Chapter 1: The Bride Who Was Swapped

Sophia POV

Forty minutes kneeling on the gravel and my knees had packed up and left.

I couldn't feel them anymore. They'd probably found some warm spot somewhere, toasting by a fire, sipping hot soup.

Lucky them.

"Just like her dead mother."

Lady Margaret Vance sat in the garden pavilion, wrapped in a thick mink cloak, a cup of hot chocolate in her hands. Behind her stood the housekeeper, Mrs. Pike, holding a cane.

That cane and I were well acquainted.

The smell of the hot chocolate drifted over—sweet, with a note of cinnamon. My nose betrayed me and took a deep breath all on its own.

Don't sniff it, Sophia. Sniffing won't get you a taste.

"The one who forms the bond with Crown Prince Julian next month will be Olivia," she said.

My brain started turning. Slowly, like winter honey, one drop at a time.

Prince Julian. That was… my betrothal.

On the day I was born, the King himself came to Vance House to smell my blood. Dragons can smell a bloodline the way a cook can smell whether meat is fresh. He said my blood was the brightest dragonkin blood he had ever smelled, and right there and then he decided: when I came of age, I would be the Crown Prince's consort.

The whole city knew about it. They also knew that I was nineteen and hadn't grown a single scale.

Around fifteen, dragonkin girls grow their first scale on the inside of the wrist, proof the blood is strong enough. The Vance scales are gold. My little sister Olivia's was gold.

And me? When I was six I fell out of the apple tree in the back garden and cracked my head on a stone. When I woke up, my tongue had learned to trip over itself—every word had to stumble in my mouth before it came out. My mind went slow too. Someone would say a sentence and I'd have to think it through three times.

Everyone said my blood had been broken in the fall too.

"Then—then who… do I—who do I marry?"

Margaret smiled. She rarely smiled at me. When she did, my back went cold.

"Prince Alexander."

The garden went quiet all at once. Even Mrs. Pike shrank her neck in.

Alexander Kingsley. The King's youngest brother. A pure-blooded gold dragon.

At least, he used to be.

Three years ago he was poisoned. The poison burned in his blood and turned the gold scales black, one by one. Now the whole city called him the Black Prince.

They said he couldn't fly anymore, couldn't shift back into dragon form, could only sit in a wheelchair.

They said that every night when the poison flared, the dragon inside him went mad, and it had to see blood before it would stop.

They said Blackmere Hall carried a few bodies out the back door every month.

My stomach knotted up.

Not entirely from fear. Mostly from hunger. I hadn't had a hot meal in nineteen days. I'd counted. I'm stupid, but I'm very good at counting.

"The King wants to find him an Anchor Bride," Margaret said. "Prince Julian put your name forward himself."

Anchor Bride. I'd heard the term in the kitchen. When a dragon is about to be swallowed by the beast inside it, a consort bond can "anchor" it. The catch is that the bride's blood has to be compatible with that dragon's.

And if it isn't?

The maddened dragon tears her apart.

The last time it worked was three hundred years ago.

I pictured myself turning into an iron anchor, thrown into a very cold river.

I can't swim.

"What—what do I—what do I have to do?"

"Go live in his house. Don't make him angry."

Go live in someone else's house. This time I only had to think it through once to understand.

Father doesn't want me anymore.

I'd known it for a long time, really. When I was nine, at Princess Rebecca's birthday ball, I did something so shameful that even Father was laughed at. From that day on he shut me in the woodshed behind the stables and didn't come to see me once in ten years.

But I'd always kept something small hidden away inside me, like a bread crumb in a pocket—as long as I still lived in this house, I was still his daughter.

Now even the bread crumb was gone.

My eyes began to sting. Don't cry. Crying means an extra hour on your knees.

I bit down on my lip, forced the heat back down, and asked the question that had been circling in my head for a while.

"Will—will I—can I get enough to eat there?"

Margaret's smile froze on her face.

Of course it froze. She was the one who kept me hungry. For ten years I'd had one meal a day—sour in summer, frozen solid in winter.

