This time a restaurant was burned to the ground because its owner refused to promote a waiter to a position as a chef. “Coffee, Your Highness,” Neena said, setting the drink on my table. That wasn’t happening-and this new riot was just the most recent in a string of unrest. Dad had expected the changes he was making in Illéa to be comfortably in place over the course of a generation, meaning any day now everything should click. When Dad had first decreed that the castes were no more, people all over the country had been delighted. How was I supposed to know if I was walking next to a Six or a Three? And why did that even matter?

It made no sense, especially since there was no outward sign of the divisions. I still thought it was completely bizarre that once upon a time people lived with these limiting but arbitrary labels on their backs. Twenty years ago, Dad’s first act as king was to dissolve the castes, and the old system had been phased out slowly over my lifetime. I flipped through the newspaper and saw that there had been yet another riot, this time in Zuni. But there were days, or sometimes months, when it felt like far too much was piled on me, too much for any one person, really. What they didn’t understand was that their attempts to make my life fair seemed rather unfair to me. So they changed the law, and the people rejoiced, and I was trained day by day to become the next ruler of Illéa. Ahren was the male, so Ahren would have been the heir.Īlas, Mom and Dad couldn’t stand to watch their firstborn be stripped of a title by an unfortunate but rather lovely set of breasts. Had I been born a generation earlier, it wouldn’t have mattered.

However, there was one thing I managed to do in seven minutes that most would say is quite impressive: I became queen.īy seven tiny minutes I beat my brother Ahren into the world, so the throne that ought to have been his was mine. I once tried to run a mile in seven minutes after hearing some athletes could do it in four but failed spectacularly when a side stitch crippled me about halfway in. I COULD NOT HOLD MY breath for seven minutes.

The heir by kiera cass