When She Reigns

by Jodi Meadows

  He shook his head. ::Sleep in the bed. I can sleep on the floor.::

  “Will that make you more comfortable?” I glanced at the bed. It was big enough for him and Hristo to share; it was big enough for him and me to share, too. We could both sprawl out and not even touch.

  He pressed his mouth into a line, and then: ::Will it make you more comfortable?::

  “I would be worried about you sleeping on the hard floor.” I pried off the robe—and therefore LaLa—and placed them on the bottom corner of the bed. She wiggled deeper into the fabric until she sat in it like a bird in a nest.

  ::When I was young,:: Aaru tapped, ::I slept on the floor all the time. Before I built a bed in the basement.::

  My chest felt heavy with pressure. “Sleep in the bed.” Before he could respond, I hurried into the washroom to wash my face and change clothes, careful to put the gown into its protective bag. By the time I came back, LaLa was asleep and Aaru had covered all but one of the noorestones. He stood awkwardly on the opposite side of the bed, wearing soft trousers and a long buttoned shirt. He looked . . . cozy. He’d looked incredible earlier, yes, but clad only in his loose nightclothes he was Aaru, but even softer. I couldn’t decide whether to hate or thank Ilina for doing this.

  “Have you . . .” He shifted his weight. It was difficult to avoid acknowledging the reason Ilina and the others had moved our rooms around, but clearly he intended to make an attempt. He switched to quiet code, just quick tapping against the headboard. ::Have you still been having those dreams?::

  I nearly sagged in relief, then tried to cover it by sitting on my side of the bed, on top of the covers, pretending like I was completely fine. Like my heart wasn’t thrumming. Like we weren’t avoiding anything. Like this was a normal conversation. “Yes. Every night.”

  He sat, too, a mirror of me. “Will you tell me?”

  “It’s hard to explain.” But if I didn’t try, we’d be forced to confront the sleeping situation. The bed situation. We’d slept close together before, but on different sides of the wall between our cells, or in separate hammocks. Nothing like a nice bed in a beautiful hotel after attending a ball together.

  His voice gentled even more. “Do you want to go to sleep?”

  I wanted to talk to him. It had been so long, and I didn’t want it to end, but . . . I got up and covered the last noorestone. When I came back to the bed, he was already between the covers. I slipped in, too, careful of my feet around LaLa’s nest, and faced Aaru. “Can I have your hand?” I whispered into the darkness.

  He shifted—I didn’t hear it, but I could feel his movements—and a moment later his fingers touched mine.

  ::There are lots of different dreams. In the ones with the empire, I see bones. Great dragon bones so big I—:: I sighed and drew his hand closer to me. ::I’ve never seen anything like it, but in my dream, I know they’re the bones of the first dragon.::

  ::The first?::

  ::The biggest. The most powerful. And in my dream, I know that I need the bones before—before something.::

  ::Eclipse?::

  “Yes.” I tucked our tangled fingers under my chin. “Before the eclipse.”

  “But the bones are in the empire.”

  “Maybe,” I whispered. “It’s just a dream. Maybe they’re not real.”

  “Maybe they are.” He scooted closer. “Ask Nine.”

  I snorted. “That won’t be strange. Hello, Nine, I know we just met and you don’t like me, but I’ve been having dreams about enormous dragon bones located somewhere in your vast and ever-growing empire. Can you confirm whether that’s true?”

  The bed shook a little, and his breath hitched. He was laughing.

  I grinned into the darkness. I couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed.

  After a moment, he pulled his hand free of mine and cupped my cheek. When the heel of his palm brushed my lips, we both went still. Didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. Then he whispered, “Thank you.”

  I didn’t ask why, because we both knew. And I didn’t remind him that I’d been here this whole time, because that wouldn’t solve anything. Instead, I closed my eyes and kissed his fingertips one at a time. Then: “Let’s go to sleep.”

  “Will you dream of dragons?”

  “Listen and find out.”

