The Dragon King’s Rejected Mate

When the Dragon King refused me, every dragon in Emberhold bowed its head. Every dragon except the one buried under his throne. An hour before my life ended, I was holding a bucket of dragon dung. "You smell like the Roost," Juno said, wrinkling her freckled nose as we hurried down the servants' stairs. "I work in the Roost." "Tonight you're supposed to smell like a lady." She grabbed the bucket out of my hand and shoved it into a corner. "Half the kingdom is up there. The envoys from all five Houses are up there. The king is up there." My stomach did the thing it always did when someone said the king. It rolled over like a hatchling that's eaten a boot. I ignored it. I'd had two years of practice. "The king," I said, "doesn't care what a keeper smells like." Juno gave me a look. She was the only person alive who knew why I couldn't say his name without my voice going flat. She was also the only person alive who'd sooner swallow a coal than tell. "Come on," she said. "Let's go watch a man get his heart picked by magic." --- The Hall of Flame was built inside the mouth of the old volcano. The walls were black glass. The floor was red marble veined with gold. A thousand candles burned in iron rings over our heads and dripped wax on anyone too poor to stand somewhere better, which was us. Tonight was the Ember Moon. It rose only once every few years, and under the first one of a new king's reign, his dragon fire chose his mate. The highborn ladies of Emberhold stood in a half-circle near the throne, glittering in red and gold silk. Every one of them had scales. Small ones, set along their cheekbones and collarbones like jewelry they'd been born wearing. Every one of them could shift into a dragon the size of a house. They stood the way prize hens stand at a market. Chins up. Feathers smoothed. Each one pretending not to watch the others. I was a half-born. No scales. No wings. No fire. Just a girl from the lower city who was good with animals and bad at keeping her mouth shut. Keepers like me stood at the back wall, holding the chains of the old dragons. Tradition said the dragons had to witness the Kindling. Tradition never said who'd clean up after them. I took Bramble's chain from the keeper beside me. Bramble was ancient, blind in one eye, and had the temper of a tax collector with a toothache. He pressed his huge scaled head into my shoulder and huffed hot breath down the back of my neck. "I know," I whispered. "I don't want to be here either." Then the doors at the top of the hall opened, and everyone went silent. King Lucan Draven walked in. He was taller than I remembered. Or maybe the crown did that. His hair was black and fell to his collar. His coat was black too, stitched with thread of real gold. And his eyes, even from the back of the hall, were the color of honey held up to a lamp. Two years on the throne had changed him. His face was sharper. Harder. He didn't look at the crowd. He looked through it, the way a stallion looks through a fence he's already decided not to jump. I told myself I felt nothing. Gran always says lying to yourself is the only lie that never gets caught. She's wrong. I caught myself every single time. Behind him walked the High Flamekeeper, Orrin Sallow, in his white robes. He had a soft, kind face and a voice like warm milk. Everyone loved Orrin. Children brought him flowers. Bramble growled as he passed. Low and deep, a sound I felt in my back teeth. Eight years in the Roost had taught me one rule above all others. When an old dragon growls at a man, you count your fingers after you shake his hand. "Hush," I murmured, rubbing Bramble's snout. "Be nice." Near the throne stood the envoys of the Concord of Five. I'd never seen them before. A woman in sea-green with pearls woven into her braids. A gray old man wrapped in robes the color of ash. A slim figure in a hooded silver cloak whose eyes flashed gold, like a fox's in a lantern beam. And a man so beautiful he didn't look real. Silver hair. Green eyes. A crown of black thorns resting on his head as if it weighed nothing at all. He was looking straight at me. I looked away fast. You don't hold eye contact with anything that pretty. Not in the Roost, and not anywhere else. --- Orrin raised his hands. "People of Emberhold. Honored guests of the Concord. Tonight the king's fire will choose the one who will stand beside him. The bond of the Kindling is older than our kingdom. It cannot be faked. It cannot be forced." He turned to Lucan. "Your Majesty. Call your fire." Lucan held out his right hand, palm up. For one breath, nothing happened. Then a flame bloomed in his palm. Small at first. Gold, then orange, then a deep, glowing red. It rose into the air above his hand and hung there, turning slowly, the way a dragon's head turns when it's choosing which sheep. The crowd gasped. The flame drifted toward the half-circle of ladies. It passed the Lady Isolde Vire, daughter of the High Marshal, the woman everyone knew Lucan was going to marry. She lifted