Deny Me, Dragon King novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Smoke
Linnea carries her burning daughter through Ashhold's gate and into the Audience Hall, three days before the king's wedding, and names the Midsummer Rite in front of his lords.
The gate sergeant put his spear across my chest and told me to go home.
Behind me, the road down to the river was white with morning frost.
In front of me, Ashhold Keep rose out of the volcano.
"The king receives no one three days before his wedding," the sergeant said.
"Then he'll receive me on the fourth," I said, "if my daughter lives that long."
Posy lay against my shoulder with her cheek burning through my collar.
She was five years old and she weighed less than the sack of herbs on my back.
Smoke curled out of her hair.
It had started two weeks ago as a cough, and every night since then it had climbed.
The sergeant looked at the smoke and his face changed.
"That's dragon fire," he said.
"Yes."
"Whose child is she?"
"Ask him," I said.
I ducked under the spear and walked through the gate.
He shouted after me, and two more guards ran, but they didn't touch me.
Nobody lays a hand on a woman carrying a smoking child.
I crossed the first courtyard with Posy's breath coming in short, hot bursts against my neck.
I crossed the second one, past the stables and the kitchen steps and a line of servants who stopped talking to stare.
Six years ago I had been thrown out of this keep through the same gate.
I remembered every stone of it.
The doors of the Audience Hall stood open for the morning petitions.
I went in.
The hall was long and black, lit by braziers of living flame along both walls.
Two hundred lords and ladies stood in rows in silk and fur, and at the far end sat the Ember Throne.
Torren Ashdrake sat on it.
He wore black leather and a collar of gold scales, and he was listening to a man talk about grain.
His hair was the same black.
The scar through his left eyebrow was the same.
A woman in blue silk and golden braids stood at his shoulder with her hand resting on the throne's arm.
That would be Lady Rosamund Crane, who would be his queen in three days.
I had learned that from a pedlar on the road.
I walked up the middle of the hall, and the talking died row by row.
The man speaking about grain stopped in the middle of a word.
Torren looked up.
For one breath, the king of Cindermark forgot to hold his face still.
Then he did it again, smooth as a lid coming down.
"This hall is for petitions," a lord called from the side. "Wait your turn, woman."
"I waited six years," I said.
My voice sounded small in all that stone, so I said it louder.
"My name is Linnea Marrick, and I am from Thistledown, on the river."
"On Midsummer night six years ago, I sat with this king at the bonfire."
"At dawn, the Flame in this hall leaned toward me, and everyone in this room saw it."
A murmur ran through the rows.
Rosamund's fingers tightened on the throne.
"The High Seer stood up and called me a thief of crowns," I said. "And he denied me, in front of you all."
Torren hadn't moved.
His eyes were on my face, and they were the color of ash with gold sparks buried in it.
"The throne knows no such woman," he said.
His voice was level and cold.
It cut me exactly where he had cut me before.
Lady Rosamund laughed, a light, pretty sound.
"Another one," she said. "Every king has one, my lord. Have her paid and sent off."
I hadn't come for money.
I shifted Posy in my arms so the whole hall could see her.
"I came for a cure," I said. "She has ember rot, and the village healer says only a dragon's fire can stop it."
"I'm not asking you to know me, Your Majesty."
"I'm asking you to look at her."
Posy stirred and coughed.
A thread of flame came out of her mouth, thin and gold, no longer than my finger.
It should have gone straight up.
It bent.
It curled across twenty feet of black floor, and it wrapped once around the king's wrist.
Torren stared at it.
It didn't burn him.
Every brazier in the hall guttered at once, and the ward fire along the ceiling went dark.
The lords went quiet in a way I had never heard.
Posy opened her eyes.
They were gold now, with slit pupils, wide open and looking straight at him.
"You're warm," she said in a small, hoarse voice.
The king of Cindermark came down off his throne.
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