The Dragon Slayer's Queen
She walks upright, every step regal, but there’s a limp now—a flaw in her machinery.
The main doors of the palace loom ahead, thirty feet tall and lacquered in a lacquer so black it eats the light. As the guards open them, sunlight slices in, catching on the dust motes and the sheen of fresh blood. Zayla blinks, momentarily blinded, and in that raw second she sees the city arrayed below: Cordiva, her birthright, the streets already crawling with rumors of the coup, every spire and bridge tense with the promise of violence.