Queen of Ruin
Chapters (49)
- COVER
- DEDICATION
- MAP
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- FORTY-ONE
- FORTY-TWO
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- DISCOVER MORE
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
- PRAISE FOR
COVER
DEDICATION
To the women of my family, who have shown me so many different ways to be strong
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MAP
ONE
SERINA
WITH EVERY BREATH, Serina Tessaro’s broken rib flamed. The half-healed slash on her arm burned, the bullet wound in her shoulder ached, and her bruises from Commander Ricci’s punishing fists screamed. In truth, finding a place where her hurts didn’t lick at her, hungry and hot, was a difficult job.
But it was the memory of Jacana’s small lifeless body, Oracle’s sightless eyes, the rows upon rows of brave dead women that caused her the most agony.
She should have known that here on Mount Ruin, survival would mean pain.
Since the first moment she’d stepped on this island, condemned for reading—her sister’s crime, not her own—she’d been surrounded by it. The pain of the shackles, of her fellow prisoners’ sobs. The pain of being stripped down and inspected by Commander Ricci. And then there was the agony of the fights themselves, watching women kill each other for rations. Watching her own friend Petrel die. When it had been Serina’s time to fight, she’d found she couldn’t do it. She’d submitted rather than kill Anika, a girl from Hotel Misery. And she’d paid for that decision with pain as well. Banishment, attacks, and then, last night, Commander Ricci’s revenge. He’d captured her and put her onstage, and told her to choose which woman she would fight.
When Serina had stood up to him and refused to fight another woman, when she’d invited him as her adversary instead, she’d assumed she would die.
She hadn’t expected a rebellion.
But Slash and the Hotel Misery crew had attacked the guards; Oracle and Ember had attacked Commander Ricci; and Serina, unlike so many others, had somehow lived to see the morning.
Every painful breath was a gift, one given by Oracle and Slash and all the women who’d chosen to fight the guards instead of one another. Serina swore to herself, as she helped scrub away their blood from the floor of the amphitheater, that she would not let those women’s deaths be in vain. She wouldn’t let down the ones who lived either.
Dawn danced across the island like a Grace in a golden dress, lining each leaf and harsh volcanic rock with lacy filigrees of light, even as Serina and the others worked to erase the carnage of the night before. All the bodies were gone—the slain women committed to the volcano’s red glow and the guards to the sea’s cold depths. Soon, every trace of blood was gone too.