The Shadow Queen (6 page)

“B
RING ME ANOTHER.
” Irina stood outside the castle’s dungeon, a pile of bodies at her feet. “A younger one this time.” The dungeon master hurried to comply.

The air was damp and chilly, but the queen was warm beneath the weight of the coat she wore. She ran her hands over the coat’s thick gray-white fur and felt the hearts of the wolves, who’d given their pelts, surge against the magic in her palms.

Magic that still flowed easily through her veins, but that left her drained and weary at the end of every spell. Magic that caused her heart to stutter and her chest to ache with the strain of it.

“Your Highness.” The dungeon master stepped out of the doorway, pulling a skinny girl of seventeen or eighteen behind him. Her dirty brown hair brushed the sharp edges of her collarbone, and her eyes were dull. The dungeon master yanked the girl forward until she stood in front of Irina.

The queen grasped the girl’s chin and examined her face
under the fading light of the early evening’s sun. “How old are you?”

“Eighteen.”

“And what crime sent you to my dungeon?”

“I was hungry.” There was a thread of defiance in the girl’s voice, though she wouldn’t meet the queen’s gaze.

Irina’s long, polished red nails dug into the girl’s face. “Being hungry isn’t a crime. I will only ask you this once more.” Her voice was hard. “What was your crime?”

“Stealing food,” the girl whispered.

“And whom did you steal from?”

The girl swallowed audibly but didn’t answer.

The queen’s nails punctured the girl’s cheek and tiny crescents of blood bubbled up. “Answer.”

The girl’s voice shook. “From my lord’s kitchen. I was a maid in the Ranulf household.”

Irina let go of the girl’s face and rubbed a drop of blood between her thumb and forefinger. “Ungrateful peasant. If you steal from my nobility, you steal from me.” She leaned close, her mouth a breath from the girl’s ear. “Do you know what I do to those who betray the ones to whom they should be loyal?”

The girl’s body trembled, and her knees gave out, but the dungeon master held her firm.

A thief. A betrayer. A girl who deserved her fate. And one whose heart might be strong enough to save Irina from her own.

The queen’s open palm slammed into the girl’s chest, her nails curving over the space that held her heart. “
Ja`dat
,” she whispered, and the power burned in her hands. “Take what is hers and give it to me instead.”

Irina’s palm, wreathed in brilliant light, pressed hard against the girl’s chest.

Her heart surged to meet Irina’s magic, and the queen could feel the strength of her remaining years stored inside her like an apple ready for the plucking.

Her magic leaped into the girl and surrounded her heart. The girl cried out in agony and resisted, but Irina’s will was fierce. Indomitable. Stronger.

Irina was always stronger.

The queen threw her head back as the girl’s youth poured out of her. It was a flood of heat and need and restless ambition that abandoned the girl and rushed through Irina’s veins instead. The girl’s face aged, her hair grayed, and then she collapsed in a heap beside the other bodies.

Irina stood panting, her hand still outstretched, and waited for the band of tension around her chest to dissolve. For the weakness, the ache, to wash away.

The pain still throbbed dully along her sternum. Her pulse still fluttered like a bird trying to break free of its cage.

Nothing had changed.

If anything, the pain was worse—the heat of the girl’s youth turning from something that energized into a poison that scalded the queen from the inside out.

The queen stared at the bodies before her—a man with the muscles of a blacksmith, a woman whose fierce attitude was written in every line on her face, a stable boy, a teacher, and the maid. All of them had submitted to Irina’s will. All of them had given up their remaining years to the queen’s magic.

And yet none of them had strengthened her failing heart.

“Clean up this mess,” she snapped at the dungeon master as she turned on her heel and strode back toward the castle.

The spell wasn’t the problem, she was certain. She’d had no problem sucking the remaining years out of her father’s flintlike heart nine years ago and absorbing their strength and vitality. Doing the same to the criminals in her dungeon should’ve been an easy solution to her problem, even with the residual weariness that came from forcing another’s heart to submit to her will. Instead, she felt weaker and the pain stronger, as if the youth she’d consumed was a slow-moving poison thickening her blood.

Taking the remaining years from the hearts of her prisoners wasn’t the answer, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t find one. She always found one, because she never flinched from doing what needed to be done.

Waving pages, maids, and guards out of her way, Irina entered the east wing of her castle and strode toward her rooms. The plush ivory rug beneath her swallowed her footsteps, and all she could hear was the sudden hiss of candles being lit in the sconces along the walls as twilight fell.

Her personal guards opened the door to her rooms. She walked into her sitting room and turned toward the fireplace where her viper was coiled, his serrated black scales glowing red in the flickering light of the flames.

