The Red Queen #dragon

Chapter 1

If Riselda Fisher couldn't scratch up enough money before the Long Winter, her family would starve. Still, she put on a brave face, trying to keep her flighty sister down in one place long enough to finish weaving her hair.

  "Hold still, Grisha."  

"Do I have to go to school, Red?" Grisha asked, trying to turn her head around.

Riselda snapped Grisha's head back in place, sighing.

"Red" was something Mother started when the first word Riselda had spoken wasn't mamma or papa, but red. Bychance, it had been a Red Summer that year. The harvests were shriveled from the sun's fire, and the freefolk starved just like they would starve come the Long Winter.

Red gently turned her fidgety sister roundabout to continue her soon-to-be-completed work of art, a milkmaid braid that wrapped the crown of her sister's head. Red's teeth held the rabbit bone pins that would secure the braid. One by one, she stuck the pins into the crucial points as she held the halo in place with her right hand.

"Yes, Grisha," Riselda said softly, turning her sister around to inspect the job in the dim, dust-swept room.

Only eight years, Grisha already bore the marks of beauty that her mother once had before drugs stole it; poverty, however, couldn't steal Grisha's imperial cheekbones, her cerulean eyes, her gold flaxen hair.

Riselda had inherited her father's mane of red hair, a feature some boys around the Hovel thought was a fair feature. But it was her only fair feature, because she'd also inherited her father's hard nose, his cobalt eyes, and his manly hands.

Grisha rolled her eyes at the moldy beams overhead. "But all we do is learn of the Empire's stupid history. It's boring. And I'm always hungry, sister."

A jolt of fear seized Riselda's muscles. She grabbed Grisha's rail-like arms and shook her till her eyes were wide as bowls, eyes too large for such an elfin face.

"Please tell me you haven't spoken badly of the Empire to anyone—anyone."

Taken aback, Grisha shook her head like she'd witnessed murder. "No. Only you."

Ulfric the Old had disappeared two nights before, and Abena Thoole, a woman known as the ear of the Hovel, had spread word that Ulfric had been back-stabbed by one of his long-time friends after talking ill of the Empire.

Ulfric's disappearance wasn't happenstance. Folks vanished when they spoke poorly of the Empire. It was just better to keep your mouth shut.

"Are you sure, Grisha?"

"You're hurting me," Grisha said, wincing.

"Sorry, but you have to be careful. Please."

"You sound like Mother before..."

Before she stopped being a mother, Riselda thought. "Because I love you, Grisha, and should anything happen to you I will have nothing left."

Grisha groaned, rolling her eyes. She was the sort of person who loved experiencing life and its many rough corners. Already she'd kissed a boy, fought with several girls, drank from the suspect groundwater, and talked back to her betters. Yesterday, Riselda had gotten a letter from the Owlry saying that if she should continue her poor behavior, the administration would have no choice but to report her to the Empire as being from the flesh of a witch.

At times, Riselda admired Grisha's free spirit, but Grisha's spirit was the kind the Empire smothered. If she could, she'd relocate her family to the Jarl March, where the streets were paved white and the rosewood gables gleamed crimson in the morning sun. But her job at the Bestiary paid little.