The Shadow Queen

by C. J. Redwine

  “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 swe
pt 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.

  “Skies above, now that is a worthy human.” Trugg clapped his meaty hands once and glanced over his shoulder. “Trouble coming. Better hope that girl can open a gate as fast as she can climb a wall.”

  “My sister can do anything.” The girl’s brother leaped from the roof of a building to Kol’s right, rolled forward as he hit the ground, and came up to his feet like jumping off a building was as easy as walking down the street.

  The gate swung open, and the girl met Kol’s eyes. “Hurry up.”

  He didn’t need to be told twice. The Eldrians raced through the open gate, followed by the girl’s brother, and then she shut and locked it behind them. In moments, she’d led them deep into the trees where the shouting from the village couldn’t make a dent against the forest’s hush.

  As soon as she stopped moving and turned to face them, Kol dropped to one knee and touched his brow in the Eldrian gesture of fealty.

  “Why are you bowing to me?” The girl took a step back and gave her brother a look Kol couldn’t decipher. “You don’t bow unless you’re before royalty.” A thread of worry wrapped around her words.

  Kol slowly raised his head. “I’m not—this has nothing to do with royalty. You saved our lives. We owe you an incredible debt.”

  The girl glanced at her brother again, who spread his arms in a grand gesture and said, “We humbly accept your fealty on behalf of the— Hey!”

  The girl punched his shoulder and glared at him.

  He frowned and rubbed at the bruise. “I was just—”

  “About to say something you shouldn’t.” She gave him a look that must have meant something to the boy, because he dropped his eyes and kicked the ground with the toe of one boot. The girl met Kol’s gaze. “You don’t owe us anything. You should leave. Now.”

  “That’s kind of rude,” Jyn said.

  “Be quiet, Jyn. Have respect for the human who can run up walls,” Trugg said.

  “May I have your names?” Kol asked.

  “We’re nobody.” The girl’s brown eyes were guarded. She had a smudge of dirt on one pale cheek, and her long dark curls were tangled from her sprint through the village, but even so, she was beautiful in a way that made Kol want to keep looking. He smiled to show her he’d meant no harm and slowly rose to his feet.

  “You need to be much more careful. The people are starving, and they still owe taxes. Taxes they can’t pay. Unless they find another source of coin or food, they’ll either starve to death or be thrown in one of Irina’s dungeons. The last Eldrian refugees who came through here paid for food with jewels worth fifty times the price of their bread. The lucky people who gained those jewels were able to take their families and escape Ravenspire. Walking into one of the poorest villages in the kingdom looking as rich as Eldrian royalty is a tremendous risk.”

  Trugg cleared his throat and stepped forward. “We look as rich as Eldrian royalty because
he”—Trugg pointed at Kol who suddenly felt like his collar was too tight—“is royalty. I present to you King Kolvanismir Arsenyevnek, son of Ragvanisnar III, holder of the sky scepter and supreme ruler of Eldr.”

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  EIGHT

  LORELAI STARED AT the Eldrians, her cheeks heating. The handsome boy with the golden eyes and wild hair was a king? What would a king be doing walking into Tranke with only two escorts, both of whom looked no older than Lorelai herself?

  The boy seemed just as uncomfortable as she felt. He waved a hand in the air like he could swat his title away. “There’s no need for formality, really. I’m just Kol—”

  “You’re not old enough to be the king of Eldr, Kol.” Lorelai crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him. Did he think she was stupid? She didn’t know what the Eldrians hoped to gain by making such a ridiculous claim, but they weren’t going to get it from her. She’d spent years learning everything there was to know about the kingdoms that surrounded Ravenspire, and the king of Eldr was old enough to be this boy’s father. “I don’t know what you want here, but it’s time for you to go.”

  “You dare speak to him this way?” The girl with the short dark hair and sharp green eyes stepped toward Lorelai, but the huge, dark-skinned Eldrian boy put a hand on her shoulder to hold her back.

  Kol met her gaze, and grief lurked in his. “My father died in the ogre war. My older brother and my mother also.” His gaze drifted from hers as he opened his cloak to reveal the Eldrian royal seal—a bronze dragon with emeralds for eyes and wings studded with rubies—pinned to the inside just above his heart. “I’m the king of Eldr now.”

  She believed him. “I’m sorry for your loss.” And she was. But more than that, she needed to understand why the king of Eldr was in Tranke and whether that posed a danger to her people or to Leo, Gabril, and herself.