The Phoenix Queen ruled the Flaming Phoenix from the Phoenix domains, and all of Ashkar knew her for the day she drove the legendary dragon Pyraxis the Embertyrant out of her kingdom. Her judgement was fiery and swift and carried no remorse, and she believed what that victory had taught her: that a danger ended completely is a danger that cannot come back.
She was tall and broad in the shoulder from a lifetime on horseback, with the red-gold hair of her house going to ash at the temples, and she rode everywhere and never in a carriage. She had her younger sister’s eyes, which nobody at court ever remarked on, and she spoke of that sister with a fierce, bright affection that could turn to anger without any warning at all.
Her sister married the Supreme Ruler for love, over the queen’s objection. She had begged her not to, because a woman who married the man who meant to rule all of Ashkar would never again belong to herself. The marriage went ahead, and the queen remained his firm supporter and his oldest military ally, though when he sent the Justicar’s Legion to end the civil war in Iskandar she wanted both sides destroyed to the last, and he refused her.
Her sister never recovered from Zarina’s birth. The queen blamed the child, and for years could hardly sit across a table from her; in time she came to see her sister in Zarina’s stubbornness and her longing to be anywhere else, and Zarina became the last of her sister she had. When Zarina gave herself to the Velvet Veil, the queen rode four hundred miles in the first snow, told the ruler to burn the Veil out, and in the eastern gallery took Zarina’s chin in her hand and looked into her eyes and named what she saw there, because she had seen it in her own camps, in good soldiers who went on taking the poppy long after the pain was gone. She offered to carry her off to the Phoenix domains and sit with her through the sickness. Zarina refused her, and told her, cruelly and truly, why her sister had never once come to her with anything half made.
Later, while the Apocalypse Horde raided with little resistance, she hunted it down without the throne’s leave, and her faith in the ruler she had defended for so long began, slowly, to burn away.
In the eastern gallery she told her sister’s child, without apology, that she had blamed her. Then she touched her face, and told her that her mother had sung to her, dreadfully and loud, every night of the one winter they had.