Red Queen (Red Queen, #1)

by Victoria Aveyard

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. Some say those are just stories, but I don’t believe that. The gods rule us still. They have come down from the stars. And they are no longer kind.

There is so much more out there. Beyond us, beyond the Silvers, beyond everything I know.

And everyone knows I’m the jealous one, Gisa. I can’t do anything but steal from people who can actually do things.

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.

You don’t see us, and so we are everywhere.” Her voice hums with authority and poise. “And we will rise up, Red as the dawn.” Red as the dawn.

“Red as the dawn . . .” the letter reads. There it is, plain as the nose on my face. Farley’s words from her video, the Scarlet Guard’s rallying cry, in my brother’s handwriting. The phrase is too strange to ignore, too unique to brush off. And the next sentence, “see the sun rise stronger . . .” My brother is smart but practical. He doesn’t care about sunrises or dawns or witty turns of phrase. Rise echoes in me, but instead of Farley’s voice in my head, it’s my brother speaking. Rise, red as the dawn. Somehow, Shade knew.

You have to look without seeing, hear without listening.

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

The Silvers are greater and stronger than I ever feared, with powers I never even knew existed. How can these people be real?

Maybe this is more like the Feats than I realized. Except instead of showing the Reds where we stand, this is the king showing his subjects, powerful as they are, where they stand. A hierarchy within the hierarchy.

Like I’ve been living my whole life blind and now I’ve opened my eyes.

know

All right, hands, now might be a good time to do your thing. Nothing happens, of course. Nothing happens when I need it to.

My voice is faint, weak, defeated, as I laugh at my predicament. “Oh, great.”

“I’m sorry,” Cal’s voice says. I think I’m dreaming.

This is a nightmare. I’m being locked away for the rest of my life, forced into being someone else. Into being one of them. A puppet. A show to keep people happy, quiet, and trampled.

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

If. It’s the worst word in the world.

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

“Is she here?” I murmur, trying to sound apologetic. “The girl you would have chosen?” He hesitates, then shakes his head. “No, I didn’t have anyone in mind. But it was nice to have the option of a choice, you know?” No, I don’t know. I don’t have the luxury of choice. Not now, not ever.

“Why isn’t anyone watching us?” He only blinks at me. “So there is a difference,” he mutters.

“I’m a Silver, sir.” To my horror, he shakes his head. “No you are not, Mare Barrow, and you must never forget it.”

“Mare, when a Silver says ‘power,’ they mean might, strength. ‘Ability,’ on the other hand, refers to all the silly little things we can do.” Silly little things.

“My dear, the queen would like nothing more than for you to disappear. Discovering what you are, helping you understand it, is the last thing she wants.”

You don’t understand the power you have now, how much you could control.” He clasps his hands behind his back, oddly tight. “The Scarlet Guard are too drastic for most, too much too fast. But you are the controlled change, the kind people can trust. You are the slow burn that will quench a revolution with a few speeches and smiles.

“Thinking all Silvers are evil is just as wrong as thinking all Reds are inferior,” he says, his voice grave. “What my people are doing to you and yours is wrong to the deepest levels of humanity. Oppressing you, trapping you in an endless cycle of poverty and death, just because we think you are different from us? That is not right. And as any student of history can tell you, it will end poorly.”

He can help me survive. Better yet, he might even help me live.

As nice as he is, my instincts tell me not to turn my back on Elara’s son, that he’s hiding something.

“You produced electrical energy.” Now I’m really confused. “Right. That’s my ability, Julian.” “No, I thought your ability was the power to manipulate, not create,” he says, his voice dropping gravely. “No one can create, Mare.”

All elementals are the same, manipulating metal or water or plant life that already exists. They’re only as strong as their surroundings. Not like you, Mare.”

You are something else entirely. Not Red, not Silver. Something else. Something more.” “Something different.”

You don’t know where freedom leads.”

The abilities are all they have.

The people rose, the empires fell, and things changed. Liberty moved in arcs, rising and falling with the tide of time.

I won’t look back, not now when he’s betrayed all I’ve ever done for him.

How she can watch her friends bleeding on the floor, I don’t know. Silvers are different, I remind myself. Their scars don’t last. They don’t remember pain. With skin healers waiting in the wings, violence has taken on a new meaning for them. A broken spine, a split stomach, it doesn’t matter. Someone will always come to fix you. They don’t know the meaning of danger or fear or pain. It’s only their pride that can be truly hurt.

Cal’s blood might be silver, but his heart is black as burned skin.

Anyone can betray anyone.”

It’s our nature, Julian would say. We destroy. It’s the constant of our kind. No matter the color of blood, man will always fall.

His lips are on mine, hard and warm and pressing. The touch is electrifying, but not like I’m used to. This isn’t a spark of destruction but a spark of life.

Anyone can betray anyone.

I’ve seen who you really are, I want to scream. You’re not the gentle warrior, the perfect prince, or even the confused boy you pretend to be. As much as you try to fight it, you’re just like all of them.

“I know you have your own reasons for—for sympathizing, but their methods cannot be—” “Their methods are your own fault. You make us work, you make us bleed, you make us die for your wars and factories and the little comforts you don’t even notice, all because we are different. How can you expect us to let that stand?”