by Nina Varela
Be brave. Have faith. You’ve done so well.
Crier let the letter slip from her fingers, fluttering to the floor of the carriage.
Reyka was dead, and it wasn’t Kinok who had killed her.
It was Queen Junn.
The Mad Queen of Varn.
And now Crier saw the cold truth: she was more trapped than ever. Kinok was after Yora’s heart, which meant he was after Ayla. But if Crier ran away to find Ayla, to warn her, she’d be a threat to Queen Junn just like Reyka had been. The queen didn’t like loose ends, uncontrolled variables. Didn’t like people who talked.
No matter how useful she’d been, she recalled all the rumors she’d ever heard about the Mad Queen and she knew, deep in her bones: Junn would show the Fox no mercy.
Crier could risk her life to save Ayla, who had tried to kill her. Or she could stay put. Go through with the wedding, if that was what Junn wanted. Take down Kinok and his movement from the inside out.
It was a terrible set of choices, and Crier had to choose one.
But for now, the only thing she could do was pull aside the velvet curtains, let the evening light spill into the carriage, and allow a second, more private truth to make its presence known inside her heart. No matter what she chose—whether she abandoned her life and duties to chase after a human traitor, or married Kinok for the sole purpose of destroying the Anti-Reliance Movement—it would be a direct rebellion against her father. Against the Red Council. Against her nation. Crier would become just as much a traitor as Ayla was. Just as much a fugitive.
Just as much a revolutionary.
No matter what Crier chose, there would be a battle to win. No, not just a battle.
A war.
Acknowledgments
Kieryn. You are my person. It is an honor to know you. Knowing you has made me kinder—to everyone, to myself. Knowing you has changed how I write and think about love; it has changed how I love. It is an honor to love you. The next time you’re trying to talk about feelings and I’m breaking out in hives, you can point to this. A paragraph isn’t enough. My acknowledgment to you is everything I’ve written over the past six years. Everything I’m writing, everything I will write, that’s your acknowledgment. Your existence informs and transforms every page. My person, my writing partner, my QPLP, my soul mate, coparent of the beastling, rescuer of plots, creator of worlds and apocalypse escape plans and regular escape plans. I’d fry up twenty pounds of latkes with you any day. I hope that says it all.
Mama and Papa, I have wanted to be a writer since I was, what, four?—and your belief in me has never once wavered. You never once doubted I could do this. You had so much more faith in me than I ever had in myself; when I said “if,” you always said “when.” I don’t think that’s the norm. I got lucky with you. Thank you for loving this strange daughter. Thank you for raising me in houses full of books. Thank you for encouraging every story. My first readers, my home. I love you.
Piera, you’re the younger one, but I think you’ve taught me more than I’ve ever taught you. You are my role model. You are empathy and bravery and damn good poetry. No offense to our parents, but I’m your biggest fan.
Tony, you’re already teaching me new things. How dare you be so young but so wise. Remember I love you, remember I miss you, remember my home is your home, remember I am here for you, always. Fiona, thank you for your endless love. You didn’t have to make me your daughter, but you did. From the very beginning. Paul, thank you for everything you have done for us; thank you for being there, unconditionally.
Thank you to Nana and Grandpa for the love and support and Doctor Who marathons and fruitcakes and just for being there. To Granny, I miss you; I vow to never see a giraffe without thinking of you.
Yes Homo, Full House, my guad, thank you for your weirdness, for your kindness, for making me laugh, for listening, for making this southern baby feel at home in LA; you are worth the lack of green things. To Amy, thank you for the music-up-windows-down fly away nights, thank you for the Treat Yourself days, for your loud, beautiful heart, for always texting me when there’s a particularly good moon.
Thank you to Mr. Wilson for seeing something in me, for taking me seriously. For the Jane Kenyon.
Thank you to Lady for being consistently horrible and also the love of my life. Thank you to Crave Café for being open 24/7. Thank you to Namjoon for the light.
Glasstown folks, thank you for making this happen. Thank you for giving this queer girl a chance to write about queer girls. Thank you to Lexa for being there every step of the way, for sparking everything, for loving this story and these characters so deeply, for believing in me and my writing, for your patience and hard work, for championing this story, for being gentle when you remind me for the thousandth time that not everything can be an inner monologue and there does, at some point, need to be a plot. Thank you to Jessica Sit for helping bring this world to life, Mekisha Telfer and Kat Cho for your thoughtfulness and insight across so many drafts, Lauren Oliver for making space for stories like this. Inkwell folks, Stephen Barbara and Lyndsey Blessing, thank you for getting this book on the shelves.
Thank you to everyone at HarperCollins: Karen Chaplin for turning a draft into a book, for untangling some very tangled threads, for working hard to make this book beautiful inside and out; Rosemary Brosnan for believing in this story from the beginning; David Curtis and Erin Fitzsimmons for the absolutely gorgeous cover; Megan Gendell for the copyediting (I’m sorry about all the commas); Jon Howard for bringing everything together; the entire marketing and publicity team for making sure people actually read this thing; Emily Berge-Thielman for the hard work and enthusiasm despite my social media ineptitude.
Thank you to Ryan Douglass—I appreciate you, your effort, your thoughtfulness.
Thank you to the old readers. I’ve been posting my writing online for over a decade, and I was always, always met with kindness. Some of that writing was incredibly cringey—the work of an angsty thirteen-year-old. It would have been easy to tear it apart. Nobody did. I cannot tell you how much your kindness and support meant to that angsty thirteen-year-old. And that angsty sixteen-year-old. And that angsty twenty-year-old. And—you get the idea. You made me keep writing. Really, above all else, it was you. Your comments, your kudos, your friendship, across multiple platforms, across dozens of stories. From the silent lurkers to the faithful commenters to the online friends I’ve known for years, it was you. I was sad and lonely and I needed someone to tell me, “You are not wasting your time, you are good at this, keep going,” and you did. Over and over again, you did. Tens of thousands of you. Ironically, I cannot put it into words: how much that meant, how much that means. How much you helped me. I wrote for you. I write for you. Thank you.
To the queer readers: for reading this book, but also just for existing. Some people will try to tell you your story doesn’t matter. That is the biggest lie you will ever hear. Reader, everything you feel and experience and create is vital to this world. Never sit down; never shut up. Nobody else wants to write about us, so: screw it. We’ll do it ourselves. We will write ourselves into every genre. We will make it impossible for anyone to pretend we don’t exist. Please tell your story—I’d love to read it. Thank you for reading mine.
About the Author
Photo credit garage26
NINA VARELA is a nationally awarded writer of screenplays and short fiction. She was born in New Orleans and raised on a hippie commune in Durham, North Carolina, where she spent most of her childhood playing in the Eno River, building faerie houses from moss and bark, and running barefoot through the woods. These days, Nina lives in Los Angeles with her writing partner and their tiny ill-behaved dog. She tends to write stories about young people toppling the monarchy/patriarchy/whatever-archy. On a related note, she’s queer. On a less related note, she has strong feelings about hush puppies and loves a good jambalaya. Crier’s War is her first novel. You can find Nina at any given coffee shop in the greater Los Angeles are
a or at www.ninavarela.com.
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Copyright
HarperTeen is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
CRIER’S WAR. Copyright © 2019 by Glasstown Entertainment. Map by Maxime Plasse. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Cover art and design by David Curtis
Cover © 2019 by HarperCollins Publishers
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2019939425
Digital Edition OCTOBER 2019 ISBN: 978-0-06-282396-0
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-282394-6 (trade bdg.)
ISBN 978-0-06-298182-0 (special edition)
* * *
1920212223PC/LSCH10987654321
FIRST EDITION
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