. More staff exited the throne room, their faces stricken.

The headmaster’s voice held a wealth of grief. “I’m so sorry to have to tell you this, but ogres attacked the reserve unit while your family was asleep in their tent. Your father is dead.”

Kol’s ears thundered with the beat of his dragon heart, and it was difficult to breathe. “That’s not . . . It can’t be.”

“I’m sorry.” The headmaster’s tone left no room for doubt. Kol’s legs suddenly felt too weak to hold him.

“Where is my mother? She’ll need me with her.” Kol craned his neck, looking toward the throne room. “She’ll need Rag, Brig, and me.”

“Kol.” Master Eiler sounded old for the first time in all the years Kol had known him. His rigid military posture sagged, and he leaned heavily against the balcony’s railing. “They were all killed. Your father, your mother, and Prince Ragvanisnar . . . they’re gone.”

“No.” Kol took a shaky step away from the headmaster. “There’s been a mistake.”

“I’m afraid not. I just saw their bodies.” The headmaster
glanced at the throne room, and then whipped a hand out to stop Kol as he stumbled forward like he meant to see for himself. “You don’t want to see them like that, my king.”

King.

Kol shook his head, a violent denial that did nothing to soften the headmaster’s next words.

“You are the king of Eldr now, Kol. I’m sorry.”

Master Eiler said something else, but Kol couldn’t hear him over the thudding of his dragon heart. The rush of scorching fire in his veins was a scream of agony. He couldn’t stay here, trapped on the balcony, waiting for the grief to swallow him in front of the headmaster and the steadily growing crowd of servants and guards behind him. His skin rippled, an itch that started in his scalp and sped toward his toes, and the heat in his chest spilled out of his nostrils in a stream of ash-gray smoke.

Without bothering to shed his clothing first, Kol gave in to the pounding of his hearts and let his dragon take him. His bones flexed and shifted, his muscles expanding. The familiar pain was a welcome outlet for the awful grief that tore at him from the inside out. He shook his head and heard the ridges along his spine clattering into place as his skin hardened into the red-gold scales of his dragon.

He thought he heard someone cry out his name, but he was done with listening. His talons dug into the stone balcony beneath him as he roared, emptying his grief and horror into the skies above. Then he unfurled his golden wings with a snap and soared into the air, leaving the castle far behind him.

K
OL STOOD BESIDE
Brig on the shore of Lake Skyllivreng, facing the vast expanse of water that stretched from the base of the Urrvenskeyr Mountain far into the distant forests to the north. Before him, floating on the water, were the funeral pyres of his father, his mother, and his brother. Their bodies were wrapped in gold silk and tied with a blue cord to symbolize the Sun Mother and the Sky Father. A bronze chest filled with treasure was placed at their heads while a gold chest filled with mementos from their former life was at their feet—one guaranteed their entrance into the afterlife, and the other helped them remember the life they’d left behind.

Kol didn’t want to be left behind. He didn’t want to be on this shore, his arm around his sobbing sister, the entire kingdom at his back waiting for him to say good-bye and take up the responsibility for saving a kingdom no one truly believed could be saved.

His twin hearts beat hard against his chest as Master Eiler
stepped to his side and held out a lit torch.

Brig shuddered, burying her face against him, and he leaned his cheek against the top of her head for a moment. It was the only comfort he could offer. He was a seventeen-year-old failure of a prince with the weight of an entire kingdom on his shoulders. He had no idea what to say or do that would give anyone—himself included—confidence that he could lead his nation to anything other than its final destruction.

Looking up, he met his former headmaster’s gaze, expecting to see pity. Instead, he saw the same rigid expectations he’d always seen. That Kol would be the cadet—the Eldrian—Master Eiler had trained him to be.

Once upon a time, those expectations had felt like a noose around Kol’s neck. Today, they were a road map for a journey Kol had never thought he’d have to take.

He straightened his spine and gave Brig one last squeeze. Stepping forward, he took the lit torch from Master Eiler with a steady hand and waded into the frigid water.

“From the Sky Father, life was granted.” His breath hitched, and he cleared his throat. Raised his voice. Tried his best to do justice to the funeral chant. To his family. “And to the Sky Father, life returns. We thank him for your journey here.”

His voice broke, and he blinked his eyes rapidly before continuing. “And we send you on your next journey with honor, with respect, and with love.”

His choked on the last word, and he had to work just to breathe as the crowd behind him repeated, “With honor, with respect, and with love.”

When their voices faded, Kol moved to his brother’s pyre.
His chest ached sharply as he thrust the torch into the straw that cushioned his brother’s body. The fire caught and ate greedily at the tinder.

Moving to his mother’s pyre, Kol laid his hand on her raft and tried to speak. He wanted to tell her that nothing would be the same without her. The words wouldn’t come. Instead, he simply whispered “I love you best, and I’ll miss you forever” as he lit her straw and turned away.

