Nausicaa once looked forward to becoming queen. She'd wanted to make her family proud, especially her father. And she'd been smitten with the boy-king who had been her friend and later her lover.

Now, barely even a year since her coronation, she just felt trapped.

Uriel wasn't the problem. His uncle was. Uriel listened to him more than he listened to her, and she couldn't even bring the matter up without being told she was close-minded and unreasonable. "I know he's your father's political rival," Uriel would tell her. "But you have to learn to see beyond that, Nausicaa. He's your family now, too."

Things grew worse when months passed and she remained without child. She was confined to the rooms of the palace, leaving only when her presence was required or when she had to appear at some political function. Even seeing to her dragon, Inanna, was no longer a freedom she had. Coupled with the pressure to produce an heir, she'd grown miserable and angry, and because she could not always take it out on her husband and her husband's uncle, she occasionally took it out on the people around her.

That was what the handmaiden who came to collect Pela warned her about in a hushed voice. "The queen is in a foul mood today." She shared a look with the guard standing by the door, a weary-looking old man who appeared long overdue for retirement, and the look practically said it wasn't only today that the queen was in a foul mood. "Good luck."

Inside her study, Nausicaa waited by the large window, her back to the door as she was momentarily distracted by the view of dragons flying around the city. But it only made her angry.

She pulled the curtain back hard and, scowling, turned to face her guest.

"You are the ward-witch?"