Aideen sauntered through the portal, right up to the gate of her grandmother's house. Located on the beach, far from the harbor port itself, she lived just outside of town and away from prying mortal eyes. No one would notice a seventeen-year-old girl emerging from a circle of fire and opening the gate. Just as her grandmother had planned.

It wasn't where her mother had grown up. Aideen's grandmother, once known in the Inverted City as the Lady Anagharad, had previously lived her entire life within Agartha. It was only after the tragic deaths of her daughter and son-in-law that Lady Anagharad left the dragons behind to raise her granddaughter amongst humans.

It was a strange rule that Aideen still had yet to understand. She had only gotten glimpses of fragments of the kingdom she was meant to rule. Rarely was she allowed into Agartha, and even then never out of the Jade Palace.

To see it again was beautiful, a reminder of what was hers.

Of course, there was the complication neither of them had foreseen. She hadn't expected there to be other girls. Logically, there were other heirs out there, as even her father had competition in his Trials by Fire. But she'd never expected them to come forward, not with her grandmother's assurances of how the previous candidates had wanted nothing to do with the magical world after the end of their Trials by Fire.

It wasn't their fault that her parents had died before their coronation.

All her life, she'd been told that she would be the next Pendragon, that she would be the one to break the curse and put things right. She would have been anyway, if her father had lived to be crowned as Pendragon of Agartha. It was the right and natural order of things.

That was what her grandmother had always told her. That was why she could not live amongst the dragons, why she had to achieve and be the very best in all matters of personal conduct and academics. She had a future, a destiny.

Suddenly that wasn't so certain.

Aideen squared her shoulders back as she approached the front steps to her grandmother's house. She had to believe she would still be Pendragon. Surely destiny couldn't be so easily altered or changed?

She knew her grandmother wouldn't be happy about these new arrivals—especially considering that she would have to teach them the same magical secrets she had been waiting to teach Aideen. 

But those girls didn't mean her harm. They didn't even know about the secret world of dragons until today. 

And there was something about knowing that they were like her, that they carried the uniquely heavy burden of a nation's hopes on their shoulders that made Aideen feel a sort of kindship towards them.

It wouldn't hurt to befriend them, would it?

Aideen could already hear her grandmother's answer to that question. She pushed it all down deep within, just like the loneliness and the pressure, and entered into her grandmother's house. 

Lady Anagharad had done her best to furnish her human residence as closely as possible to that she'd owned in Agartha. Aideen was never allowed to visit that house, even though Lady Anagaharad visited it once a month to ensure that everything was in order for her hopefully eventual return once Aideen earned her rightful place as Pendragon. 

Jewel-toned rugs with metallic threads woven throughout carpeted dark wooden floors, matching the furniture with clawed feet like that of a lion's—or indeed, a dragon's—and trinkets filled the shelves, glimmering with promises of ancient stories. 

Lady Anagharad was sitting upon a chaise in the living room, all of the curtains drawn to imitate the darkness of eternal night within Agartha, the main light coming from the glass globes that shifted color like the False Moon over the Jade Palace did, and a smaller star-shaped lamp on the small table by her side. 

She did not lift her head from her book as Aideen entered. Lady Anagharad in spite of being Aideen's grandmother hardly looked older than her late twenties. She shared Aideen's golden curls, although Lady Anagharad styled hers in the more medieval styles that were popular in her homeland. She wore an opal pendant around her neck, and while her clothes were more updated to human trends than her hairstyle, she did wear the jewel tones of the dragons, and little hints of her true identity. 

"Lady Grandmother." Aideen sank into a reverence. 

"You're back later than I expected." Lady Anagharad still did not look up from her book. "I take it all went well?"

"It did." Aideen bit her lip. "Well, mostly. I've been recognized as a Princess of Agartha and sworn to the Trials by Fire. But I'm not the only one. There are two other girls."

The effect was instant. Lady Anagharad's emerald eyes blazed as she closed her book with a snap. She set it the side, her calmness as she shifted position at odds with the fire in her eyes. "How many?" 

Her tone was deceptively light and casual, as if they were discussing something as uninteresting as the weather. 

"Two." Aideen moved her hands behind her back, to hide the nervous twisting of her bracelets. "They were born on the same day as me, actually."

Lady Anagharad was not amused by this fact. Her eyes narrowed. "Will wonders never cease?"

"But they don't know about the dragons—or at least, they didn't before today." Aideen maintained an even expression. "I'll do better than my father did."

Lady Anagharad's expression softened and she patted the spot next to her on the chaise. "I know you will, my little fire. This is your destiny. You will be the one to save us all."

Aideen set her messenger bag down at the side of the chaise and accepted the seat her grandmother offered her. 

Lady Anagharad brushed a stray curl out of Aideen's face and leaned back, her emerald eyes narrowed once more in appraisal. "They would be proud of you, of the fine young lady and princess you've become."

Aideen thought of the trunk in her room. It had previously been in Lady Anagharad's closet, but she'd moved it to Aideen's room when Aideen had turned thirteen. Aideen thought of the letters and photographs inside—the last vestiges of parents she'd never gotten to know. "Thank you, Lady Grandmother."

Lady Anagharad patted Aideen's cheek and smiled indulgently. "I have some surprises for you—for our future queen."

"Thank you, Lady Grandmother." Aideen was just relieved that Lady Anagharad did not seem mad about the presence of the other two princesses.

