Red Queen (Red Queen, #1)

by Victoria Aveyard

“Mom, don’t cry,” I say, stepping forward to hug her. She feels so thin in my arms, thinner than I remember. Or maybe I just never noticed how frail she’s become. “It’s not just you, dear, it’s—” She looks away from me, to Dad. There’s a pain in her eyes, a pain I don’t understand. The others can’t bear to look at her. Even Dad stares at his useless feet. A grim weight settles on the house. And then I realize what’s going on, what they’re trying to protect me from. My voice shakes when I speak, asking a question I don’t want to know the answer to. “Where’s Shade?” Mom crumples in on herself, barely making it to a chair at the kitchen table before she devolves into sobs. Bree and Tramy can’t bear to watch, both turning away. Gisa doesn’t move, staring at the floor like she wants to drown in it. No one speaks, leaving only the sound of my mother’s tears and my father’s labored breathing to fill the hole my brother once occupied. My brother, my closest brother. I fall backward, almost missing a step in my anguish, but Cal steadies me. I wish he wouldn’t. I want to fall down, to feel something hard and real so the pain in my head won’t hurt so badly. My hand strays to my ear, grazing over the three stones I hold so dearly. The third, Shade’s stone, feels cold against my skin. “We didn’t want to tell you in a letter,” Gisa whispers, picking at her splint. “He died before the discharge came.” The urge to electrify something, to pour my rage and sorrow into a single bolt of bitin...