Behind the Dragon's Veil: The Dragarri Series, #1

By Christina Jolly

Magical artifices, dragon-shifters, palace intrigues and meddling sorcery meet in Behind the Dragon's Veil, the first novel in a new YA fantasy series. 

After seventeen years of seclusion and secrecy, Annarae Valanya, an artificer, and now the queen of Andrandria, sits the throne and embraces freedom for the first time. But her problems are far from over. In the dark of the night, a dragon reduces an entire village to ash. She organizes a tournament to assemble slayers, even as her royal council tries to humiliate and undermine her.

Meanwhile fighters travel to Sar to fight in her slayer tournament. Among them; the dragon himself, and the maginari behind the attack. With a killer bent on stealing a power she doesn't have, a queen without a husband and heir is perilous to the realm. To appease her royal council, Annarae must marry the tournament champion or risk losing her throne.

Filled with surprise, romance, secrets and wonder, Behind the Dragon's veil is perfect for fans of RAPUNZEL, A GATHERING OF SHADOWS and A COURT OF MIST AND FURY.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Silver Swallow Press
• Release date: Sep 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9789671732625

Book preview

Prologue

IT began with a secret hallway.

Nestled deep inside the restricted East Wing, far from the palace’s main hub, the hallway harbored a stretch of wooden panels, doors and magical fallacy. A walkway along which only one girl could traipse unhindered.

Few knew that light wouldn’t seep under its hundred doors. A hundred identical doors that would shift as if by magiya, a wonderful power only the Maginari possessed. Except it wasn’t magiya. The entire structure was fully mechanical. It had been designed by and constructed for a seventeen-year-old girl. She was the biggest secret of all, rumored to be concealed behind the only door that didn’t lead to a brick wall.

Restricted to the kitchens below, servants claimed to have glimpsed the shadows of the girl in its humming depths, slouching in a ballroom once fit for a king. She was a distorted figure far from human, the tales went. A tentacled monster with skin like jagged coral and multiple tongues with a taste for mortals. As the years went by, however, even the servants stopped marveling at the significance of her presence or why the royals kept such a secret. In the end, the East Wing and the girl simply existed. Unexamined, unbothered, like the teal trees in the courtyard.

This was precisely the reason the girl made it a point never to entertain the freakish rumors about her. Unpleasant talk that bred from fear and uncertainty. But despite her efforts, it affected her just the same.

Skin like jagged coral, she would whisper. What utter nonsense.

And on this morning, she would have none of it. Her vest tightening around her armpits, the girl disassembled one of the many push buttons on her breastplate. She wouldn’t notice its inner coil rebounding in the corner of her vision. Colorblind as she was. Its green melted in with the assorted grays across her surrounding. Tools clattered as she dug through a drawer for a replacement.

She exhaled bitterly and gazed up at the light peeking through the murky domed skylight. The ballroom’s high arches reflected back into her goggles. Their metal-plated columns concealing inner hydraulics behind drapes speckled from age.

When the East Wing ballroom transforms into a giant hoversub, she thought, a real monstrosity fully equipped with state-of-the-art submersible technology, mind them, they would truly have gossip worth spreading.

Her chin met collarbone as she tightened the wires in her side pocket. The hieroglyph calculator, a headpiece of multiple rotating circlets, designed to generate sequence instructions that only she understood—the fabled monster’s crown—stayed in place despite the angle.

To some extent, they were right. She was an abomination. But it didn’t matter. While she emerged only during the queen’s discreet visits—on Old Souls’ day of each month, to be exact, for two hours of tea and feeble pleasantry—she was more than happy to vanish back into her mysterious den. There, she was free to play god to a monochrome city of mechanical creatures. In a workroom redolent of sawdust, drawing papers, metal, and (curiously) lilies.

The oscillating disks around her forehead marked the hour for dinner. Soon her meal would travel up a shaft on a metal platform, the closest any servants would come to touching anything belonging to her. She’d lost more weight over the course of the year. Despite the steaming aroma of freshly cooked, herbed poultry and vegetables, her vision deficiency made her food unpalatable.