Lady Anagharad stood. "Come, we must celebrate your coming of age."

As Aideen followed her grandmother, she supposed that they had no reason to worry. After all, the other girls had not been trained the way she had. She was meant to be Pendragon, this was her destiny. Hers was to be a golden legacy, the beginning of a new age for all dragons. 

And everyone knew that destiny could not be so easily changed.

"There you are!" Jinn rushed to Lila as she entered the apartment above the cafe. "I went to the school and you weren't there—and you weren't answering your phone—"

"When you were running late, I asked Sabrina to pick me up and we were working on her case for  Speech and Debate." The lie rolled surprisingly smoothly off of Lila's tongue. She did not flinch as she met her mother's amber eyes, even though she was certain that Jinn could see right through her. 

"I'm just glad you're safe." Jinn's shoulders slumped in relief. "Just let me know next time, alright? I didn't get that phone just for you to play on social media, you know."

"I know, Mom." Lila pulled away from her mother's hand. "I'm sorry, it won't happen again. Look, I'm fine, just a little tired."

Before Jinn could say anything else, Lila brushed past her, into her room. She slammed the door behind her, and slid down it. She dropped her backpack down beside her and exhaled deeply. 

She knew that her mother was worried about her, and already her stomach tingled with guilt for lying to her, to pushing her away when she was trying to give Lila a happy birthday. But she couldn't stand to be in the room with her for another moment, lest she burst out all of her secrets.

She could never tell Jinn what she knew. Something was wrong—she knew that now. Her mother had tried to keep her out of this world. That was behind all of her strange rules, like covering up the birthmark. 

Why? Why did her mother not want her to know about the dragons? 

Absinthe recognized her as her mother's daughter. But Lila didn't know how to ask her then, just like she didn't know how to ask her mother now.

Keep quiet until she could find out more—that was the plan. 

But how could she lie to everyone for long enough to find out? How could she keep such a great and terrible secret from her mother, the person who loved her the most?

So many questions darted around in her brain with no answer in sight, no easy way out. It was like a pattern she'd found in the thrift store, nothing labeled and some pieces missing. She couldn't make heads or tails of how it was all supposed to fit together.

But she'd figured that out then. And she'd figure this out now.

Still, this all felt like a tidal wave, threatening to overwhelm her in the sheer power of it. Maybe Aideen had wanted this—as the princess of the school, Lila could see her as the Queen of Dragons, or Pendragon, or whatever the title had been. And she saw the light in Kira's eyes—she'd wanted to be a rock star, and at least a Dragon Queen would have the same amount of eyes and adoration upon her.

But Lila had plans. She had an ambition, a career path. She was going to be a fashion designer—she'd never heard of a fashion designer queen! Then again, she supposed she'd never heard of a Pendragon either. 

Lila had no choice in the matter. She would have to play the game, to become Pendragon to break the curse.

She just only hoped she would lose.

Kira entered the townhouse close to the university. Her grandmother still wasn't home. She supposed that she was out for some event or another, or even the usual overtime. That was fine by her. She wasn't ready for her grandmother to know yet about what had happened. 

She grabbed the leftover pizza from the previous night out of the fridge and took it back to her room. Happy birthday to me.

This was all straight out of the fantasy books and movies that lined the secondhand bookshelf in her room. Like a lot of her furniture, it was taken from the various dorms of the universities where her grandmother had worked, the things that the students were too wealthy to care about leaving behind and were too bulky to take with them when moving out for the summer. 

Kira sat on her bed and contemplated her new title, and the hidden realm of the dragons. She supposed all of this had to do with her father. 

It was no secret that her mother, Ruby, had been wild. After she'd dropped out of college to join some secret occult society, Kira's grandmother had cut all contact with Ruby. For about five years, no one knew where Ruby had been, what she was up to. Kira's grandmother buried her husband alone. 

And then, out of nowhere, in a hospital in the middle of Nebraska, Dr. Gershwin got the phone call that changed everything. 

Ruby was dying, and Kira was born without any family in the world at all.

Dr. Gershwin had rushed to the hospital, but Ruby died before she could get there. So Dr. Gershwin did the only thing she could—she took Kira in, and that was that.

They'd wandered from place to place, and Dr. Gershwin was always so secretive when it came to Ruby. Kira had always thought it was about wanting to avoid a repeat of the outcome, to eliminate a rogue variable. 

But she wondered now if her grandmother was so secretive because she knew more than she'd let on.

Maybe she had made it in time for Ruby to tell her the secret of who Kira's father was—and maybe he was the link to the bloodline of dragon kings and queens.

She didn't know. She'd probably never know.

But that didn't stop her from wondering.

Kira glanced idly out the window—she noticed that the neighbor also had a light on in his window. She'd caught a glimpse of him from time to time, as he placed his desk in by the window.

A high school boy—probably a boy at her new high school. And a cute one, from her vague estimation. 

He was there now, writing something down in a notebook. She wondered what he could be writing about. There was nothing cuter than a boy with hobbies—except maybe a boy who could write.

Maybe it was poetry, or song lyrics, or—

She nearly fell off the bed when he looked up and waved with his pencil at her. 

She froze, and shyly waved back—but he'd already looked back down at his work. She hastily drew her curtains and retreated further back into her room. 

Happy birthday to me. 

She sighed. 

For all the change that being a Princess would supposedly bring, not much had changed at all.