Red Queen (Red Queen, #1)

by Victoria Aveyard

This is the true division between Silvers and Reds: the color of our blood.

“A whisper,” I breathe aloud. Never before have I seen one in the arena—I doubt anyone has. Whispers are rare, dangerous, and powerful, even among the Silvers, even in the capital. The rumors about them vary, but it boils down to something simple and chilling: they can enter your head, read your thoughts, and control your mind.

In school, we learned about the world before ours, about the angels and gods that lived in the sky, ruling the earth with kind and loving hands.

The gods rule us still. They have come down from the stars. And they are no longer kind.

The parade, she calls them, an endless march of preening peacocks, each one more proud and ridiculous than the next. All Silver, all silly, and all status-obsessed.

It’s actually a gate made of sparkling glass that blinds us before we even get a chance to step inside. The rest of the wall looks to be made of the same thing, but I can’t believe the Silver king would be stupid enough to hide behind glass walls. “It isn’t glass,” Gisa tells me. “Or at least, not entirely. The Silvers discovered a way to heat diamond and mix it with other materials. It’s totally impregnable. Not even a bomb could get through that.” Diamond walls.

Throne of Glass anyone?? 👀🥹

“Wrists,” he sighs, already bored with us. For a moment, I’m puzzled, but Gisa sticks out her right hand without a thought. I follow the gesture, pointing my arm at the officer. He slaps a pair of red bands around our wrists. The circles shrink until they’re tight as shackles—there’s no removing these things on our own.

To mark them as Reds probably

The Reds are few and fast, running errands and selling their own wares, all marked by their red bands. Though the Silvers wear no band, they’re easy to spot.

Knew it

It takes all my strength not to snap at these cowards who will never see the front lines or send their children to fight. Their Silver war is being paid for in Red blood.

In the light of the inn, his eyes glint red-gold, the color of warmth. My years spent sizing people up do not fail me, even now. His black hair is too glossy, his skin too pale to be anything but a servant. But his physique seems more like a woodcutter’s, with broad shoulders and strong legs. He’s young too, a little older than me, though not nearly as assured of himself as any nineteen- or twenty-year-old should be.

The morning seems a hundred years away, part of another life where I was stupid and selfish and maybe even a little bit happy. Now I have nothing but a conscripted friend and a sister’s broken bones.

Long ago he called us ants, Red ants burning in the light of a Silver sun. Destroyed by the greatness of others, losing the battle for our right to exist because we are not special. We did not evolve like them, with powers and strengths beyond our limited imaginations. We stayed the same, stagnant in our own bodies. The world changed around us and we stayed the same.

The metal box is cool to the touch, having long lost the heat of electricity. But there are vibrations still, deep in the mechanism, waiting to be switched back on. I lose myself in trying to find the electricity, to bring it back and prove that even one small thing can go right in a world so wrong. Something sharp meets my fingertips, making my body jolt. An exposed wire or faulty switch, I tell myself. It feels like a pinprick, like a needle spiking in my nerves, but the pain never follows.

Does Mare have powers?? 👀

Somehow, Shade knew. Many weeks ago, before the bombing, before Farley’s broadcast, Shade knew about the Scarlet Guard and tried to tell us. Why? Because he’s one of them.

“Say nothing. Hear nothing. Speak to no one, for they will not speak to you.”

The crown on his head is familiar, made of twisted red gold and black iron, each point a burst of curling flame. It seems to burn against his inky black hair flecked with gray. How fitting, for the king is a burner, as was his father, and his father before him, and so on. Destructive, powerful controllers of heat and fire.

Cal is the prince. And he’s a burner too 🤔👀

Tiberias Calore the Sixth, King of Norta, Flame of the North.

Calore CAL 😩😅

“And the crown prince of House Calore and Jacos, son of my late wife, the Queen Coriane, heir to the Kingdom of Norta and the Burning Crown, Tiberias the Seventh.”

CAL

The crown prince is Cal.

I KNEW IT

I can feel all eyes on me, the burned Red girl. The human lightning rod.

Instead of catching a dozen jagged blades in my palms, I feel something quite different. Like with the sparks before, my nerves sing, alive with some inner fire. It moves in me, behind my eyes, beneath my skin, until I feel more than myself. Then it bursts from me, pure power and energy. A jet of light—no, lightning—erupts from my hands, blazing through the metal.

SHE’S SO COOL

“I am not an it.” “What you are remains to be seen. But be thankful for one thing, little lightning girl,”

With a jolt, I realize my wrist is bare. The red band is gone, taken away. What could that mean?

Time to pose as a Silver!

All together you are poor, rude, immoral, unintelligent, impoverished, bitter, stubborn, and a blight upon your village and my kingdom.”

“You are no longer Mare Barrow, a Red daughter of the Stilts.” “Then who am I?”

“Your father was Ethan Titanos, general of the Iron Legion, killed when you were an infant. A soldier, a Red man, took you for his own and raised you in the dirt, never telling you your true parentage. You grew up believing you were nothing, and now, thanks to chance, you are made whole again. You are Silver, a lady of a lost High House, a noble with great power, and one day, a princess of Norta.”

