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.
SEVEN
IT TOOK KOL, 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?”