Firelight from his mother’s pyre glinted against his father’s golden shroud as Kol laid his palm against the wooden planks and took a deep breath. “I know I disappointed you.” The words left a bitter taste in Kol’s mouth. “And we never understood each other. But now I have the weight of Eldr on my shoulders, and I don’t know how you did it all those years. All I can do is promise you that I will do my best. I won’t disappoint you again.”

His father’s straw caught fire, and then members of the royal council were there beside him, pushing the pyres out into the lake until the current caught the rafts and sent them on their slow, stately journey toward the afterlife.

Master Eiler waded into the water. “The sun will be setting soon. It’s time for the coronation. Eldr must see that they still have a king.”

Kol nodded. It was the best he could manage. He was about to become king of a nation on her deathbed. Defending his people from the ogre invasion was now his problem and his alone. He faced the castle and clenched his fists. He would figure out how to lead his people. How to protect them. He would become the kind of ruler he could be proud of, or he would die trying.

Two hours after he’d been crowned king and had met with the royal council to discuss the ogre war, Kol was ready to leave for the war front to assess the situation himself. All that remained was to tell Brig good-bye.

She stood in the middle of his room, watching him with tear-filled eyes. Kol crossed the distance between them and pulled her into his arms. “It’s time.”

“Please, Kol. I’ve already lost everyone else. Don’t go.”

He swallowed the sharp edge of grief that ached in his throat and said, “Brig, I’m the king now. The war is my responsibility. How can I figure out how to beat the ogres if I’ve never seen what they’re capable of doing?”

Her voice rose. “You’ve seen what they’re capable of doing! We lost
everyone
because of them. It doesn’t matter if you go to the war front or if you stay here. No one can stop the ogres. Their skin is hard as a rock and immune to our fire, to our catapults—they’re three times our size, and no weapon we use against them does anything more than slow them down.” She glared at him. “You might
die
.”

He had no answer for that, so he simply held her and wished he could turn back time to a week ago before he’d pulled his epic prank on Master Eiler, before his parents had taken Rag on a tour of the war front, before everything became so complicated. So impossible.

“What are we going to do?” Brig’s voice was little more than a whisper.

Kol stepped back and lifted her chin so he could look into her eyes. “You are going to stay here and manage the castle for me with Master Eiler and the royal council. I’m going to assess the ogre situation and come up with a solution. And together, we’re
going to show our people how to face pain and fear with honor and strength.”

“You sound like father,” Brig said, a shaky smile flitting across her face.

Kol had to swallow hard against the sudden tightness in his throat. “Who would’ve guessed I’d ever be capable of that?”

It took nearly a full day for Kol, Trugg, Jyn, and two members of the royal council to reach the war front by flying in their dragon forms. The craggy mountains and lush forests that surrounded Tryllenvreng, the capital of Eldr, slowly gave way to rivers that cut through the rocky hillside like ribbons. Eldrians fleeing the southern half of the kingdom for the safety of the refugee shelters in Tryllenvreng camped along the riverbank in clumps. Kol’s human heart ached for them as he flew past. He understood now what it meant to have those you loved ripped away from you.

The land began to bear battle scars as Kol and his friends closed in on the war front. The evidence of a recent fight could be seen in shattered boulders, in trees ripped up at the roots, and in an entire hillside caved in as if an enormous creature had ripped the land to pieces.

Tearing his gaze away from the wreckage, Kol signaled the others to follow him to the highest hilltop in the area. Night was falling, and soon they’d be able to fly over the armies and assess the situation undetected.

Kol alighted on the hilltop, shook out his wings, and folded them back as the others came to rest around him, their talons digging into the rocky soil. Below him, the Eldrian army was positioned with the strongest flyers in the center, archer and
catapult support just behind them, and secondary flyers hidden from the approaching army on both the left and right flanks. The third wave of flyers were hidden behind the archer and catapult support to provide either another wave of attack or defensive cover for the forward soldiers in the event of a retreat.

Kol had a feeling all the army had been doing was retreating, giving up Eldr in bits and pieces.

As he studied the army’s position, there was a cry of warning, and then a pack of ogres swarmed over the rocky hills to the south. The ogres were immense thick-chested brutes—wide as four large oak trees side by side and double the height of the average Draconi—with no necks, round black eyes, and tough gray skin that matched the rocks they were scaling with incredible speed.

Immediately, the first wave of flyers rose into the air, and the catapults began pelting the incoming ogres with boulders coated in pitch and flame. A few of the ogres went down, crushed beneath the weight of the boulders, but for every creature who fell, another three took its place.

The ogres formed a V and stopped as if waiting for the arrival of the Eldrians. From his vantage point on the hilltop, Kol saw something in the middle of the V begin to glow like a brilliant blue sapphire. He squinted against the glare of the dying sun, and a pit of ice formed in his stomach.