Come.
She pushed the thought at Raz, and the viper uncoiled himself from his bed. Swiftly, he slithered across the gleaming cedar floor. When he reached her feet, she bent down, extending a hand. The viper moved up her arm and settled around her neck, his long black tongue flicking toward her face as if he
meant to taste her. She ran a slim finger over his blunt nose, and he pushed his head against her hand.

Ssstill hurt
, his rough voice whispered in her mind.
Ssstill weak.

For now, but the spell will work. I just have to find the right person. The right heart.

And while she searched, she had a kingdom to run, a spate of violent peasant outbreaks to subdue, and an increasingly contentious nobility to bring into line. Moving to her vanity, she looked at the oval mirror hanging above her bottles of perfume. It was the size of a dinner platter with serpents and gilt-dusted brambles surrounding the glass—a gift from Irina’s long-lost mother. The most valuable thing she’d left her eldest daughter, unless you counted the magic running through Irina’s blood.

Magic that had taught her father and sister the terrible price of betrayal and that had removed every obstacle standing between Irina and the Ravenspire throne.

Unbidden, the thought of the white monolith resting in the center of the castle garden and her sister’s body buried beneath it filled Irina’s mind. Her heart lurched, tapping against her breastbone like an impatient fist. She pressed one pale hand against her chest and focused on the mirror.

It didn’t matter what she’d done to secure the throne that would’ve been hers all along if her sister hadn’t betrayed her. It only mattered that she remained strong enough to keep it.

Raz lifted his head and stared at the mirror with her, his golden eyes unblinking.

She held her spine straight and kept her voice steady as she
asked, “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the most powerful of them all?”

The mirror’s opaque surface swirled into a gray mist and then slowly resolved into Irina’s own reflection—pale blond hair, a delicate face, and eyes as blue as the summer sky.

The queen smiled.

I
T TOOK
K
OL,
Jyn, and Trugg a little over three days to cross the border between Eldr and Ravenspire. They’d flown as fast as possible, stopping only when absolutely necessary. Kol wasn’t sure how long it would take to fly to the capital, but he knew that they needed some food and rest before they attempted it. Spotting a little village on the road that wound down the Falkrain Mountains on Ravenspire’s side, he signaled his friends to land in a meadow full of yellow, brittle grass just north of the village.

His dragon heart beat fiercely in his chest, but he ignored it and focused on his shift. The spikes that lined his back receded, his muscles and bones shrank slowly into his human form, and his scales softened into skin again. Quickly, he pulled clothes out of his pack and put them on, the grass beneath him crunching with his every move.

“We need a decent meal and a drink,” he said.

Trugg’s eyes lit up. “A drink! I knew there was a reason I
agreed to follow you to Ravenspire. Do you think they serve spiced mead?”

“You’re impossible,” Jyn said as she wrapped a leather belt around her waist and pushed her short dark hair behind her ears.

“Look at this.” Kol motioned at the ground. Bending close, he ran his fingers over the ground. The soil was pale and crumbled easily beneath his touch as if it was nothing more than air. The grass that clung to it was a sickly yellow that turned brown with rot at the roots. “If it’s like this across the kingdom, Irina should be looking for a way to save her people.” Kol clenched a fistful of dirt, and it dissolved into a trickle of dust.

“Come on.” He wiped his hands clean and stood. “Let’s go get a meal and a room so we can sleep in real beds tonight and be rested when we reach the capital.”

“Do you think they have a room with three beds? Or will we be sharing?” Trugg raised a brow at Jyn. “I’m good at sharing.”

“You get to sleep on the floor.” Jyn stepped in front of Kol and began moving toward the village.

Trugg moved to Kol’s side. “Somehow my considerable charms never work on her.”

Kol and his friends entered the open gate that led into the village and moved down the main road toward the heart of the town. A handful of children playing in the dirt near the gate stared at the Eldrians, their eyes wide, and then took off running toward the village, yelling something about visitors.

“Their welcoming committee is kind of creepy,” Trugg said as they passed rows of tiny cottages with thin wisps of smoke
curling from their chimneys and barren ground surrounding their foundations.

“Maybe they don’t see many outsiders here,” Kol said, but as they neared the village proper, a din of voices on the road ahead of them sent his dragon heart pounding. They rounded a corner, leaving behind the cottages for the brick and board storefronts that made up Tranke’s main street, and a crowd of villagers was waiting for them. The children from the gate were standing off to the side, staring at the Eldrians as the crowd surged toward the visitors.

“Need some cloth?” A woman lunged in front of Jyn and held up a length of pale pink linen. “Make a trade for a jewel.”

“I have buckets. And bricks.” A man grabbed Kol’s sleeve. Trugg growled and slapped the man’s hand away. Kol’s dragon heart pounded faster, and the fire in his chest burned.

“I can launder your clothes.”

“I’ll polish your boots.”

