Crown of Hidden Scales novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Crown Chooses
At her betrothal rite the crown burns the prince's hand and leaps to Sabine, her hidden scales show, and the Warden comes to take her.
The crown went past Prince Edric's outstretched hand and into mine.
I did not reach for it.
My hands came up on their own.
The metal was hot, and it did not burn me.
Three hundred nobles stood in the throne hall with their mouths open.
Edric's right palm was smoking, with a red ring across it where the crown had refused him.
"Sabine," he said, very quietly. "Put it down."
I looked at the crown in my hands.
It was black iron, with a ridge of teeth along its brow.
The Wyrm Crown had sat in a glass case for a hundred and fifty years, waiting for a king whose scales would wake it.
Today was supposed to be Edric's rite.
He had stood on the dais in cloth of silver, with his sleeves rolled to the elbow.
Silver-green scales shone along both his forearms, and the whole court had sighed when he lifted the crown.
The scales had run down his arm and onto the floor.
I was standing near enough to see it.
It was paint.
I had known it was paint for three years, and I had said nothing, and I stood there holding the thing that had just shown the whole court so.
Then my own sleeve began to burn.
It was a soft heat.
I looked down and saw the satin of my left cuff split along the seam.
Under it my skin had gone to glass.
Silver-green plates rose up my wrist and over the back of my hand, each one the size of a fingernail, each one catching the light.
They were not painted.
They had been under my gown since the day I was born.
For twenty-four years I had bound them flat against my ribs and powdered them over, because my mother had taught me to, and then she had died.
Now they ran up my arms.
Someone screamed.
A noblewoman near the front fell to her knees and began to pray.
"Scaled," said a man by the door, in the voice you use for plague.
"Guards," said a calm voice from the dais.
Dowager Queen Hesper rose from the lesser throne.
She was fifty-three years old, in black silk, with her silver braids pinned up.
When she spoke, the whole hall went quiet to hear it.
"Lady Sabine Orrel carries the Burning in her blood," she said, as gently as if she were naming a dish at dinner.
"The law is old, and it is not mine to change."
"Take her to the Pit."
Eight guards started forward in a line.
I turned to Edric.
I had worn his ring for two years.
I had danced at his birthday, and sat through his father's funeral beside him.
"Edric," I said.
He took one step back from me.
His burned hand hung at his side, and with the other he wiped it on his coat.
"Don't say my name," he said.
"You hid this from me. You sat at my table and let me kiss you with that thing under your skin."
"You are a beast."
The word hit harder than the guards did.
I felt the heat climb my neck.
The scales were crossing my collarbone, and the crown in my hands began to hum.
The first guard reached for my arm.
I did not run.
I lifted the crown to the height of my chest, where every person in the hall could see it, and I held it there.
"Your Majesty," I said to the Dowager, "your son put his hand on this crown and it burned him."
"It did not burn me."
"Call me a beast if you like, but the hall can see which of us the crown asked for."
The guard stopped with his hand an inch from my sleeve.
He was young, and he was afraid of the thing in my arms.
A murmur went through the court, low and ugly.
Hesper smiled at me.
It was a kind smile, and that was the worst part of it.
"Fetch the Warden," she said.
The murmur died.
I had heard the title my whole life.
The Warden of the Pit did not come to court.
The great doors swung open and a man walked down the aisle alone, and the nobles drew back from him.
He was tall, in black leather, with a scar through his left eyebrow.
His hands were gloved to the wrist, and his face showed nothing at all.
He stopped three paces from me and looked at the crown.
Then he looked at me, and I saw something move behind his eyes, quick and strange.
"Warden Rhain Caldrey," said Hesper. "Take her down. She burns at dawn."
He held out his hand for my arm.
I did not give it.
The crown tilted in my grip.
Along the edge of his black glove, a thin line of gold light began to glow.
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