Alinore tried to imagine ascending into that lofty wilderness, waiting to be set upon by a mighty, fierce beast. She shuddered. ‘So no one ever sees the dragons?’
‘Not on the day of the Maiden Sacrifice, but I’ve seen dragons before. Sometimes you can spot them in the distance.’
‘And do they breathe fire?’ asked Alinore.
There were paintings of dragons in the castle gallery and she enjoyed seeking them out whenever she could slip away from her maid. The dragons depicted were all different: some stocky and crouching, others lithe and looming; some the dark greens and browns of the mountains, others brightly coloured and ornate. Alinore was not sure what was real and what was mere embellishment.
‘Do they have long fangs?’ she added. ‘And spikes on their tails?’
Before he could answer, Princess Cressyda stepped forward and said, ‘Ottone, our mother is waiting for you. She’s unwell this morning.’
A knowing look passed between them.
Alinore had never wished she had siblings – she enjoyed having her father’s full attention on the rare occasions he was home – but she thought now that she would quite like an older brother like Prince Ottone. Someone kind and knowing.
‘All right,’ he sighed. ‘Let’s get this over with.’ He pushed himself off the battlements and stretched. He was only one winter older, but a whole head and shoulders taller than Alinore and almost three times as broad. ‘The Maiden Sacrifice is grim for everyone,’ he added. ‘I’m sorry, Lady Alinore, I can’t imagine how it’ll seem if you’ve never experienced it before. I hope today isn’t too difficult for you.’
Alinore stooped into one of her elaborate curtseys as PrinceOttone walked away. The Princess fell into step behind him, without a backward glance, and they drifted across the battlements together, dark heads bent, jewelled clothes gleaming in the sunlight. By the time Alinore had straightened again, they were gone.
She turned back to the scene below, stepping closer to the edge, placing her hands against the warm stone. Guards were stringing flags from the colonnades on the left side of the main square, while attendants hammered the bones of a stage into the centre, all watched over by a rowdy crowd. They were a loud, wine-flushed gaggle, laughing, pressed shoulder to shoulder as though they were awaiting a festival rather than a rite of death.
Alinore pursed her lips. A strange churn of anticipation and anxiousness rolled around her stomach.
She tried to picture the chosen girl – the Maiden Sacrifice. Eighteen winters old, at the very cusp of life beginning, only to have it cut short. She wondered what it would feel like to stand on that stage below, knowing you were being sentenced to death. She imagined the ride into the mountains later, the dark procession winding upwards into mist, towards the lair of something ancient and merciless. She imagined the cold. The fear. And then the dragon. A real dragon. Not something from a painting or tapestry, not a monster from a tale or ballad, but something alive and seething with fire.
She wondered how it felt, in those final moments. Not just to die, but to burn.
Cressyda
SHE HAD NOTstopped thinking about the creature. That thing. The red-eyed, shadowed woman from the Sanctuary. Its shiny, pearlescent skin and hollow, unnatural face. Its thin, bloodless lips and long, wet strands of hair. The terrible pitch of its hissing voice:Greetings.
The memory had haunted Cressyda for the last few days. She had dutifully paraded through the gruesome rituals of the Maiden Sacrifice ceremony: witnessed the Mountain girl announced, sat through the feast, watched the dancing, and responded to Queen Flavria’s every beck and call as usual, but always she had been thinking of that awful being. Always she had been wondering what it could possibly be and why only she seemed able to see it.
Shadowed beings had lingered at the edges of Cressyda’s vision for as long as she could remember. Faint, shifting figures that no one else noticed. Smoke-like shapes watching from corners, trailing her through corridors, melting away when she turned her head. She had learnt to ignore them, to keep her eyes fixed forward andher mouth shut, pretending they were no more than tricks of light. She had hoped they would one day disappear into nothing. But this red-eyed creature had looked solid and real – clearer than any shadow she had ever seen before. And it had spoken to her in that strange, vibrating whisper:Greetings.