Oh boy

My years in the shadows have taught me many things. Who carries the most money, who won’t notice you, and what liars look like. The king is a liar, I realize, watching as he forces another shrug. He’s trying to be dismissive, and it’s just not working. Something has him scared of Farley, of the Scarlet Guard. Something much bigger than a few explosions.

With my newly pale skin and darkened eyes and lips, I look cold, cruel, a living razor. I look Silver. I look beautiful. And I hate it.

You are pretending to be raised Red, but you’re Silver by blood. You are now Red in the head, Silver in the heart.

From now until the end of your days, you must lie. Your life depends on it, little lightning girl.

If there was ever a person begging for an elbow to the face, it is Evangeline Samos.

As much as I try, I can’t ignore the sudden jolt of pity I feel for the forgotten prince. But it passes when I remember who he is and who I am. I’m a Red girl in a sea of Silvers, and I can’t afford to feel sorry for anyone, least of all the son of a snake.

In the fairy tales, the poor girl smiles when she becomes a princess. Right now, I don’t know if I’ll ever smile again.

“You know, we’d get there much faster if you actually moved.” “Shut up, Lucas.”

LMAO

“So what does this mean?” “I’m not quite sure. You are something else entirely. Not Red, not Silver. Something else. Something more.” “Something different.”

“You better hide that heart of yours, Lady Titanos. It won’t lead you anywhere you want to go.”

“We won’t say anything, of course.” “Not a word,” Dad agrees. My siblings nod as well, swearing to be silent. But Kilorn’s face falls into a dark scowl. For some reason, he’s become so angry and I can’t for the life of me say why. But I’m angry too. Shade’s death still weighs on me like a terrible stone. “Kilorn?” “Yeah, I won’t talk,” he spits. Before I can stop him, he gets up from his chair and sweeps out in a whirlwind that spins the air. The door slams behind him, shaking the walls.

What a fucking liar. I KNOW YOU WILL

The air cools, but Cal doesn’t step back. I’m his brother’s betrothed—he has to be protective of me.

Because he likes you 👀🥹

Kilorn says softly, finally understanding the price I’ve paid. “You have a bad habit of trying to save me.”

Foreshadowing?? 👀

Few Silvers inherit abilities from their mothers, and no one has ever had more than one ability.

He would oversee the broadcasted executions in the capital, lording over the Reds and even the Silvers sentenced to die. And now I know why they chose him to do it. The Haven girl blinks back into existence, suddenly visible again, while the churning wind dies in Oliver’s hands. Evangeline’s knives drop out of the air, and even I feel a calm blanket of nothing fall over me, blotting out my electrical sense. He is Rane Arven, the instructor, the executioner, the silence. He can reduce a Silver to what they hate most: a Red. He can turn their abilities off. He can make them normal.

Oofda dangerous much?

Angry, I let my mind reach out to the desk lamp illuminating my reading. The electricity in it calls to me, as familiar as my own pulse. With nothing more than my brain, I turn it on and off, blinking in time with my ragged heartbeat.

What a badass

“It seems we have more in common than you think, Mare.” “What do you mean?” “They killed my sister too. She stood in the way, and she was removed. And”—his voice drops—“they’ll do it again, to anyone they have to. Even Cal, even Maven, and especially you.” Especially me. The little lightning girl.

“I’m trying to tell you that I’m not the same as the rest of them. I think my life is worth yours, and I’ll give it gladly, if it means change.” He is a prince and, worst of all, the queen’s son. I didn’t want to trust him before for this very reason, for the secrets he kept hidden. Or maybe this is what he was hiding all along . . . his own heart.

Now I can only see Kilorn running full speed toward his doom. “You know what happened to Shade. You can’t do this.” He pulls away the rag and reaches out to embrace me, but I step away. His touch feels like a betrayal. “Mare, you don’t have to keep trying to save me.” “I will as long as you won’t.” How can he expect to be anything but a human shield?

Kilorn backs away, following the others into the shadows, but his eyes stay on me. “Mare,” he calls after me. “At least say good-bye.” But I’m already walking, Maven by my side, Walsh leading us both. I won’t look back, not now when he’s betrayed all I’ve ever done for him.

Stupid boy

“Well, it’s difficult to learn without a partner,” I snap, bristling at him. “Indeed.”

Is Cal gonna reach her how to dance???? 🥹😭

“Don’t corner someone better than you, it makes them more dangerous,” he says, putting an arm around his brother’s shoulder. “You can’t beat her with ability, so beat her with your head.”

With nothing but a backward glance at me, Cal leaves us to stand with Evangeline. I wish he wouldn’t, just so I don’t have to watch her smirk and gloat. Not to mention I get this strange twist in my stomach every time he looks at her.

BECAUSE YOU LIKE HIM

Cal’s blood might be silver, but his heart is black as burned skin. When his eyes trail to mine, I force myself to look away. Instead of letting his warmth, his strange kindness confuse me, I commit the inferno to memory. Cal is more dangerous than all of them put together. I cannot forget that.