She was in the middle of divesting herself of her bulky vest of gadgets and switches, unclasping the one controller on her belt that no longer served a purpose but of which she was just particularly fond, when she heard footsteps in the hallway.

For a moment, she couldn’t believe it. Turning her better ear toward the sound, she unbuckled her headpiece and let it slide into her hands. She checked the day-clock hovering near the ceiling in one corner. She’d never gotten around to fixing its broken ailerons, so it had inhabited that corner for months.

Her chest gave a profound thump when she saw the date: the sixth day of the week, the thirtieth of January. A rest day: no training, no tutoring. Her most isolated day of the week.

She didn’t recognize the footsteps. It wasn’t Mariqeh Qin, the royal weapons master, or Sensa Kadir, her tutor, the only two people allowed inside the East Wing. Even they met her in the covered courtyard, never once setting foot in her secret hallway.

She knocked over a stray glass instrument. But at that moment, she was deaf to the sound of her shattered device. Someone else was out there.

Warded against magiya and physical infiltration by multiple enchantments, the East Wing was absolutely impenetrable. A fact she wished she could take full credit for. During her appeal to prevent her father from shipping her abroad (for protection from his obviously conjured threats), she had revealed a fully mechanical apartment plan designed to protect her. To her mother’s relief, her father had diplomatically agreed to its construction. The girl had nothing to do with the magiya wards, not being magiya-gifted. But the genius of the East Wing was all her.

The key to the East Wing hallway was the exact weight of the secret hidden within. In the wake of a foreign weight upon the black-and-white hallway tiles, the many doors and wall panels would shift. A door that had stood there before might not be seen again for another hundred relocations. Unless one shared the girl’s small and distinct light-footed frame. And the cumbersome vest she favored that particular week. It was fairly evident that none could pass through the secret hallway, and find the correct door to her secret workroom, but her.

Sepha, her childhood friend, had once tailed her painstakingly through the rotating hallways. He was found unconscious from exhaustion hours later. Just before the magiya wards could forcefully rebuff him, banishing him from Andrandria forever.

So when the knock came at her door that rainy afternoon, the girl stopped breathing. Her father must be right. She was truly unsafe. The fabled Hunter was finally here to kill her.

In between the thumps of her heart, the knock came again, this time more urgently. A low and scratchy voice came through the door.

Vasha Milost, it said, Your Highness, are you there?

Relief cascaded down her shoulders. She knew that voice. It was the high Maginari responsible for the intricate wards on the East Wing.

Archmage Echemmon?

Yes, milady.

Thunder shook the murky chandeliers.

It’s been years since I last heard your voice, she said, careful to sound calm.

He was alone, no guard escorts, no battle mages. Not that an archmage needed an escort, but why was he here?

As I you, Vasha Milost, though I’m afraid we lack the time to exchange pleasantries. I’ve come to escort you to the main palace.

Again, a spasm of nerves trembled violently through her. It was 1902, a full decade since they’d shut her away here. The prospect of visiting the royal halls prompted an exhilarating yet unpleasant tug in her core. She’d never entered the main palace, not even on the king’s birthday. Something must truly be wrong.

It’s loud in there, the Archmage called. Instantly the room’s mechanical hum—the gears, the springs, the steam— sounds that had faded with time, enveloped her.

I suppose I’d grown used to it. It keeps away the silence. The deafening silence that amplified the sounds of her barbed thoughts.

It’s too late when the clocks stop and the metal sings.

I’ll wait in the antechamber, Vasha Milost, he said. Pray you do not take long.

She rushed to change into the only presentable clothes that still fit her.

She found the archmage outside, letting the raindrops tickle his fingers and breathing in the fresh green scent of the storm. A color she could only imagine through its smell.

Are the trees satisfied? she asked, invariably desperate for some semblance of color, tone, life. Even outside, her sight remained black and gray and sour.

He didn’t respond, hurrying her silently through a long passageway toward the king’s private audience hall. They passed gradually from the blandness of her apartments to the warmth and extensive opulence and delicate crystal of the king’s quarters.