“My family is hungry. You can spare some food, can’t you?”

“I have a sword to trade. Please. A jewel from you might be enough to convince a merchant from Súndraille to take my family out of Ravenspire.”

Villagers surrounded them, and more were coming. All of them were calling out, offering services, trying to trade, or simply begging for riches the Eldrians didn’t have to give. Kol had brought a few bronze coins and some small jewels, enough to give them a night or two in an inn with a meal when they needed it, but with his army steadily losing ground to the ogres, he hadn’t had time to make a formal request for funds from the royal purser. Instead, he’d taken what was left of Brig’s monthly
stipend and borrowed the rest from his friends.

“We can’t help you,” Trugg said gruffly as he pried yet another hand off Kol’s arm.

“Let us pass or it will go poorly with you, humans,” Jyn snarled as a man grabbed her hands and implored her to buy a pair of teacups from his wife.

The man reached for her again, and Trugg shoved himself between the two, his dark eyes glittering with his dragon’s fury as he said, “Touch her again, and she’ll destroy you. And if she doesn’t, I will.”

People surrounded them, pressing in from all sides. Above the gathering crowd, Kol spotted a sign that said White Wheel Tavern. Beneath the sign, a girl with curly dark hair and pale skin stood staring at the crowd, her gloved hands fisted in the skirt of her green dress. She met his eyes and jerked her chin toward the tavern. He frowned, and she lifted one hand to beckon sharply. Unlike the wild desperation he saw on the faces around him, she looked calm and focused.

It was trust her or deal with the mob himself without giving in to the violent pounding of his dragon’s heart. He made a split-second decision and nodded to her. She whirled and disappeared inside the tavern. A boy with the same pale skin and curly black hair followed in her footsteps.

“Come on,” Kol said as he shouldered his way through the throng, Trugg and Jyn at his side. “We’re going into the tavern.”

“Maybe we should just shift and get out of here,” Jyn said.

“The second we stop to shift, this crowd will be all over us.” Kol firmly pushed a man’s arm aside and ducked beneath the outstretched hands of another. “And since we have to give
in to our dragon hearts to shift—”

“Our dragons would attack,” Trugg finished for him.

“Maybe that’s a lesson these people need to learn.” Jyn shoved past a girl who was holding a dirty rag doll up for trade and motioned Kol toward the tavern.

“They’re desperate,” Kol said quietly. “They’re just doing what they can to survive. We can’t hurt them for that. Besides, if we attack Ravenspire citizens in our dragon form within Ravenspire borders, we violate the treaty my father signed with Irina years ago, and we’d lose our opportunity to have any upper hand in the negotiations.”

They reached the wooden sidewalk that ran in front of the tavern, and Kol immediately moved toward the door.

“If we go inside, we’ll be trapped,” Jyn said.

“I think there’s a way out.” And, skies above, please let him be right about the girl and her intentions. If he led his friends into a trap, they’d have no choice but to shift.

Behind them, the villagers shouted and begged, but the pleading had disappeared from their tone, and anger had taken its place.

Kol, Jyn, and Trugg raced into the tavern seconds before the mob of furious villagers began shoving through the doorway, their eyes wild as they screamed for the Eldrians’ cloaks, boots, and coin.

“This way!” The girl waited by an open door in the far wall that led to an alley. “Hurry.”

In the alley beyond her, a man with dark skin and graying hair stood with his hand on the hilt of the sword strapped to his waist while the boy who’d followed the girl into the tavern was
looking both ways. “It’s still clear. Let’s go,” he said.

The mob behind the Eldrians surged forward, and a man with sunken cheeks and a patched shirt that hung from his frail shoulders launched himself at Kol, his bony fingers grabbing at the small leather satchel tied to Kol’s belt. Two more men leaped forward and snatched at Kol’s cloak.

“Get off him!” Trugg roared and slammed into the men, sending all three of them flying into the closest wall.

More villagers—starving and desperate to get their hands on anything of value—poured into the room and surrounded Jyn while Trugg shoved his way to stand in front of Kol.

Kol’s chest burned with dragon’s fire, and pain rippled over his muscles as his body fought to shift. He drew a deep breath, tasting smoke at the back of his throat, and focused on keeping his human form.

Jyn’s laugh raised the hair on Kol’s neck. “You picked the wrong girl to mess with today, humans.” Her fingernails lengthened into talons, and a shudder rippled across her skin as it began hardening into scales.

“Who wants a piece of this?” Trugg shouted, smoke pouring from his nose as the crowd pressed in on all sides. Some of them raised crude weapons—planks of wood, butcher knives, and hand-carved spears—and waved them at the Eldrians.

“No!” Kol shouted, panic slicing into him. “Don’t shift. I forbid it.”