  THE DRAKONTOS CELESTUS

  EVEN FOR DRAGONS, FLYING WAS INCREDIBLE.

  The sensation of wind under wings, the feel of fire burning inside, and the absolute defiance of gravity: it was a new joy every time. Even the way shadows fell, like grounded echoes of clouds. Or dragons. These wings stretched wide, casting darkness over the world, one piece at a time.

  And from above, everything looked small, like toys. The waves, ships, and even the islands themselves, if one could only get high enough. The whole world spread below, a map of everything that mattered.

  A map of everything that would soon disappear.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  THE MOMENT THE CURFEW WAS LIFTED, AARU AND I were out the door—hurrying toward the address Nine had given us.

  Dawn hovered just below the horizon, purple and deep blue. Only a few people moved through the streets—fishers, bakers, cart vendors—but if they noticed Aaru and me, they showed no interest. They trudged on with heavy, downcast eyes, looking as wrung out as we felt. They probably hadn’t been up half the night looking for an imperial spy, but the need—real or manufactured—for martial law was taking a toll on everyone.

  Nine had sent us to a shoe shop, one I’d passed by several times during my market visits, and even glanced into during the gown-shopping excursion with Ilina and Zara. It seemed like a strange place to meet a spy, but then again, what did I know about spies? Maybe this was perfectly normal.

  Before I could try the door, Nine let us in. She wore regular clothes, rather than the guard uniform from last night. Eerie how easy it was for them to move among us, unnoticed.

  “Are you living here?” I glanced around, but it was just a typical shop: shoes on display, shoes packed onto shelves, and a small polishing station to help protect against the red dust that touched every part of Flamecrest.

  “Where I live is none of your concern.” She waved us into the back room, which was cramped with stores of leather and cotton and all manner of equipment. There was nowhere to sit, aside from a single stool, so we all remained standing. “I’ll get you into the summit,” she said, “but I need to hear everything about how Seven died.”

  “No.” It was too uncomfortable of a topic, partly because it was my fault Seven had died, and partly because the events revealed too much about my connection with dragons. She was a spy, after all. She worked for the Algotti Empire. Information about Seven’s death was one of the few things I had to bargain with. “I’ll tell you after the summit.”

  Her gaze was steady. Dark. But at last she nodded. “Very well. But I must know what he told you regarding events in the Fallen Isles. How much do you know about our purpose here?”

  We glared at each other for a moment while I considered what she could use against me later, and finally I conceded. “I thought you’d come to see what your empress had bought with the Mira Treaty,” I said, “but Seven claimed you came to investigate the disasters.”

  “That’s right.” She began rifling through a box sitting on one of the tables. “Our empress wanted to know how your problems would affect us. We may be far from you, but waves originating from the Fallen Isles have touched our shores.” She frowned, as though we’d personally done that to her. “But instead of mere geological activity, we’ve found evidence of a civil war brewing.”

  “Anahera,” I murmured.

  She pulled a pair of trousers from the box. There seemed nothing special about them, but she nodded to herself. “Here.” She tossed them at Aaru. “Put these on.”

  Aaru paled, but Nine didn’t look ready to offer him another place to change to protect his delicate sensibilities, so he edged around a pile of crates, and I turned my back.


  “It seems,” Nine said, digging through the box again, “the high magistrate intends to keep this island planted firmly in the sea by collecting all the dragons he can find.”

  “That’s my theory as well.” I caught the trousers she sent flying my way. “Our holy books tell us that the dragons are the children of the gods, and that they entreat the gods on our behalf. The Great Abandonment is because of a broken covenant: we haven’t taken care of the dragons, and so there are too few to speak for us.”

  “I know.” She threw a shirt at Aaru. “I’ve read all of your holy books.”

  “You have?”

  She scoffed. “Of course. You don’t expect me to come here, knowing nothing about your culture or society, and try to remain invisible, do you?” She found another shirt for me. “So he gathered all those dragons to the ruins, believing their presence would save Anahera.”