Murmuring aristocrats filled the outer chamber. They quieted with stunned, speculative expressions when she appeared with the archmage.

What’s an artificer doing here? they whispered. Who is she?

She hid her hands beneath her armpits, self-conscious of the grease under her jagged nails. Curious glares scrutinized the thin headscarf that veiled her nose and lips. They stared at her inappropriate and mismatched clothing: stained white overalls atop an ill-fitting red blouse, straps swaying slightly beside her hips.

Archmage Echemmon walked her toward the empty thrones. Her fingers grazed the smooth surface of the gilded chairs.

To her surprise, Musavir Asen, her father’s closest advisor, stepped up beside her and faced her toward the crowd. Behold—Annarae Summer Aurora Valanya, the new queen of Andrandria.

The girl’s pulse lurched. She searched the faces gathered before her. Convinced only by the series of gasps, the shuffling of silk and leather, and finally, the hair-raising applause that echoed through the hall.

She paled at the misfortune that had befallen the king and queen. Her parents, completely and absolutely gone. But it sank in ever so gently, like a revival.

She was finally free of the East Wing.

Blood rushed into her ears as she took in the wave of bowed heads before her.

The shield of Andrandria be hers, they chanted. Great may she reign.

1

Annarae

Royal Palace of Andrandria, City of Sar

MY mother believed I was born with the gift of creating life.

It amused her that I meddled with the work of the gods by animating automata. Despite her devotion to her religious texts, my mechanical friends had beguiled her during her short visits, so she never stood in the way of my work.

Unbeknownst to her, my creations taught me to be fixated with control. I sought to control the circumstances of my life the same way I formulated their functions. Alas, one could not control fate or destiny. One could not control the extent of one’s freedom. One could not see the world as others saw it.

Alas, this caged monster was released into a bigger cage.

Watch out!

I retracted, blocking the attack aimed for my stomach only to find my legs flying above my head. I landed with a brain-jarring slam on the timber floor.

Mariqeh Qin scowled at my ungainly self, sprawled on the floor like an old dishrag. No focus.

I caught a glimpse of my bloody teeth in the floor-to-ceiling mirror and grinned ruefully at the royal weapons master. When you’ve mastered grief and farewell, write me a volume.

The art form is for your mind and body, a method of healing. Sooner or later that void will be filled. It doesn’t stay this way forever.

First you called it an exercise for physical health. Now it’s an art form.

Old man, give Her Majesty a break, Sepha said, then winked at me from where he leaned against an arched column. Spar with me. I’ll break your miserable streak.

I wiped drool from my throbbing lip. Go away.

She had no breaks as a princess, Mariqeh Qin said. She will not have breaks as a queen. I am her mariqeh; you’re her pet. You do not give me commands.

Sepha chuckled as if he read the thoughts plastered to my face. A true princess could ask for anything: fineries, freedom, a parent’s attention—all fulfilled with a single request. But not me. I was never given such luxury. I was never a princess; I was forgotten property.

Focus, Vashe Velihest. Mariqeh Qin pulled me up and led me to the waiting benches. Without you, Your Majesty, your people will suffer. Imagine a kingdom without a Valanya. Imagine a kingdom ruled by the Mogushes or the Pobedas!

I understand, I said. I will persevere for the kingdom.

Mariqeh Qin had been more anxious about my ascension than I had. He handed me my pale silk cloak, his thick brows dropping lower as he scanned the hidden corners of the training hall. Sepha mirrored his alertness. My heavy braids knocked my shoulder before the hood folded down to my nose.

Concealed once more.

Mariqeh Qin bowed. With your permission, Vashe Velihest, I take my leave.

I nodded and watched him depart.

Cold water dripped onto my swelling lip.

Drink, Sepha said. You’re one ugly queen.

I squinted up at him through the sweat that burned my eyes. Blunt as always—my ascension to the throne hasn’t changed anything. What are you doing here, anyway?

I took the mug and chugged the icy water.

He snickered. Making sure you don’t impale yourself.