What kind of weapon glowed like that? The ogres in Kol’s history books—the ones who’d roamed Eldr and the southern kingdom of Vallé de Lumé in vicious packs centuries ago before a witch sealed them away in a prison deep beneath the southern mountains—had always used brute strength and violence to crush their opponents. Not weapons that glowed. Not
formations that spoke of organization and strategy.

He wanted to scream at the flyers to get back, but it was already too late.

The flyers dove at the assembled ogres, fire spewing from their mouths—a cover for the poison-tipped arrows the archers sent just beneath the Draconi. A few of the arrows struck ogres in the eyes, but the rest glanced off the beasts’ rock-hard skin and fell harmlessly to the ground.

The flyers banked a perfect turn, preparing for a second assault, when the ogres on the outside of the V dropped to the ground, revealing the creature who stood in the center. It may have once been an ogre but was now it was something far worse. Its round black eyes were lit with sapphire flames from within. Its massive bulk was covered with so much knotted muscle, it resembled an enormous gray rock bound by gnarled tree roots. And in its hands was a ball of crackling blue light the size of a small horse.

What kind of monstrosity was this?

Kol’s hearts thundered in his chest, and his stomach plummeted as he dug his talons into the unforgiving ground and forced himself to stay hidden. To stay safe because Eldr needed her king, even though her king had no idea how to save her.

The creature stretched to its full height, casting a long shadow over the ogres crouched below it. Kol lashed the ground with his tail, scattered bits of rock and dirt. His army was already struggling to contain the ogre onslaught. How were they supposed to fight a monster like this? How was
he
supposed to fight it? The kingship he’d accepted at last night’s coronation ceremony felt too heavy to bear as his flyers banked, preparing to sweep the ogre lines again.

The creature drew its arm back and flung the sizzling blue light directly into the flyers as they completed their turn. It wrapped around the Draconi like chains of lightning and then exploded into a brilliant blue mist. When it dissipated, all that was left of the entire squadron were a few bloody scales that slowly drifted to the ground. Kol felt sick, his dragon’s fire burning miserably in his chest.

Magic
.

The ogres, released from their mountain prison by the dark enchantress who had ensnared the southern kingdom of Vallé de Lumé the previous winter had somehow found a way to tap into her power and use it for themselves in their quest to once again dominate the lands they’d been cast out of so many lifetimes ago.

There was nothing Kol could do to stop them. Not without magic of his own. The realization was a blow Kol didn’t know how to absorb. Focusing on the grief and desperation in his human heart, Kol released his dragon. His wings receded, his fangs drew back, and as his red-gold scales softened into his human skin again, he turned to find the others had shed their dragons too and were busy pulling clothing out of the travel bags Jyn had volunteered to carry for the group.

Jyn tossed Kol some trousers and a shirt. “How did ogres get the use of magic?” She sounded shaken.

“A better question would be how do we stop them?” the councilwoman asked as she shrugged into a shirt.

“We can’t stop them.” Kol was grateful his voice didn’t reveal the panic that wanted to steal his breath and paralyze his thoughts.

He’d promised to protect Eldr. How was he going to do that when his enemy was unstoppable?

“If we had magic of our own, it would be different,” the councilman said.

“You’re right.” Kol looked at the councilman while his thoughts raced. “The only way to turn the tide of this war is if we have magic of our own capable of defeating the weapon we just saw. And I only know of one kingdom with that kind of magic—”

“You aren’t seriously suggesting that we go to Morcant for aid, are you?” Jyn asked, her hands on her hips. “Have you forgotten what those magic wielders—those
mardushkas
—do to Draconi? For centuries, they’ve captured us with their cursed magic, forcing us to sniff out gems and veins of gold like dogs on leashes. There’s a reason we have a law forbidding Eldrians from setting foot on Morcantian soil.”

“We aren’t going to Morcant for aid.” Kol’s hearts pounded as a plan just as bold and risky as any of his pranks took shape in his mind. “Negotiations work best when you have enough leverage to come to the table as an equal. Ravenspire is suffering from massive food shortages caused by a blight on their crops. There are reports of tremendous unrest and violence among the peasants.”

“That’s correct,” the councilwoman said.

“Ravenspire’s queen doesn’t have enough resources to feed her people and stop the unrest. We, however, have an entire mountain full of treasure—enough to buy food from the merchants in Súndraille for the next ten years. We have the solution to her problem, and the queen of Ravenspire—”

“Is a
mardushka
from Morcant and married into her throne,” the councilwoman finished, her eyes gleaming.

Kol shouldered his bag. “Let’s go back to the castle. Master Eiler and the rest of the royal council need to know what we’re up against and what I plan to do about it. I leave for Ravenspire in the morning.”

“Why you? Let us go in your place,” Trugg said.