For Those Who Favor Fire. . . .

Leaning on the marble banister, I tried to take in as much of the Imperial Gardens as I could. The pain that had taken up permanent residence in my bones, however, wanted to outshine the scenery. It had been a little under twenty-four marks, and the mild joint-ache that had started the day before we arrived at the Eastern Palace lingered on.

It was an odd pain . . . a sensation I had never felt before. It had begun around the sixteenth mark, yesterday afternoon, and hadn’t left my body since. At first, I had attributed the pain to nerves. I had never traveled to this part of the vast continent before—and certainly not without my father. I was travelling with an entire group of dignitaries I barely knew to speak to, in a foreign place, about which I knew practically nothing.

It must be nerves, then, I had repeated to myself, thinking that if I could somehow calm down, the pain would cease.

Unfortunately, that logic proved false. I had survived the ten-week journey, meeting what seemed to be every one of the Eastern Reaches’ inhabitants, and was now standing in front of surely one of the most beautiful gardens on Earth. I was already past the nerves.

Try to ignore it, I told myself. After all, the view was magnificent—stone vases held lovely flowers of various jewel-toned colors. The trees were in bloom with delicate blossoms and alive with exotic, golden-throated birds. Farther out stood the proud, ancient Imperial City—City of Mysteries, to its northern visitors.

Beyond that—beyond the grand palace, fantastic gardens, and that peerless City—was the ocean, which rivaled the sky for cobalt clarity. . . .

But I was very hot, and my body was begging for the climes it knew.

Next to me, the Emperor Tai-z’An said something in his pretty, sing-song language, and behind us, the interpreter asked if I was quite alright.

“Lev’ii,” I confided tightly, as pain ripped through me, “this ache in my bones isn’t going away. I don’t know what to do.”

Lev’ii imparted my words to his Royal Majesty, who smiled at me—rather condescendingly—and asked, through Lev’ii, if it was “my time of the month.”

Stung and insulted by such a rude question, and despite my pain, I drew myself up to my full height, which made me taller than His Royal Majesty, and replied: “It is certainly not. If I might see my chirugeon. . . ?”

At this relayed question—and how I loathed having to ask to see my own healer, who’d helped birth me, and took care of my illnesses these twenty years—the Emperor spoke, and looked off into the Imperial Gardens impatiently.

“His Majesty says that he has . . . studied female physiology at his leisure, and that you are likely suffering from mild hysteria . . . he asks if you can breathe and walk without impediment?”

Taken aback by this accusation, I glared over my shoulder at Lev’ii, who quailed in his fine, colorful robes. I could not believe that the Emperor was ignoring my request to see my own chirugeon.

“I can certainly breathe, and I can walk the bloody hell out of here!” I turned, shouldering past Lev’ii, back the way we had come.

Suddenly there was a hand on my arm, and the pain in my joints and bones grew fiery. My skin became flushed and I felt as if I would melt, given time enough and rage. I whirled around to see the haughty Emperor bending a glare on me that would have no doubt quelled a lesser person, but moved me not one whit. I was the daughter of the Dragon King of Karego, Warlord of Upper and Lower Kastrrl.

I had weathered worse glares from my father than from this diminutive toy-emperor.

“Remove your hand at once, sir.” I did not so much as tug on my arm, trusting my tone to impart my demand.

For the first time, I saw a look of uncertainty cross the Emperor’s face. He stared hard into my eyes then finally loosed my arm as if burned.

I inclined my head: a remnant of my nurse’s attempt to train good manners into me.

“You may extend my well wishes for the day to his Royal Majesty, Lev’ii. If I am well, I shall see him at dinner.”

Then I strode off with my head held high and my shoulders back. I could have balanced a book on my head, were I so inclined.

*

Later that evening, I was not so poised.

I lay in bed, shaking and shivering, feverish and chill. My skin was hot to the touch, yet the air around me felt glacial.

My nurse could not put a hot compress on me, but that my skin began to blister . . . nor a cold compress that I began to complain of the cold. Forgotten were the Emperor’s rude gaffes of the afternoon. All I wanted was to be home.

“There, there, child . . . the chirugeon will be here soon.” My nurse put her hand on my head. It felt cold, but wonderful, too.

“I fear I am dying, Nanny,” I rasped, shuddering. I hadn’t called her ‘Nanny’ since my twelfth year. “I fear—“

“Hush, child, there is nothing to fear. Once you’re married, the Curse will lift, and—“

“What have you told her!” My chirugeon burst into my rooms, throwing back the enormous, ornate doors as if they weighed nothing. I could see two surprised guards in the hall on either side of the doors, peering in with great interest.

I suddenly became enraged . . . with this kingdom, and its strange, rude people, their strange, abrupt ways, and their strange, haughty emperor. I grew hotter than ever, as if my skin would crisp and I would burst out of it . . . some skinless, hot-cold woman, wailing and moaning and bleeding. . . .

I screamed in fright and agony, and began to convulse. My nurse and chirugeon tried to hold me down—but when they touched my skin, they, too, drew back as if burned.

I flopped onto the floor, twitching, and began to crawl to the window . . . I didn’t know why, only that I must get into the open air. But the guards had come into the room; they tried to stop me, but they hissed and howled when they touched me, and fell back.

I made it to the balcony, and the night air was a sweet balm. I painstakingly drew myself up to the railing, gasping. The muscles in my back began to writhe and tear as if flayed, and once more I screamed.

“It’s the Curse, it’s the Curse!” Nanny screeched, horrified.

“We’re too late—oh, what will the Warlord say?!” Chirugeon moaned fearfully.

But their voices were distant, small things, now. I pushed my burning, convulsing body over the railing and fell.

The air rushing past me felt like everything I’d ever needed and never gotten. It cooled my burning skin, which had begun to split like rotted fabric with faulty seams. Even as I plummeted, the fiery pain in my body grew, and bone began to stretch and reshape itself audibly, cracking, breaking, and forcing muscle and cartilage to conform according to some perverse will entirely outside my own.

With one final surge of agony, muscle, cartilage, and bone freed itself from my back with a wet, horrendous tearing-sound. I would have screamed, but my skull felt as if it was caught in an implacable vise, crushed and yet expanded, and still rearranging itself into some alien shape even as it was propelled forward and upward by the elongation of my neck and spine. All was pain and flux and terror, and I wished with every fiber of my being to be free of it all. The world rushing endlessly toward me promised nothing, if not that, and—

—and before I could become reacquainted with His Majesty’s beautiful gardens . . . I was aloft. Skimming the treetops as I glided over them, startling nightingales into silent flight and razing leaves and blossoms in my wake.

My nightdress and skin burnt off me in tatters, revealing scales as incarnadined as heart’s blood. Gone were the hands that had been outstretched to break my nonetheless fatal fall. In their stead were paws, tipped with vicious, dripping talons.

I opened my mouth to shout my surprise . . . and a roar the likes of which I’d never heard before came from me, followed by a gout of blue flame. From a gazebo far below I could see the shocked face of the toy-emperor, and his parfait of a palace with its beautiful, beautiful gardens.

Then all I saw was the full moon toward which I flew, elated, and free, at last.