With a staff?

You almost tripped on your own foot.

It was a part of the move, I protested, wincing a little. Come, I need to lie down.

We stepped into the cool twilight air. Shadows draped across the garden. My damp clothes clung to my skin. Servant girls nudged each other at the sight of Sepha.

I shoved him mischievously. Race you!

Balancing on one leg, arms flailing, he almost slipped into the pond that snaked along the path. When he regained balance, he smiled at the giggling girls and dashed after me.

We flew down the cloister and up the tower steps as the last sunbeam disappeared below the horizon. My legs threatened to collapse beneath me by the time we reached the top. But before Sepha could crank the rooftop door shut, Archmage Echemmon appeared at the top of the stairs with a servant.

The archmage sidestepped Sepha with a disapproving look. Vashe Velihest, you must remember that the Hunter is still at large and the Maginari Academy has yet to ascertain your safety. Your deliverance from the East Wing is purely for the benefit of the realm. Running around the palace without proper escort is inadvisable. Where is the captain of the guard?

Legs wobbling from the climb, I crawled the remainder of the way onto my outdoor divan. I have relieved Baltazar for the evening. It is the seventh day, a day of sanctity. Shouldn’t you devote your time to prayers?

My sole purpose is to safeguard the realm and its new queen.

He snapped his fingers, and after the unmistakable sonic boom that announced a leapia, four battle mages materialized. They installed themselves upon the four corners of my divan, velvet cloaks settling heavily behind armor inlaid with multiple runes and scrollwork, bristling with magiya particles that swayed with the passing wind.

Is this necessary?

You will encounter worse still in court tomorrow, Vashe Velihest, he said, unperturbed. He hid his hands beneath the folds of his murka, the famous uniform of the elite Six of Andrandria. Until then, I’ll take my leave.

His sonic boom left no trace except the mages and the servant, who set two vials of healing salve beside me and scuttled back through the tower door. She would wait there until I called for her. If I hadn’t so dearly coveted this freedom after being locked up most my life, I might’ve found myself missing the privacy of the East Wing.

I reached for the salve. The tray the vials rested on was made from Creadorean porcelain, with the daunting ASAV carved at its center. Everything in my apartments bore the new royal cipher after I’d taken sovereignty.

That smells horrendous, Sepha said, plopping himself onto the edge of the divan, confident that the battle mages wouldn’t zap him over the railings, and no doubt trying to disarm my anger. Do you remember the day we first met?

The cork popped. I flicked it off with my thumb. You were hiding from Kara. He’d been lost and disoriented in the ever-shifting East Wing hallway.

I was eleven, and she wanted us wed!

I haven’t seen her in a while.

He waved a hand. Ah, she’s just sulking somewhere.

How’re you so sure?

He laughed. I witnessed the fit she threw at the prospect of bowing to you. No law in Andrandria could hinder a lady from jealousy.

I bit my lip and finished applying the warm salve to my bruises before I set the vial back on its tray. Kara’s always one to indulge in bad temper.

Woe be to her, for her troubles outweigh those of the queen.

Kara Cavalerri and Sepha Nerius were children of my father’s high officials. By virtue of sharing the same age, we’d shared the same tutor. My father had thought it imperative that I keep a few social interactions, so they became pretty much my only friends. If I could consider Kara a friend.

He leaned toward me. I heard you rejected suitors.

I looked toward the servant hidden behind the rooftop door.

Don’t be angry with me. Servants enjoy telling me things.

They also call you the soft bits to my army of automatons. I recalled the expressions of the servants granted permission to clean my apartments, to finally chance audience with the horde of mechanical creatures of the East Wing.

He laughed. I’ll show them I’m not as soft as they think. He amplified his voice toward the door and slapped his chest. Not quite copper but still hard, I assure you.

No sounds issued from the door, the servant girl plainly unimpressed by his declaration.

I have a responsibility to marry within the week, I said. It was Andrandrian custom for a queen to marry a consort; females were not suited to rule alone. If I don’t, I risk losing my throne to a regent.

