Kristin Cashore

Eighteen-year-old Bitterblue, queen of Monsea, realizes her heavy responsibility and the futility of relying on advisors who surround her with lies as she tries to help her people to heal from the thirty-five-year spell cast by her father, a violent psychopath with mind-altering abilities.

Bitterblue

Cassidy Nolan

“I’ll make no more declarations without consulting you first,” she said quietly.

“There now,” said Thiel, relieved. “See? That’s a wise decision. Wisdom is queenly, Lady Queen.”

“I’m as old as both of you,” she said, even though she suspected she wasn’t, “and I’m smarter, and I can probably fight as well as you can.”

“Her personality is not gray,” Saf said.

“Indeed,” Teddy said. “She’s all sparks.”

If Bitterblue had had any doubt that Saf was a sailor, his language now as he carried his gasping, glass-eyed friend up the steps laid those doubts to rest.

Bitterblue ran back to the castle in a thick, gray dawn. She raced the sun, hoping, fervently, that Po wasn’t planning to ruin her breakfast again. 

Find something useful to do with your morning,

 she thought to him as she neared her chambers. 

Do something heroic in front of an audience. Knock a child into the river while no one’s looking and then rescue him.

She noticed, absentmindedly, that the woman in the hanging, dressed in white furs and surrounded by stark white forest, had eyes green as moss and hair bright and wild, like a sunset or like fire. She was too vivid, too strange to be human. Yet another odd decorative object of Leck’s.

There was something funny about Po’s face, about the way he was steadfastly not turning it to her. “Look at me,” she said.

“Can’t,” he said glibly. “I’m blind.”

“I need Po,” Bitterblue said. “Is he awake?”

The door swung open to reveal the bed, where Po lay sleeping. “He’s exhausted,” said Katsa. “What happened, sweetheart?” she asked again.

“Someone attacked me outside the castle,” Bitterblue said.

Katsa’s eyes blazed blue and green and Po sat up in bed like a mechanical doll. “What is it?” he said blearily. “Wildcat? Is it morning?”

She dreamed that she was walking from rooftop to rooftop in Bitterblue City. She was walking on the castle roof. She was walking on the edges of the parapets of the glass roof of her castle tower, and she could see everything all at once, the buildings of her city, the bridges, the people trying to be strong. The sun warmed her, a breeze cooled her, and there was no pain, and she wasn’t afraid to be standing at the top of the world.

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