It meant something. There was a reason that she could see these shadows, whatever they were. Perhaps demons or spirits or figments of a madness. And Cressyda worried that it meant the very thing she most feared – that she did not belong here.
Finally, she could not stand it any longer.
Three days after the Maiden Sacrifice ceremony, Cressyda lay curled in her bed, waiting. When the footsteps of guards trudging past her chamber on nightly patrol had ceased and the muffled giggles of courtiers embracing on balconies had quietened, she crept from beneath her woollen blankets and tiptoed into the corridor.
In the gloom of midnight, Syonno Castle looked different, and at first Cressyda hesitated. She rarely ventured around the castle alone and never at night, but desperation had made her bold. Dark passageways wound away like twisting caves, torch brackets stood empty, their iron mouths gaping, and the moonlight that bled through narrow windows lay in long, pale bars across the terracotta floor. But Cressyda gripped her nightrobe around her shoulders and willed herself forward, scurrying down hallways and scampering up stone steps, knowing that she had to do something. She could not ignore the shadows any more.
Spotting the door to the castle’s library ahead, Cressyda rushed towards it, bare feet pattering. Slipping inside, she peered around the dim, oval room lined with shelf upon shelf of books, inhaling the scent of dusty parchment, aged leather and old candle smoke. She had studied in the library a few times over the winters duringlessons, and she had aways thought it a calm, peaceful place, but she had never come here alone before.
Padding across the thick rugs scattered on the floor, she approached one of the bookshelves and squinted at the long line of spines. She did not know what she was looking for exactly – perhaps something that might explain what the shadowed beings were – but she had no idea where she might find such a thing. Scanning a row of titles, she pulled out a few volumes on zoology and beast studies, carrying them to a nearby chair. Clambering into the seat, she took the first book and began flicking through the pages, tilting it towards the moonlight peeking through the shutters.
She carefully leafed past illustrations of deer, elk and moose before reaching the end. With a sigh, she cast it aside and pulled the next volume on to her lap, skimming through descriptions of bison, buffalo and cattle. Then the next book. And the next one. With a sinking feeling gathering in her stomach, Cressyda leafed through all the volumes she had carried from the shelf, but none of them held what she was looking for: no strange, slithering creatures with hunched, peculiar bodies or shadowed, ethereal beings. She glanced across the room to the zoology section and began counting the many volumes on the shelf, stopping after she had reached fifty. It would take a long time to look through them all. And that was before she had even started on the other sections: histories, biographies and magical basics.
Carrying the stack of books back, Cressyda carefully replaced each one, stifling a yawn. She was about to turn to the next pile of tomes when she noticed pale, yellowish light drifting across the room. Turning, she saw daylight peeking through the chinks of the shutters at the window.
Morning.
She bit her lip, heavy disappointment churning with panic in her chest. She had been so sure that she would be able to find the answers she was looking for tonight. She had hoped for so much more. Looking around at the vast, floor-to-ceiling stacks of books, she realized the immensity of the task that lay ahead. It would take many moons – probably many winters – to search every book.
With one last longing look at the shelves, Cressyda turned away and slipped out of the room. As she crept back down the castle corridors, dodging a gaggle of scullery maids striding about to begin their morning chores, and a lone guard patrolling a hallway, she promised herself that she would return to the library again at nightfall. She would come back day after day if she had to. She could not let herself give up. The truth must lie somewhere in there. She just had to find it.
Cressyda trudged into her chamber, rubbing her eyes. She stumbled towards her bed, wondering if she could snatch some sleep before the morning Sanctuary bells started ringing, but when she reached the soft, inviting warmth of her blankets, she paused. Longing tugged at her chest like an itch. She turned and crossed to the far wall instead, where a heavy tapestry concealed a recess. Sweeping it aside, she opened a narrow cupboard set deep into the stone and pulled out a wooden box brimming with ribbons. Bright silks tumbled one on top of another, frothing over her wrists in a cascade of colours. She flicked them aside, digging deep inside the box until her fingers closed around what she was looking for.