  And then my friends and I had not only freed the dragons, but destroyed the ruins as well.

  “How do you think their disappearance affects his plans?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.” I began switching my clothes for the ones she’d given me. “Dragons have no quarrel with the goddess of destruction, only the man ruling the island, so they could still be here.” My heart ached at the memory of all those dragons lying there, sick and trapped in their own minds.

  “He won’t rely on that.”

  “No,” I agreed. “He won’t. I didn’t want to believe that one island could betray the others, even after everything Seven said. But the evidence is too strong. The dragons, the new fleet, bringing what’s left of the governments here.”

  Nine shot me a look that might have been described as sympathetic, but she didn’t seem like the kind of person to express such feelings. “I believe he intends to establish his rule here and hold out as long as possible.”

  “I suppose, but what if the Great Abandonment doesn’t work like he thinks?” I finished changing into the clothes she’d given me. “What if it doesn’t matter whether he has dragons here? Anahera might still rise.”

  “He has ships.” Aaru appeared from behind the crates. The clothes didn’t look like much—just shapeless and gray, the same sort that I was wearing now. On both of us, the sleeves and trousers were too short, as if Nine had given us her own clothes.

  Nine nodded at him. “Perhaps the high magistrate intends to find another place to bring his chosen few, once the time is right. There are other islands in this ocean, you know. And other oceans. Other continents across the horizon. There’s an entire world out there, beyond these shores.”

  I knew that. Mostly. I’d just . . . never thought anyone from the Fallen Isles would ever want to leave. This was our home. The seat of our power. The place where our gods rested beneath our feet.

  We were destroying it.

  I plucked at the sad, gray clothes. “What is this? How will this help us get into the summit?”

  “We’ll walk right in.”

  “In this?” I gestured at the too-short sleeves and how silly everything looked on Aaru.

  Nine smiled. Really smiled, not just the smirk she’d used on us before. “Your island magic is interesting. I know people back home who’d love to study it. Our empress finds it fascinating, in fact. But let me give you a taste of the empire’s power.”

  Then she took a small metal device from the box and pressed her fingers against the flat side that faced her. She murmured something under her breath, too soft for me to hear—and when I glanced at Aaru, he just shook his head. When she finished whispering, Nine drew a short metal rod from inside the device and tapped it against my sleeve.

  My shirt transformed into the flame-blue top of an Anaheran guard uniform.

  I jumped and, embarrassingly, squeaked out a panicked yelp. Nine laughed and tapped my trousers, and they, too, transformed. Miraculously—magically—they were even long enough now.

  “What did you do?” Alarm filled Aaru’s voice as he backed away from Nine. “What is that?”

  “This”—she lifted the device—“is magic. Real magic.” She tapped the rod onto Aaru’s clothes and grinned while the gray fabric rearranged itself into the uniform of the high magistrate’s guards. Then she changed hers, too. “Bring your own clothes. We’ll stash them away for later.”

  My heart finally slowed to a normal rate while Aaru and I pressed our things into a small knapsack Nine lent us. The magic device went back into its box—it was probably far too dangerous to bring that with us—and Nine pulled out a sheet of paper with a hasty sketch of the Red Hall and the chamber where the summit would be held.

  “Now,” she said, “here’s how this is going to happen.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  WHEN I WAS YOUNGER, VISITING THE LUMINARY Council’s chamber felt like something between a punishment and a treat. I hated politics, but I loved the marble columns and gold inlay, the brilliant noorestones, and the light and open airy feeling. I’d always thought that room, designed by the First Masters, was the height of architectural beauty.

  But now, I saw the Fire Ministry’s chambers, and I understood what true power and wealth could offer.

  It was all polished bloodwood, with seven tiers that descended toward the main floor and the high magistrate’s bench. Public and private galleries stood above, providing a space for carefully chosen citizens to come see their government at work. The furniture—long rows of desks—and even the staircases were painstakingly carved with decorative swirls and, on the bigger pieces, detailed etchings of their goddess’s great works.

