Maiden

By the time the snows start to rot and slide from the mountain peaks, every girl in Calestra has learned to count her own bones.

The kingdom’s oldest law is written not on parchment, but in ash and charred stone: each spring a maiden is chosen by lot and given to the Great Dragon. The sacrifice keeps the valleys green, the courts gilded, the fragile peace with the creature intact. That is what the priests say. That is what the nobles repeat over their wine.

Cressyda has no wine—only a name that keeps surfacing on people’s lips when they fall suddenly silent. She knows too well what happens to girls the kingdom calls blessed. Alinore moves through the palace halls with a perfect curtsey and a tongue full of questions she’s never quite brave enough to ask aloud. Her loyalty is a costume that’s beginning to itch. And Maylie, who smells of smoke even when the braziers are cold, carries a hidden magic the court has outlawed and the Dragon would recognize.

As the drawing of lots approaches, these three lives knot together around the altar everyone pretends not to see. Beneath the hymns and pageantry lies a bargain inked in blood—between throne and Dragon, past and present, power and those it devours.

To break it will mean dragging forbidden sorcery into the light, turning against the very order that raised them, and walking straight into the Dragon’s rage with their eyes open. The sacrifice is coming, as it always has.

This time, the fire will not find them willing.