Shana Abe: Queen of Dragons

"Where was it last night?"

The voice behind her was thinner, younger, and threaded with a calm that probably was not real. "A village several leagues away. Deda." "Deda. That far?" "Apparently."

She combed her fingers through her hair, looking down at the shiny dark strands. In the past two years it had grown past her hips; she could go the length of her arm and not reach the end of it.

I should cut it, she thought. Too long to powder, too heavy to curl. I should cut it.

"Did I kill anyone?" she asked aloud and, in the silence that followed, glanced over her shoulder at the boy who lingered against the east tower wall.

"No," answered her brother, and shrugged a little. "Not that I know."

He was staring down at the hay, his cheeks and mouth chapped with the wind. His eyes were black-lashed, crystal-gray, exact reflections of her own, but their similarities ended there: For one thing, he was dressed, and dressed well. Sandu usually favored the plainer styles; it was a struggle to convince him to wear anything beyond breeches, boots, and a shirt. Yet this morning he was done up in one of his finest waistcoats, a wig, three layers of lace, and heels that lifted him taller than she. Mari studied him a moment, her mind turning—the barren terrace, the wind, the lanky young prince in ivory and velvet—until she remembered the day.

"Petitions," she said.

"We're almost ready to begin."

"I'll be down. One half hour."

"I'll tell them."

He turned away at once. She did not wait for him to reach the door, the footmen she knew would be stationed just inside. She couldn't walk in like this, and in any case, she didn't want to see their faces. She certainly didn't want them to see hers.

Maricara Turned to smoke.

It was a rush of sensation, an instant lightness that required neither breath nor thought. All human flesh was gone, all sense of cold or pain; all that came instead was lovely and silken. She'd had this Gift since the age of eight, the youngest of any of the drakon she knew—although it had taken a full year after that for her dragon form to emerge...claws and wings and velocity, the violence of the wind tearing at her eyes...

But this morning she was smoke, because smoke could roll down the side of the castle walls, smoke could skim the rough, familiar stone—like rubbing her hand over sandpaper, only without body, without weight. As smoke she could move any direction she wished, down farther, diagonal to the rampart, entangling briefly with the remains of a seated granite griffin, carved by some long-ago ancestor.down another level, and then she was at her own window, at the hairline crack in the glass she had made years ago, back when she had been imprisoned here.

It took time to sift through the break in the glass. It had been the greatest danger of discovery, the minute and seventeen seconds she needed to force herself through the fissure. But she'd never dared to make it larger, and then later, when it no longer mattered, she simply hadn't bothered. It would only be another breach in her defenses, anyway.

She became a gray well upon the sill, a plumy waterfall to the floor. When she was fully inside the room, she Turned back into woman, nude again, suppressing a shiver.

The drakon were unable to transform anything else in the Turn, not gemstones or weapons or food, certainly not clothing. Out of habit she remained motionless and in shadow, allowing her physical senses to surge back—her heart pumping to life, the scent of wood polish and hot coffee suddenly sharp in her nose—but her skin prickled against the fresh chill.

She heard the wind groaning through the vent of the chimney and the slow tick of the Belgian clock upon the secretaire.

And breathing. And petticoats very lightly brushing stone.

Mari turned her face. From the doorway her maids took her cue, stirring and then coming forward, carrying garments and cosmetics and jewelry.

The private quarters of the princess were lavish and golden, a true reflection of the wealth of the castle. The bed was cherry and damask, the sheets were satin. She had rugs of peacock colors from exotic lands she had never seen, Turkish cabinetry and hardwood paneling from the darkest forests of black Russia. She had mother-of-pearl inlay and beeswax candles and that coffee languorously steaming in a service of solid gold by the fire. She had all these things, and always had, from the moment she'd first stepped foot here as a child, and the only aspect of this rich and blinding room that Maricara had ever troubled herself to change was the wallpaper. Or, more specifically, the wall.

Along the southern side of the room she had stripped the dyed silk from the wood, and then the wood from the stone. There were no windows there, no paintings or anything else to distract from the bare quartzite that composed the foundation of Zaharen Yce. It was a fine stone, solid and largely silent, which was good. Because tucked in the mortar between the ancient blocks were ancient diamonds, hundreds of them, and Maricara needed to hear them sing.

Cool and plain, colored and clear, they studded the wall in frosted bumps, every one of them uncut, every one a brilliant poem. If she ran her fingers over them, they would hum up her arm, into her heart, filling her ears and her throat and her blood with song. There had been times when their music had been her sole solace in the world.

She focused on that now, on their soft constant singing, as she bit her lip and cleansed the wound on her stomach with soap and cold water.

"No corset," she said without looking up, and one of the maids drifted back into the recesses of the room.

The blood washed off. The cut would heal. In time, she knew, everything healed.

The princess handed off the stained towel and basin to take her seat at the vanity. The looking glass showed the bed behind her tinted silver, the covers neat, no sign whatsoever that she ever once slept in it.

Like she didn't even exist.

With her hands folded in her lap, Maricara allowed her servants to begin her transformation.

No one spoke as she entered the chamber. They'd hardly been speaking before, just occasional mutters and whispers behind hands, but it seemed to Alexandru that the level of excitement seething through the serfs before him had been slightly higher than usual for this day.

Perhaps not. The room was round. Voices echoed. That could be all it was.

He'd been passing the time by putting on his spectacles and acting like he was examining the documents laid out before him, petitions written for him by his chamberlain, prepared in the order in which he would see each man. But it was all scratches and nibbles to him, tiny grievances blown into feuds: this field, that field, his hog, my acorns.

Sandu was fifteen years old. Breakfast had been hours ago. He was hungry, and he was chilled, and she was late, and he honestly didn't care about anyone's damned acorns.

The letters began to blur against the parchment. He pushed his spectacles back up his nose but it didn't help; the black ink ran to blue, the colors shifting, the words changing.. .they said something new now, something he could almost make out..

Pay attention, rang his sister's voice inside his head. You are Alpha. Every man's concern here is your own.

He blinked, and everything righted again. Sandu sighed and rubbed his nose. He wished, for what had to be the thousandth time, that the Convergence Room had a fireplace. It was mid-April but the Carpathians were still gripped with snow, and his court stockings were not woven for warmth.

The double doors opposite his table swung wide. Maricara entered the chamber, and that was when the air actually froze.

She was beautiful. No one would deny that. All their kind had a beauty, but in Mari it had grown into something beyond even them. She wore rouge and kohl, and a wig of long, heavy slate coils, and the violet of her gown lent purple to her eyes, but Sandu thought all these things really only served to distract from her true nature. It wasn't the whiteness of her skin that set her apart, or the lift of her shoulders, or the shape of her jaw. It wasn't her fashion or her figure, or her gliding walk. It wasn't anything so clear and physical. She was beautiful because she simply was : Of all the women of the mountains, she was the only one who could Turn.