  Even though the fifty noorestones shone their usual white-blue, the room looked red. Rich. Forbidding.

  Nine had given us strict instructions on how to move, where to stand, and the need for us to do exactly as she ordered. “I’ve worked too hard to earn the trust of the high magistrate and his guard,” she’d explained. “I don’t need the two of you ruining everything in a day.”

  I couldn’t imagine how she’d managed to get herself inserted into the high magistrate’s personal guard, let alone the two of us, but when I asked, she simply said she wasn’t going to tell islanders her secrets. We were, after all, supposed to be enemies.

  So when we arrived in the chambers, we took our positions and waited while the rest of the Red Hall security escorted the dignitaries to their seats.

  The chairs filled up quickly, first with the thirty members of the Fire Ministry. Nine had said they usually took up the entire chamber, with seats next to them for their aides, but now all the ministers sat to the western side to leave room for the rest. There were no aides today.

  The Twilight Senate came next, followed by all the Hartan matriarchs, then the Warrior Tribunal. Last, Mother entered, the sole representative of Damyan and Darina.

  No one came to represent Idris.

  I was stationed near the grand double doors at the back of the room, which meant that everyone had to walk past me, yet no one actually noticed. From here, I had a wide view of the chamber, and also Aaru—and his hands. We’d be able to communicate by quiet code.

  Meanwhile, Nine was positioned near the high magistrate’s bench, her posture straight and waiting. Anyone could see her there, but that was her best way of blending in. After all, who expected an imperial spy in the Fallen Isles? And in the high magistrate’s personal guard? Nine had the perfect disguise, and though she was small, no one could mistake her for anything but deadly. She and Gerel would probably get along as well as sisters.

  Movement sounded in the galleries above. Thirty or so people began to file in—some I’d seen last night, or during my previous visits to Anahera. They were all high-end merchants, bankers, or traders: Anaheran elite with a connection to the high magistrate.

  Where were the regular people?

  Well, I knew that answer. Regular people hadn’t been invited. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have needed Nine’s help to get in. Only Paorah’s friends were allowed to watch today. Maybe every day.

  As everyone began to settle
into their seats, the hum of voices echoed off the polished wood and obscured any single voice, but from what I could tell of people’s profiles, they mostly wore curious, expectant expressions—and as the door near the high magistrate’s bench opened, everyone grew quiet.

  Paorah stepped into the room, robed in deep gold and red, and flanked by a pair of guards. He went to the floor, rather than his bench, and there he studied everyone he’d brought here—by force or by invitation.

  “Welcome, friends.” He gazed around the chamber as the last of the murmurs died, and then said, “Thank you all for coming.”

  As though they’d been given a choice.

  “Last night, we attended a memorial for our brothers and sisters on Idris,” he went on, “but let us take another moment to remember the Silent Brothers, who are forever silenced, and the Luminary Council, who were murdered by rogue warriors just a decan ago.”

  Everyone bowed their heads. One of the matriarchs who’d been seated near Mother reached out and offered a hand to hold.

  A moment passed.

  Then another.

  I met Aaru’s eyes—briefly, before anyone could see—and we, too, shared a moment. Of understanding. Of grief. Of longing for a world that didn’t exist anymore.

  Then the high magistrate cleared his throat and looked up, and so did everyone else.

  “Seventeen years ago, all the governments of the Fallen Isles came together in an unprecedented way: we signed the Mira Treaty. In it, we united ourselves against our enemies on the mainland. We enacted safeguards to protect the dragons of our islands. And we declared that all of us are equal in the eyes of our gods, and that no island should be held below others. We bow only to the light of Noore.”

  I could not help but notice the gold-inlaid flame carved into the front of the bench behind him. The Great Flame: Anahera’s fire.

  “Some of you may remember,” he said, “that I campaigned against the Mira Treaty.”