By the gods, you can’t let that happen, Ann!

The battle mages shifted indignantly in their positions.

I mean, Vashe Velihest, he quickly corrected.

I’d lived alone my entire life. How would I share my new life with a man, let alone one I knew nothing of? But ruling alone was proving to be a frightening prospect.

After enduring seventeen years of secrecy, I had long since accepted that I would never ascend the throne. My formal, isolated education had placed the least priority on politics and court etiquette. Whatever I’d learned on the subject, I’d self-cultivated through Viziune, my flying eye, which recorded whenever my father took audience. Even then, through the buzzing I made out only half of what was actually said.

I was far from ready to shoulder this tremendous responsibility, yet now I stood as humble leader to a great nation that had never known I existed. I was an enigma my nation would not easily trust. They were afraid, just as I was afraid.

The air was sullen, and the sounds of the city below took on a hostile note, a promise of a future laden with tumult. I released a shuddering breath.

Mariqeh Qin’s been good for you, Sepha said. Servants say your appetite’s improved.

It’s all I can cope with for now.

They also said you stopped going to the pier.

Breathe, Annarae. A cloud of warm vapor materialized and dissipated before me. A month had passed since my private coronation, a month of waiting by the edge of the lonely waves as if the sea would part and return my parents. The sea was an ancient villain; why would it favor me?

I made no attempt to conceal the edge in my voice. Will they ever stop watching me?

Could you blame them? He smiled wryly. Unlike me, they never had the delight of keeping the kingdom’s biggest secret.

Such a treasure you are.

You’d think me less a treasure if you knew how much I feared losing my head.

No more cause for fear now. The secret is out. Know that I appreciate your honesty above all—and sometimes even your head.

My fingers drifted to the dragon charm dangling from my bracelet. Its black-and-white serpents used to frighten me as a child, two terrifying creatures of legend interlaced down to their tails, but now I reached for in an effort to calm.

Sepha stood and reached for the instrument pointing to a mysterious cluster of light in the sky. In his usual jacket and pants, he would’ve melted into the night if not for his favorite pistol, a gift from me on his sixteenth birthday. It dangled from his belt, magiya energy streaming out of the leather holster, illuminating his side like a hundred glowworms.

This must be your newest stargazer.

His knees knocked my outstretched legs. I can feel the rumbling curiosity of Andrandria from up here. They’re eager to finally catch a glimpse of their new queen.

I shifted to allow him more space. The battle mages stood at attention, unconcerned by our closeness. Sepha was like a brother to me.

He adjusted the stargazer and peered through the eyepiece, examining the drops of white amid the darkness. I’d never altered my original design, only made it better. Made it see farther.

Andrandria is surprised the Valanya line didn’t end with my parents, I said. They’re angry. The former king deceived them for seventeen years.

They only kept you hidden to protect you from the Hunter, he said. You’d think the esteemed Maginari Academy would’ve found him by now.

Growing up confined may have conditioned me to fear the Hunter, but now that I was free, I would die before I’d let them take away my freedom again.

I don’t understand it, I said. What does the Hunter want with me? Why does he want me dead? I’ve lived in abject misery because of him, yet no one’s telling me anything.

It’s only because the king told them nothing, Ann, he murmured, as if the battle mages weren’t in earshot. Who’d dare question the king?

I inhaled deeply. For a passing moment, I noted the familiar fragrance of sage and aromatic wood. For years now, this foreign scent would interlace with the protective incense of the palace before drifting away. My first thought had been the Hunter, but the Maginari Academy never found a threat linked to the odd presence of the scent. Likely a lost spirit, they claimed. I’d learned to live with it, but my eyes still wandered on alert whenever I sensed the fragrance.

I stood and ambled toward the stone railing.

A gauzy glow moved high above the backland mountains. An oil lamp on deck. The cloud passed, and slowly the outline of its sails came into view. If not for the moon’s illuminating splendor, those airships might’ve remained unseen, haunting the vast, inky skies.

