Red Queen(23)

My mind runs wild, wondering what could require a shield made of lightning. Not a bear or a pack of wolves or any of the rare beasts of the forest. Even the creatures of myth, great cats or sea sharks or dragons, would pose no harm to the many Silvers above. And why would there be beasts at Queenstrial? This is supposed to be a ceremony to choose queens, not fight monsters.

As if answering me, the ground in the circle of statues, now the small center of the cylinder floor, opens wide. Without thinking, I push forward, hoping to get a better look with my own eyes. The rest of the servants crowd with me, trying to see what horrors this chamber can bring forth.

The smallest girl I’ve ever seen rises out of darkness.

Cheers rise as a house in brown silk and red gemstones applauds their daughter.

“Rohr, of House Rhambos,” the family shouts, announcing her to the world.

The girl, no more than fourteen, smiles up at her family. She’s tiny in comparison to the statues, but her hands are strangely large. The rest of her looks liable to blow away in a strong breeze. She takes a turn about the ring of statues, always smiling upward. Her gaze lands on Cal—I mean the prince—trying to entice him with her doe eyes or the occasional flip of honey-blond hair. In short, she looks foolish. Until she approaches a solid stone statue and sloughs its head off with a single, simple slap.

House Rhambos speaks again. “Strongarm.”

Below us, little Rohr destroys the floor in a whirlwind, turning statues into pulverized piles of dust while she cracks the ground beneath her feet. She’s like an earthquake in tiny human form, breaking apart anything and everything in her way.

So this is a pageant.

A violent one, meant to showcase a girl’s beauty, splendor—and strength. The most talented daughter. This is a display of power, to pair the prince with the most powerful girl, so that their children might be the strongest of all. And this has been going on for hundreds of years.

I shudder to think of the strength in Cal’s pinkie finger.

He claps politely as the Rhambos girl finishes her display of organized destruction and steps back onto the descending platform. House Rhambos cheers for her as she disappears.

Next comes Heron of House Welle, the daughter of my own governor. She’s tall, with a face like her bird namesake. The destroyed earth shifts around her as she puts the floor back together. “Greenwarden,” her family chants. A greeny. At her command, trees grow tall in the blink of an eye, their tops scraping against the lightning shield. It sparks where the boughs touch, setting fire to the fresh leaves. The next girl, a nymph of House Osanos, rises to the occasion. Using the waterfall fountains, she douses the contained forest fire in a hurricane of whitewater, leaving only charred trees and scorched earth.

This goes on for what feels like hours. Each girl rises up to show her worth, and each one finds a more destroyed arena, but they’re trained to deal with anything. They range in age and appearance, but they are all dazzling. One girl, barely twelve years old, explodes everything she touches like some kind of walking bomb. Oblivion, her family shouts, describing her power. As she obliterates the last of the white statues, the lightning shield holds firm. It hisses against her fire, and the noise shrieks in my ears.

The electricity, the Silvers, and the shouts blur in my head as I watch nymphs and greenys, swifts, strongarms, telkies, and what seems like a hundred other kinds of Silver show off beneath the shield. Things I never dreamed possible happen before my eyes, as girls turn their skin to stone or scream apart walls of glass. The Silvers are greater and stronger than I ever feared, with powers I never even knew existed. How can these people be real?

I’ve come all this way and suddenly I’m back in the arena, watching Silvers display everything we are not.

I want to marvel in awe as a creature-controlling animos calls down a thousand doves from the sky. When birds dive headfirst into the lightning shield, bursting in little clouds of blood, feathers, and deadly electricity, my awe turns to disgust. The shield sparks again, burning up what’s left of the birds until it shines like new. I almost retch at the sound of applause when the cold-blooded animos sinks back into the floor.

Another girl, hopefully the last, rises into an arena now reduced to dust.

“Evangeline, of House Samos,” yells the patriarch of the silver-haired family. He speaks alone, and his voice echoes across the Spiral Garden.

From my vantage point, I notice the king and queen sit up a bit straighter. Evangeline already has their attention. In stark contrast, Cal looks down at his hands.

While the other girls wore silk dresses and a few had strange, gilded armor, this Evangeline rises in an outfit of black leather. Jacket, pants, boots, all studded with hard silver. No, not silver. Iron. Silver is not so dull or hard. Her house cheers for her, all of them on their feet. She belongs to Ptolemus and the patriarch, but others cheer too, other families. They want her to be queen. She is the favorite. She salutes, two fingers to her brow, first to her family and then to the king’s box. They return the gesture, blatantly favoring this Evangeline.