Page 5 of Empire of Flame and Thorns

I raise my gaze to the palace itself that is visible across the grasslands. Made of shimmering pale stone, it shines like it’s filled with golden light when the sun reflects against it. It used to be the seat of power in our court. A jewel in the beautiful landscape and a testament to the marvelous power of the Seelie Court.

Now, it’s a deserted relic. A reminder of everything we can never have.

Rage burns through my heart, fierce as wildfire, as I shift my gaze to the iron wall that now circles our beautiful castle. Cold iron. A metal that drains our energy and blocks our connection to our magic. And those sadistic fucking dragon shifters built an entire wall of it around our most precious building.

Another burst of fury pulses through me, and I squeeze my hand into a fist. Isn’t it ever enough? I get that what our ancestors did to the dragon shifters was wrong, but by Mabona, it has been thousands of years since then! Haven’t they already gotten their revenge?

Closing my eyes, I heave a tired sigh. Even after all these years, I can still hear the voice of the dragon shifter teacher at school who taught me and the other kids before we became old enough to work. Can still hear his nasally voice as he tells us about how awful our ancestors were. How we deserve everything we got. Because it will never be enough. No amount of penance will ever be enough to absolve us of our cruel acts.

He used to tell us that thousands of years ago, fae and dragon shifters were allies. That we lived in peace and harmony. But then the fae discovered a new metal deep within the roots of a long dead volcano. A metal they calleddragon steel. Though it’s not actually real steel. It’s harder and, more importantly, it can bend a dragon’s will.

My old teacher used to say that just as we are weak against iron, the dragon shifters’ weakness was dragon steel. And our ancestors used that to their advantage. Apparently, they forged bracelets and collars from the steel and forced them onto the dragon shifters. And then when the fae of old channeled their magic through the dragon steel, the shifters had no choice but to obey them. So the fae turned the shifters into slaves and became dragon riders, treating them as if they were no better than horses.

Eventually, the shifters rose up and killed all the dragon riders. My old teacher was always very vague about the details of exactly how that happened, for obvious reasons. But apparently, the dragons slaughtered everyone who had enslaved them, and all the other adult fae too. They spared the children but trappedthem inside the Seelie Court so that they would be isolated and vulnerable.

My gaze drifts to the thick forest of gnarly trees and sharp thorns that completely surrounds our court. The old roads to the rest of the continent are still there, running right into the dense woods, but they’re useless now. It’s possible to walk a limited distance into the forest, but then the thorns become so thick that it’s impossible to get through.

Since this unnatural vegetation apparently continues for miles upon miles around our court, it has made us entirely isolated from everyone else. We have no idea what happened to the Unseelie Court, but I can only assume that they suffered a similar fate. I don’t even know how the dragon shifters managed to raise this strange forest of thorns all those millennia ago, but it has kept us prisoner ever since.

I still remember the vicious smugness in my teacher’s voice as he told us that this is what we deserve. That it is our turn to live in poverty. To live as slaves. Our turn to suffer so that we might pay for our ancestors’ crimes.

Heaving a bitter sigh, I shake my head. It’s time to fight back. To take back our home. Reclaim our freedom. That’s the whole reason why I joined the resistance. If only they would actually let mehelp. It has been years, and still all they ever let me do is be a lookout. I want to do something meaningful. Something important. Something that will actually aid our cause.

With another angry shake of my head, I push off from the wall and straighten again while I squeeze my hand into a fist. Determination pulses through me as I start back towards the city. I need to do something to prove myself to the leaders. Something that will finally make them trust me. Something?—

My gaze snags on a poster that has been nailed to the wooden news board.

Stopping in my tracks, I blink at it.

That’s it.That’s what I need to do in order to actually make a difference for our resistance movement.

After quickly checking the address at the bottom, I hurry towards the correct building. It should be open for another half hour before the administrator closes up and goes home for the day. Picking up the pace, I sprint towards the building.

Once again out of breath, I arrive at a well-kept wooden building with about ten minutes to spare.

All around me, people have started heading home for the evening. A tired-looking fae man with silver hair limps past, supported by another guy who carries an axe in his other hand. Given their clothes and equipment, they must be from the Lumber Guild. Across the street, a member of the Painter’s Guild continues trying to give the rundown building before him a much-needed facelift. Green paint is splattered across the sleeves of his white shirt.

I draw in a deep breath to refill my lungs and then push my hair back behind my pointed ears in an effort to make myself look more presentable and less like I have just spent the past hour trying to escape from a patrol that was hunting me.

Once I’m reasonably sure that I look as composed as I’ll ever be, I open the door and stride across the threshold.

A small brass bell tinkles above me when I open the door. At the sound of it, a male dragon shifter looks up from a document that he was reading. He is sitting behind a large desk on the other side of the room, facing the door. Apart from that, and the chair he is sitting on, the small room contains only bookshelves filled with leather tomes and documents. There is a door to my right, leading farther into the building, but I’m pretty sure that everything I need is right in this room.

“What?” the shifter behind the desk snaps, his voice laced with impatience.

His blue eyes lock on mine as he raises his eyebrows expectantly. Since dragon shifters have very long lifespans, just like we fae have, it’s difficult to tell how old he is. Their physical age stops around the same time as ours do, so everyone looks like they’re somewhere between twenty-five and thirty. This man in front of me might be twenty-five or five hundred years old, and there is no way to know just by looking at him.

“I’m here to register for the trial,” I reply as I walk a little closer to his desk.

He heaves an annoyed sigh as if this is something that takes great effort on his part when it’s in fact his literal job. Setting down the document he was reading, he twists in his chair and reaches towards a stack of papers on the shelf behind him. The paper rustles in the air as he yanks one out and then turns back to me. After slamming it down on the desk, he picks up a pen and then levels yet another impatient look at me.

“Name,” he demands.

“Selena Hale,” I reply.

Faint scraping sounds drift through the room as he writes down my name. Without looking up, he asks, “Age?”

“One hundred and sixty-seven.”

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