Heedlessly, I tilted back, tipping until I vanished over the railing. My cloak whipped as I plummeted. The night wind whistled sharply in my ears, its coolness brushed against my skin. I exhaled a breath along with this brief sense of freedom—as Sepha’s panicked voice rang in my ears.

He’d assumed my misery had provoked me to plunge to my death.

Oh, Seph.

I grasped the rope around my arm, the one hidden behind the ledge I’d used so many times as a child longing for escape. With a single move, I hooked it under my feet and landed against the tower walls with a thud.

I adjusted my footing and peered up. Sepha stared down at me, jaw straining. The battle mages crowded the rail beside him.

I smiled, giving him the same wink he often gave me.

He shook his head. I should’ve known.

I inched toward my bedroom window. When I unclasped the rope, the wind carried with it the soft sound of his farewell.

Night, Seph, I whispered back.

And that was the last time I saw him. The next day, a dragon burned my best friend alive.

2

Annarae

Royal Palace of Andrandria, City of Sar

V ASHE Velihest, we are grateful that you have allowed us audience.

The man fidgeted, and the throne room’s sudden silence intensified his presence.

We hail from Mantalya, a fishing village near the coast of Goldfast. Hours before dawn, a few of my men and I were casting the lines when we heard the most frightening roar echoing through the skies, followed by an explosion from the direction of our village. Frantic we were about our return, Vashe Velihest, but there was nothing we could do. Our homes were ablaze, and our families are no more.

He paused to stifle a sob, then looked heavenward and shut his eyes. His despair seemed amplified just by being here, in this throne room, surrounded by finery that bent superciliously away from him.

We thought it was syaitanfire from the depths of shellahah. But then we saw it. Big it was. About eighty feet, bigger than an airship, I swear it! Sweeping down the coastline. We feared it would come back for us, but our prayers were answered and the dragon disappeared above the clouds.

My throat tightened as the court burst into anxious whispers and muffled cries. Someone retched in the crowd behind him.

The fisherman clenched his sea-worn hat to his chest and wiped tears and snot upon his travel-stained sleeve. A dark smudge trailed down his neck, an imprint of the leather satchel that slouched beside his one shoed foot and one bare foot. He must have lost a shoe in their escape.

Lornin, the court steward, noticed my attention. I nodded, and he got going.

It was my sixth audience with my subjects this morning, and I thanked the heavens that only the royal council and highest-ranking officials were in attendance. Word of this massacre would spread panic in the city. Worse, those with foolish ambitions would go after the beast to claim the kill for their own and profit from its lucrative hide—a suicidal pursuit. This information had to be contained, at least until I’d determined what to do.

My reign had just begun, this crisis so sudden. I had to think fast. I forced my features to display urgency, something my life alone had never demanded, and signaled Kaptan Baltazar, the captain of the palace guard, to lock the doors.

Lornin slipped back inside just before the doors closed to provide the fisherman with a new pair of shoes.

Thank you, Vashe Velihest, thank you, the fisherman murmured.

I stepped down from the dais and moved toward the man. The room fell silent. Hand to the hilt of his sword, the kaptan inched protectively toward me.

Nobody had ever seen me up close. Since being declared monarch, a hood or veil had always concealed my face. A security measure against the Hunter.

Eyes with every kind of intention scrutinized my every move. I preferred the soulless optical lenses of my automatons. Their prearranged functions held more truth than the living beings in this court. I lengthened my spine, emulating my late mother’s grace and quiet power.

I clasped the man’s weathered hands, deeply hued and callused from years of working the sea. I’m no stranger to such a loss. My heart aches for you, your families, and your companions. May they find peace in Mandayna before the passover to the covenanted dimension. Mandayna receive them. Allow them safe haven. Eternity with peace awaits.

The court echoed the ceremonial words, a customary Andrandrian respect for the fallen.

I searched his glassy, forlorn eyes. I knew this look; I’d seen it in my own reflection. His pain extended beyond words.

What is your name? I asked.

He gaped. Her Majesty speaks the dialect of the far west … Righting himself, he bowed again. Th-they call me Cass, Vashe Velihest.

I