The Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson Page A

exciting and terrifying, and part of me is glad that I may never know. I’m not sure I could bear to be naked before him.
    Late in the afternoon, a pageboy brings a message from the dovecote. Ximena grabs it and sends him away before he can ask questions. She breaks the canister’s seal and hands it to me. I recognize Alodia’s hurried script.
    Dearest Elisa,
    My condolences regarding Aneaxi.
    Your status in Joya d’Arena was not part of our negotiation. He agreed to marry you in the sight of Orovalle’s nobility and take you safely to his country. In return, Papá will commit troops for the upcoming war with Invierne.
    Elisa, little sister, if you wish to be Joya’s queen in spirit as well as name, you can make it happen, but you must make your own decisions regarding your place there. I cannot counsel you.
    I do believe you have it in you to be a great queen.
    Papá sends his love.
    Alodia
    I read the letter over and over, imagining my sister’s exasperated face. When we were children together, she would huff away, rolling her eyes. The Lucero-Elisa of a month ago would have seen this letter as but a grown-up version of that same contempt, that same frustration at my inability to meet hers and Papá’s expectations. But I feel the truth of it now. Alodia thinks I could play the game if I chose to, and play it well.
    She thinks I could be a great queen.
    It’s heady stuff. I begin to wonder, hesitantly, if she is right. I’ve never wished to rule. Ruling is tedious and exhausting, but better, perhaps, than being useless. And it might be the only way to make Alejandro mine in some way, to matter to him. I toy with the idea for hours, asking what Alodia would do in my place, remembering applicable passages in the Belleza Guerra .
    I make a mental list of my advantages. Alejandro is housing me in the queen’s suite. I’m not sure what it means, but it’s significant enough that his mistress sent her maid to spy on me the day after I arrived. I have Ximena, a woman I don’t begin to understand, but whose loyalty to me is unquestioned. I’ve made a friend in the head priest of the Monastery-at-Brisadulce. I am a princess of Orovalle and therefore outrank everyone save Alejandro and his young son.
    But the hugest advantage of all is that I bear the Godstone. A tremendous honor, I’ve always been told, bestowed by God only once every hundred years, a sign that I am destined for greatness.
    But I’ve had several perplexing hints that I don’t know much about it at all: Alodia’s warning that I should trust no one. The execution of a man who recognized my Godstone. The way Father Nicandro reverently referred to my nurse as my guardian. And now Alodia’s letter, which says I was to be taken safely away.
    The Belleza Guerra says to beware of power, for it is the sparking stone of fear. What is it about my Godstone that sparks so much fear?
    I place my fingertips against the smooth surface. Even through my nightgown, it pulses soft and warm. If I decide to play this terrifying game, my first move must be to discover what it truly means to be the bearer. And I will have to sneak around Ximena to do it.
    I close my eyes and pray. Did you place your stone inside me to help me become queen? I can’t decide how I want God to answer.
    A warm hand presses against my forehead, and I open my eyes. Ximena looks down at me with an affectionate smile. “You look better,” she says. “More color to your cheeks.”
    I smile back. “I feel much better.”
    “Are you ready to eat more? I could get some pastries for you, some chilled juice?”
    “No, thank you.” My mind whirls with planning, for I may have thought up a way to speak with Father Nicandro in secret. “I’m not hungry.”

Chapter 8
    T HE Scriptura Sancta says that all men are equal in the sight of God, and once every week servants sit shoulder to shoulder with merchants and nobles. The first time Ximena and I attended weekly services at the