She gave a snort. "That's a royal house. You think they'd let you starve?"

Warm bread. Hot soup. Maybe even meat.

"Then—then I'll go."

But I'd already decided. If he really was going to tear me apart—at least I could be torn apart on a full stomach.

Well done, Sophia. You've found the saddest good news in the world.

"One more thing." Margaret tipped her chin at Mrs. Pike. "Check her."

My heart dropped.

Every year on my birthday she "checked" me: turning my wrist over, looking it over inch by inch, like she was hunting for a hidden louse.

I didn't know what she was looking for. I only knew she mustn't find it.

Mrs. Pike seized my arm and shoved my sleeve up to the elbow. The cold wind scraped across my skin.

And then I felt it.

On the inside of my wrist, something was turning cold.

No. No no no. Not now.

That was my secret. In all these years it had only appeared three times: the second I fell out of the apple tree, the night I was locked in the cellar, the winter the cane beat me until I bled. Every time I was scared past all bearing, a scale would surface on my wrist.

The size of a fingernail, thin, ice-cold.

Silver.

Not gold. Silver.

The old cook in the kitchen had said gold dragons and silver dragons were the noblest of all, but the silver dragons had died out twenty years ago, not one left. So I figured I must be sick—so sick that even my scales came out the wrong color.

Before she died, Mother said: "Little Sophie, your name means wisdom. A clever child knows when to hide. Don't let bad people find out how good you are."

Wisdom. A person with a broken head, named Wisdom.

I didn't know what good a scale of the wrong color could do. But I'd kept it hidden all this time.

And now it was slowly rising up from under my skin.

Through my clothes, I pressed hard on the little silver pendant at my chest.

The pendant went hot for an instant.

The cold on my wrist drew back, like a tide going out.

Mrs. Pike looked for a long while, then spat. "Nothing. Useless is useless."

Margaret leaned back in her chair and let out a long breath.

She was… relieved?

I thought it through three times and still couldn't work out why.

She made me kneel another half hour before she let me go. As I limped past the main house corridor, Olivia was standing in the doorway trying on jewelry.

She's a year younger than me. At fifteen a gold scale grew on her wrist, and ever since she'd worn only gloves with a section cut away, so everyone could see it.

"Sister, I hear you're going to be an anchor for that madman?" She stroked the necklace at her throat. "Last a few more days. I form my bond next month—it'd be a real downer if you had your funeral first."

I wasn't listening. I was looking at the necklace.

A silver chain with a sapphire hanging from it, like a drop of frozen seawater.

That was Mother's. Before I was five, I'd lie in Mother's arms every night and play with that stone.

"Th—that's… that's Mother's."

"It's my dowry now." Olivia's eyes dropped to my collar. "That junk around your neck—that was your mother's too, wasn't it? You're going off to die anyway. What do you want to keep it for?"

She reached out and grabbed.

I shrank back and didn't get away. Her fingers hooked the chain—

Then snapped back.

"Ah!" She shook her hand, the tips of her fingers red. "It—it burned me!"

I looked down. The little silver pendant hung there quietly, the pale green stone in its center glowing faintly.

It bit her?

No. It seemed to be… protecting me.

"Monster." Olivia stepped back. "You and your mother, both monsters."

The door slammed shut.

I stood in the corridor for a long time. The pendant in my palm was still warm, like a small hand holding mine.

That night I curled up in the straw and counted the days on my frozen fingers.

Three more days.

I hoped my new home had a blanket without holes in it. I hoped the bread there was soft. And I hoped that if he really was going to tear me apart, he'd wait until I'd finished breakfast.

Outside the window, a long howl came from the northern sky.

Low, agonized, like something at the edge of the world being torn apart inch by inch.

The kitchen people had said that sound came from Blackmere Hall. It was the dragon inside the Black Prince, roaring.

I curled up tighter and got ready to cover my ears.

But my wrist went cold first.

I stared at it, blank. No cane, no cellar, no one about to hurt me. And yet the silver scale still surfaced, glowing faintly in the dark—

As if answering that howl.

It had never done that before.

In three days, that dragon would be my husband.