Chapter 1: The Ark Does Not Open for the Weak

Jax closed his hand around my wrist, and I understood that I was about to be thrown away.

"Not leave," he said gently. "But Transfer."

I had never heard that word used about a person. It sounded like something you did with a bag of coins.

The bond tore.

It felt like a hook pulled out from behind my ribs, dragging something warm out of my chest. For ninety days, a silver thread had lived there, and every morning I had woken to it humming like a small, steady heartbeat. It went taut and thin… before it snapped, I screamed and went down on one knee in the freezing sea.

All around the last terrace of the Dragon Spire, the world was ending.

The Flood had come to the mountains. The Imperial Palace was a drowned crown. The great beast markets, the Academy towers, the golden temples of the Hundred Cradles, all of it lay beneath a grey, heaving ocean that stretched from one horizon to the other. Only the highest peaks were left, and the water was climbing them. Long, pale shapes slid beneath the surface, vast as boats. The beasts of the deep had woken, and they had grown. A river eel as long as a street rose beside the terrace, looked at me with one flat, hungry eye, and sank again, as if it could afford to wait.

Above us, the Ark of Heaven hung in the storm. It was a ship the size of a city, carved from white jade and borne up on the wings of a dozen Ascended Dragons. A long bridge of light descended from its side to the terrace, and the lanterns on its decks burned warm and gold through the rain.

Only one Ark, the Court Oracle had said. Only the strongest pairs. Only those who are worthy.

The first warning had come when the rivers turned black. Then the wells went bitter, and finally the sea began to climb. For three weeks, I had carried water in buckets up the Spire stairs for a dragon who ate more than a village. I had boiled and strained and rationed. I had told myself that if we only held together, we would be chosen.

I was a Tamer of the Ninth Rank, bonded to a Black Dragon who had broken every record in the history of Eastland. I had raised him from a half-dead snake in a basket. I had given him ninety days of my life, every pill, every sleepless night.

I should have been the most worthy person on that terrace.

I was also the only one standing alone.

Other pairs were already crossing the bridge. A tiger-tamer and his golden beast. A hawk-lady with her sky-blue eagle. The Court's heralds shouted names into the wind, and mine was not among them. For ninety days I had been the quiet girl behind the famous dragon, and I had never once wondered why nobody came to stand beside me.

"Jax," I gasped. The sea was in my mouth. "The Ark takes a tamer and her beast. You and I—"

"You and I are not a pair anymore."

He lifted the hand of the woman beside him and pressed his lips to her knuckles courteously.

Daisy stood dry and untouched at the foot of the bridge in a pale blue cloak, smiling. My stepsister had not looked this rested in years.

"Hello, sister," she said.

I had not seen her in a month. Three months ago, at the Selection, Daisy had picked a peacock because it was pretty, and then she had let it starve in a cage behind the stables when it turned out to be useless. She had never needed a beast of her own. She had always known which one she wanted.

I looked from one of them to the other, and my mind went blank, and then very sharp.

Last night, in the kitchen of the Spire, Jax had taken the evening pill from my palm and said, "Good girl." I had been so happy I had almost cried. I remembered it now like a splinter under the skin.

I remember Daisy was at the Spire door with a basket of sweets. I remember her sitting in my kitchen, asking so kindly how I was. She was always there, always listening.

I had thought she was finally learning to be my sister not knowing she had been learning to be my replacement.

"Do you know what Daisy told me, the first night she came to my room?" Jax said, almost conversationally. "That I was wasted on you. That a dragon like me deserved a tamer who could stand beside him, not a blank who keeps him fed."

"I made you every pill," I whispered. "I stayed up through every Ascension. I gave you—"

"You gave me little herbal sweets, because you wanted to feel useful." He tilted his head. "How very like you."

He thought they were herbs? So he had always thought they were herbs.

In every pill I had ever made him, there were three drops of my own blood. It was in the recipe I had found at thirteen in my mother's old book, in a line I had never understood. Three drops of life-essence. I had thought it was a ritual, a harmless tradition. I never knew it was the whole reason he had risen from a dying snake to a dragon in a few days while every other beast on the continent took years.

"Jax," I said. "The pills. They were—"

The pain took my voice.

The silver thread that had been my bond slid across the air in a bright, rippling line and wound itself around Daisy's wrist. Daisy gasped with pleasure. A golden light kindled around her, and I saw her face go soft and hungry as she felt it settle into her. It was the face of a girl being handed the world.

"Mine," she mouthed.

"A tamer without a beast is nothing," said Jax. "You taught me that, Nora. You used to say it so lovingly."

"Don't cry, sister," Daisy added softly. "You made it so easy."

A wave broke over the terrace and swept my feet out from under me. I went down hard on the stone, and the cold swallowed me to the shoulders, and I looked up through the spray at the man I had spent months loving.

"Why?" I said. My voice was thin and cracked. "I gave you everything."

Jax paused at the foot of the bridge. For a moment, something crossed his face. It was not guilt. It was a faint, irritated pity, the way you might look at a dog that could not understand it had been put down.

"Because I'm a dragon, Nora," he said. "I was always going to be more than you."

He and Daisy walked up the bridge of light together, and neither of them looked back.

I watched them go. Not one of the Court guards looked down. Not one of the other tamers called out. They stepped around the place where I knelt as though I were a puddle. I watched the bridge fold up behind them like a door being closed, the lanterns lift, and the great white ship rise into the storm. I watched the last pair cross, and the last gate seal. Nobody on that terrace turned to look at the girl in the water… me.

The next wave took me.

It was gentle at first. It lifted me off the stone, and the cold closed over my face. The roar of the storm dwindled to a long, soft hum as I sank. Through the water above me, I saw the lanterns of the Ark shrinking into a single gold coin, falling upward.

I had loved him. I had loved him so much that I had never once looked to see whether anyone was looking back.

My chest was burning. My fingers were going numb. I thought of my mother, who had died when I was nine, and whose pearls I had worn every day because it felt like being held. I thought of the cold house I had grown up in, and the tall windows that had never once been lit for me, then my stepmother's voice saying, Poor Nora, she will never amount to anything.

I thought…I wasn't the villain, I wasn't even the hero. I was just the girl who held the door.

I wanted to be angry but was too tired.

Somewhere above me, far away, the surface was a shivering silver ceiling. A drop of my blood drifted loose from a cut on my lip and spread through the water in a slow, glowing thread. It was faintly, wonderfully white, like moonlight.

I stared at it.

It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I had no idea what it meant.

If I could only have one more chance, I thought. If I could only choose again… then I wish to be the villainess, I wish to fight back and never allow anyone bully me again… I wish to never bond with that betrayer of a snake.

Beep… Beep… Beep

"WHAT," read the first comment. "WHAT! WHAT! NO."