Semua Bab Chosen in Dragonfire: Bab 1 - Bab 10

Lyra "Lyra Walker."The herald's voice cut across the square like a blade, and my own name turned my legs to water. He was reading from a long roll of parchment. The tribute list. The names of the girls the Dragon King would take this year.I knew what that list meant. Every five years, the Dragon Court chose unmarried girls from the human towns. They were called brides. They were called offerings. They were called many gentle things. But none of them ever came home.I forced myself to keep walking.The market noise blurred. A woman behind me whispered a prayer. A child clutched her mother's skirt. I kept my chin up and my hands by my sides, the way my mother had taught me before she died. Don't show fear in the open street. Don't give them anything to laugh at.I had until sundown.That was the law. A girl on the tribute list could be excused if she was already wed by the time the dragon's carriage arrived. I was engaged to Ethan Crowell. The promise had been made when I was four ye

Lyra The carriage stopped.I did not know how long we had been moving, only that the road had gone smooth enough to mean we were inside the inner walls. I held the necklace through my dress and tried to remember my promise: I was coming back alive.The dragon-livery man opened the door.I climbed down on my own. I would not be lifted again. The cobblestones of the courtyard were paler than the cobblestones in our town, and the air smelled of cut stone and hot iron.There were other girls.A great many of us, all in pale dresses or traveling cloaks, all standing in a loose half-moon along the wall of a square stone yard. One girl was crying without seeming to notice she was. Another was chewing the inside of her cheek and staring at the closed door at the far end of the yard.A girl near the front was wearing a sapphire on a long chain.She was tall, and her hair was the color of polished oak, and she stood with her chin lifted. The sapphire at her throat caught the light with a cold

Lyra For one long second, no one in the dormitory moved. Then Elin made a small sound at the back of her throat. "What."The chamberlain did not stand up."There has been a mistake," I said. "He cannot be asking for me.""He is asking for you, Tribute Walker."He straightened, then, and turned, and waited at the head of the corridor. Elin's voice came up sharp behind me. "It cannot be her. I survived the fire. He is looking for me. I—""Per the rules of selection," the chamberlain said, without turning, "a tribute summoned by the King is to be brought without delay. Please, Tribute Walker."I had not even washed my face. I followed him.We walked for a long time, past the halls I had crept through the night before and into wider ones I had not seen, with carpet underfoot and tapestries on the walls. The chamberlain did not speak, and I did not ask.My mind was racing through every story I had ever heard about the King. What to say. What not to say. Where to put my eyes. Whether to k

ZarekI woke with no blood in my mouth and no bodies on the floor.That was the first thing I noticed, before I noticed her, before I noticed the gold beneath my hip and the cold morning gray at the cave mouth. There were always bodies. The last time the curse had taken me clean — really taken me — I had come back to my human shape inside the practice yard with thirty-two of my own court dead around me. Hugh had counted them while I sat on the stones with my hands shaking and my mouth full of the taste of them.There were no bodies today. There was only the girl.She was lying on her side a few feet from me, sleeping. Then, even as I looked, she was not sleeping. Her eyes opened. They were dark and quiet and entirely too steady for someone who had just woken up in a dragon's hoard.I knew her face.It was the face from the disused corridor. The night before. Yesterday afternoon. Sometime. The last clear thing in my memory was a small, careful pressure against the inside of my wrist.

LyraThe work is grueling; continuing on far into the night as I scrub and press and wash everything in sight. Eventually we do make out way to the main hall, where guests will enter and be guided to the ballroom. The head maid is relentless, nit-picking my work to the point that I wonder if I ever truly knew how to clean.I can’t blame her for her sour attitude, however. No matter how much my joints ache as I begin sweeping the entryway rug. I deal with it silently, not willing to cause her more trouble. When I think about the pain she’s in, my heart tightens to the point that I can’t breathe. My mother experienced that pain for more than a minute. But the maid? She experiences it every day. Grueling aches that I can see disturb her as she grabs an ointment and rubs it beneath her mask. From the smell, it’s a numbing agent.So, I bear my burdens quietly. Changing tasks with ease, redoing my work without protest—just to help however I can. During my time, however, I catch bits of info