Essie nodded.
“You’ll be thought of as weak.”
Essie said nothing.
“You’ll be seen as a girl who belongs nowhere and to no one.”
Essie held their father’s gaze. “I know where I belong,” she said. “And to whom.”
As if that were enough.
Their father lowered the knife, looking from Essie to Roa, his eyes pleading for her help. But one glance at Essie’s face and Roa knew there would be no convincing her.
Roa reached to take the blade, staring at the hilt of her sister’s earning.Earned by Essie,the inscription read,daughter of the House of Song.The blades might be different, but the hilts were exactly the same. Both inlaid with alabaster. Both engraved with the same star.
A perfect match.
“I’ll hold on to it for her,” said Roa. “In case she changes her mind.”
Nine
After dinner, Roa and Essie set out for the former dragon queen’s room.
Roa’sroom now.
With the sun setting, it was cooler in the east wing’s halls. Roa pulled her sandskarf up over her head to keep the warmth in.
The house had been modeled after the round homes scrublanders were known for, with a terra-cotta roof and a central pavilion. But this house had too many wings for a scrublander home, and in this way it borrowed from Firgaardian architecture, too. The gardens were full of highland roses, juniper trees, jacarandas, and other plants native to both Roa’s home and Dax’s. It was a perfect blend of both, and a reminder that before she’d become queen, Dax’s mother was a scrublander.
Amina, who’d been born into the House of Stars, was childhood friends with Roa’s mother. Roa remembered the first time the queen came to visit them. She and Jas were playing gods and monsters on the floor of her father’s study and Roa was about to take his skyweaver piece when the queen stepped into the roomand lowered herself to her knees at Roa’s side. Roa remembered the way her beautiful layers of blue silk pooled onto the dirt floor. Remembered the thin golden circlet shining above her glittering black eyes.
She was perfect. Like a painting.
Now, as Roa’s bare feet padded the tile floors, she wondered what it had been like for Amina, living all the way across the sand sea. Being separated from her loved ones. Beingqueen.
Theo had compared Roa to Amina, believing they were both victims whose stories would end the same way.
I don’t believe that,Essie interrupted from her perch on Roa’s shoulder. Her sister had been quiet and distant all day, but the hum was back. Bright and strong, linking them both.
As Roa approached a familiar door, she looked to her sister.Believe what?
That Amina was a victim.
Roa wasn’t so sure.
I think she knew exactly what she was walking into,said Essie.I think she had her own reasons for marrying him.
Maybe,Roa thought.Or maybe she didn’t realize he was a monster until too late.
A scrublander symbol had been carved into this door: three vertical lines, confined in a circle. It was the same symbol painted above her father’s study. Roa lifted her fingers, tracing the lines.
“We’ve passed this door three times,” she said aloud, sighing heavily. “I think we’re lost.”
Roa’s tracing fingers must have pressed too hard, because the door creaked and swung slowly in.
Her fingers paused in midair.
“Hello?”