Over the heads of the mob, he spied the girl in the dress. Her dark eyes met his, and then she whistled sharply.

Something sharp jabbed Kol in the back, and he stumbled forward. The crowd surged against him, and its weight shoved
him to his knees on the dusty floor. Smoke began pouring from his nostrils, and his dragon raged.

Then a piercing shriek split the air, and an enormous white gyrfalcon swept into the room and slammed into the people surrounding Trugg and Jyn. The bird circled, raked the mob with its talons, and then screamed a battle cry.

“Get up. Up!” A small gloved hand wrapped around Kol’s arm and hauled him to his feet. Before he could take a single step, the girl locked her arm around the back of his neck, leaped against his chest, and slammed both of her feet into a group of villagers, sending them sprawling. Falling back against him, she whirled around and pulled his shoulders toward her while another plank whistled through the air where his head had been.

Skies above, she knew what she was doing in a fight. He supposed he should be embarrassed—the king of the Draconi needing rescue from a human wasn’t exactly the kind of story the bards would turn into song—but he was too grateful for her help to bother.

Trugg and Jyn, their attackers momentarily driven back by the gyrfalcon, hurried toward him. The mob quickly rallied in their wake and came after the Eldrians with renewed fury.

“Follow me.” Without waiting for a response, the girl looked at the gyrfalcon. As if obeying some unspoken command, the bird shrieked and flew toward the door. The girl hiked up her skirt and ran forward, the Eldrians on her heels.

They burst out of the tavern and into an alley covered in sodden leaves and clumps of almost-melted snow, the crowd of villagers right behind them.

“Gabril, get Risa and anyone else who will be reasonable and
see if they can talk sense into their neighbors. Promise them we’ll rob the next treasury wagon and give food to everyone.” The girl turned from the black man with the sword and looked at the boy who’d entered the tavern with her.

“Leo, find a clear path out of the village,” the girl said. The boy disappeared around the corner, and then reappeared on the roof of a building close to the street.

“North and then west,” he called.

“You three, follow me!” the girl said as she sprinted down the alley, leaving the man with the sword behind. Kol obeyed without hesitation.

The bird swooped low and slammed into a pair of women who were chasing Jyn, rusted knives in their hands.

“I like this bird,” Jyn said, and though her skin still shimmered with her dragon’s silvery sheen, her eyes were human again. “It has good taste.”

“I think the girl is controlling the bird. She has it trained to obey her movements or something,” Kol said as he raced with his friends toward the mouth of the alley where the girl was . . . skies above, she was yanking off her dress.

“Then the girl has good taste, and,
hello
there,” Trugg said with appreciation as the poufy green dress was dumped unceremoniously on the dusty cobblestones, leaving the girl in a pair of fitted dark brown pants, a white jerkin that left her pale arms bare, and a pair of boots.

A thick jug went sailing past Kol’s head and slammed into the ground, and the crowd behind them screamed for money, for food, as Kol snarled, “She just saved our lives. Stop looking at her like she’s next in the try-Trugg-on-for-size club.”

“I’m one size fits all,” Trugg said as they reached the mouth of the alley and tumbled into the street where the girl was already moving north.

“You’re a fool,” Jyn snapped.

The mob of villagers poured out of the alley in the Eldrians’ wake and came for them.

“We have to get out.
Now
.” The girl sprinted up the street and skidded around the corner of a squat little brick building. The boy appeared on the rooftops to their left and kept pace with them, leaping from building to building like a mountain lion.

“We’ll have to use the north gate,” he said. “It’ll be locked.”

“Meet us there,” the girl said. Her bird arrowed into the sky and flew in the opposite direction.

“Hey! We might need that bird,” Jyn called out.

“She needs to find Gabril and make sure he’s safe,” the girl said as she practically flew over the cobblestones. “There’s nothing more she can do for us.”

Kol sped up—the girl was
fast
—and came abreast of her as she whipped into another alley. “How far to the gate? And why is it locked?”

“Just past this alley. And it’s locked because when the gate watchers warned the village about your arrival, several of them ran to bar the gates shut from the outside. Makes it easier to rob you if you refuse to barter when you have nowhere to run,” she said as she reached the end of the alley and launched herself into the street.

“If the gate is
locked
, how—”

“She led us into a trap.” Jyn grabbed Kol’s shoulder as they
rounded the alley’s corner and found themselves facing a brief cobblestoned walkway leading to a closed gate. The wooden beam used to bar the gate from the inside was still propped against the wall, which meant the girl was right—the villagers had locked the gate from the outside to trap the Eldrians.

“Watch your backs and wait for me.” Flexing her gloved hands, the girl took a deep breath and ran for the wall.

Kol’s jaw dropped as the girl seemed to run straight up the wall, kicking upward and out, lightly touching the wooden planks, and then flying upward again.