her chin as it floated near her. Her father, a big gray-bearded man in armor, smiled like a man who'd already spent the dowry. The flame kept going. It drifted past the ladies. It drifted over the heads of the lords. It floated down the length of the hall, slow and lazy, and people turned to follow it, whispering. It floated toward the back wall. Toward the keepers. Toward me. "No," I whispered. Juno grabbed my arm. The flame stopped in front of my face. It was warm, like sun through a window. It smelled like cedar smoke and the night air in the Roost, like the leather of a prince's coat on a cold night two years ago. Then it went into my wrist. It didn't hurt. That's what I remember. It should have hurt. Instead it felt like coming home after a long shift and finding the fire already lit. Heat rushed up my arm and into my chest. When I looked down, a mark was burning into the inside of my wrist, gold and red, shaped like a dragon with its wings spread. The hall went dead silent. Every head turned. Hundreds of highborn faces stared at me. A half-born keeper with dung on her boots, holding a blind dragon's chain. "A keeper?" someone said. Someone laughed. Then more people laughed. I lifted my eyes and found Lucan at the far end of the hall. He wasn't laughing. He was staring at me like he'd been kicked in the chest by something big. For one breath, I saw him. The real him. The boy who used to sit in the straw with me at midnight, feeding a sick hatchling with a spoon and making terrible jokes. The boy who called me Keeper. The boy who kissed me once, the night before he was crowned, and then vanished from my life like smoke out a chimney. Then the mask came back down. He walked toward me. The crowd parted. His boots rang on the marble, slow and steady, and every step landed on my ribs. He stopped an arm's length away. Close enough that I could see the gold flecks in his eyes. Close enough that I could see his jaw was clenched so tight a muscle jumped in his cheek. "What is your name?" he asked. He knew my name. He'd whispered it against my mouth. "Mara Kestrel," I said. My voice didn't shake. I was proud of that later. "Keeper of the Roost. Your Majesty." Something moved behind his face. Then it was gone. He turned to Orrin. "The fire has spoken. Does the law allow refusal?" "It does, Majesty," Orrin said gently. "If the king believes the bond would harm the kingdom, he may refuse it. The fire returns to him. The mark fades. It has been done before." The High Marshal Vire stepped forward. "Your Majesty. The kingdom needs a strong queen. A highborn queen. Not a stable girl." The laughter came again. I wanted to drop through the floor. I wanted to scream at him that he knew me, that he'd told me things he'd never told anyone, that I was more than a stable girl. I didn't. I stood there and held Bramble's chain. You don't run in front of a pack. Gran taught me that about dogs. It turns out it works on lords too. Lucan looked at me one more time. "I'm sorry," he said. So quietly that only I could hear. Then he raised his voice so the whole hall could hear. "By flame and blood, I refuse this bond." My wrist flared white-hot. This time it hurt. Pain shot up my arm, through my chest, into my teeth. I bit my lip so hard I tasted blood. Juno held me up. Bramble roared. Then every dragon in the hall lowered its head to the floor. It was the old custom. When a king refused a bond, the dragons bowed to show the kingdom accepted his choice. I'd seen it in paintings. I'd just never pictured myself in one. Bramble lowered his great head. The other old dragons along the wall did the same, their chains clinking. The laughter turned to applause. I stared at the floor and waited for the mark to fade, the way Orrin said it would. The way the law said it would. It didn't fade. It burned brighter. That's when the floor cracked. It started under the throne. A sound like a boulder splitting. Then a c***k raced across the red marble, straight down the center of the hall, straight toward me. People screamed and scrambled back. Lords dragged their ladies away. Lucan's guards drew their swords. The c***k stopped at my feet. Heat poured up out of it. Not candle heat. Something older and deeper, like the breath of the volcano itself. And out of the c***k came a voice. It wasn't in my ears. It was in my bones, in my blood, in the burning mark on my wrist. It was the voice of something that had been dead for a very long time and was not happy about it. Every dragon in the hall lifted its head. "Maraveth," the voice said. I had never heard that name in my life. But my body knew it. My heart knew it. My wrist blazed like a coal somebody had blown on. "Maraveth Aurenne," the voice said. "Queen of my blood. You have come home." The hall was so quiet I could hear the candles drip. Then the High Flamekeeper Orrin Sallow, beloved by children, kind-faced and soft-voiced, turned whiter than his robes. "Seize her," he said. "Seize the witch before she wakes it." And the Dragon King's guards came for me.