Crown of Dragonfire Read Free Page A

what burned above
her head. Her old halo, a thin ring of soft light, was gone. Instead flames now
seemed to wreath her brow, a crown of dragonfire.
    "Who am I now?" she
whispered in the shadows. "What am I?"
    Her mother was Queen
Kalafi, a seraph fallen from Edinnu, but did the holy ichor still flow through
Meliora's veins? She had thought herself a noble seraph princess, pure and
fair, yet her long golden hair was gone; only stubble now covered her head. Her
wings, once curtains of white, were gone too. Her halo was a thing of flame
that burned her own fingers. Who was she now?
    "A child of Requiem,"
she whispered.
    She closed her eyes,
and she thought of Requiem. She had grown up seeing that ancient kingdom of
dragons. All her life, she had gazed upon Requiem in frescos, mosaics,
paintings, engravings on great palace walls and temple columns. All her life,
she had heard of a kingdom of reptiles, of ruthless enemies that Ishtafel had
conquered.
    And all her life,
Meliora had dreamed of that distant, fallen land—and in her dreams, Requiem
still stood, and she flew among the dragons, one of their number, not beastly but
noble and proud, and the stars of the dragon shone above her.
    Perhaps I've always
known that I'm a child of starlight.
    That land of marble
halls and birch woods had fallen, but Requiem still lived. It lived here in
Saraph—in the land of Tofet beyond the City of Kings. It lived in the
thousands of huts. It lived in the small home of her father, the priest Jaren,
and her siblings, Vale and Elory. It lived in the hearts of the slaves who had
marched behind Meliora into the city, stood before the palace, and cried out
for freedom. And it still lived within Meliora—a memory of starlight, a torch
of dragonfire she vowed to keep carrying.
    She could feel the
magic deep inside her, warm, tingly. She tried to summon it again, to become
the dragon. As a dragon, she could shatter the prison door, storm through the
halls, burn all in her path. Breathing deeply, Meliora let the magic flow
through her, rising, filling her like healing energy. Scales began to rise
across her body, pearly white, and her fingernails lengthened, and—
    The collar tightened
around her neck.
    Meliora gasped in pain,
and her magic petered away.
    Her scales vanished,
and she fell to the floor, trembling, bile in her throat. She clawed at her
collar, but it was forged of solid iron, engraved with runes of power. No saw
or blade in the empire could cut through this collar, no fire could melt
it—certainly not her fingernails.
    But there is a key
that can open it.
    Coughing, weak from her
wounds and hunger, Meliora reached into the pocket of her burlap shift. She
pulled out the ancient relic she had snatched in the battle—the Keeper's Key.
    Or at least what was left
of it. For hundreds of years, the Keeper's Key had hung around Queen Kalafi's
neck, allowing the royal family of Saraph to remove the collars from choice
slaves. Only a few Vir Requis were ever allowed to become dragons—to dig in
the tar pits, to haul heavy stones, and sometimes to entertain the people in
the arena in mock battles from the old war.
    But Ishtafel had
crushed that key in his palm, forever sealing the Vir Requis—and her among
them—in their human forms. Meliora examined the remains of the key. It lay in
her palm, crumpled into a ball of crimson metal. The old runes upon it, written
in gold, were barely visible, only a few squiggly lines.
    Once again, Meliora
tried to unbend the key, to tug the metal back into its long slender form. But
she could not; she didn't have Ishtafel's strength, and even if she did, would
she simply snap the key when trying to straighten it? As she had countless
times, she brought the twisted ball of metal to her collar, hoping against hope
that this time—finally!—it would work. The few crumpled runes on the
key—whatever was still visible—gave but a soft glow, then fizzled away. The
collar remained locked.
    Meliora sighed