“But know this,” Ispa the black-hearted sneered, “we were created to lurk, and to judge, and a lifetime is awfully long. You are still so very young. Be careful where you step. Be careful what you say.”
“We were christened ‘the snatchers’ by our gods,” Keke added. “And I… am devourer of the wicked. Thief of their children.” Her eyes flicked over Michelle as if surveying a bin of overflowing garbage. “So… be good.”
The three harpies took to the skies again, with the exception of Parnassia, who lingered just above me and stretched out one withered claw to brush my cheek. Her face, for a moment, was almost soft. Almost. “Theon Aena—king of The Hearthlands,” she cooed. “Your valor and constitution were most impressive to us. Please do not hesitate to patronize Thundercliff again.” Her eyes gleamed wickedly, and all vestiges of softness disintegrated. “For a price.”
With that, she launched into the dark sky after her sisters.
“Theon.” Michelle cast me a stern gaze, as if she thought that the proper expression was all that I required to pay respect to someone. She touched my arm, and Nell’s nose curled, her eyes flashing. But she remained ever my queen, strong, steadfast, and did nothing but glower at the intrusive hand of her enemy. “You know that the ice dragons are wicked and treacherous,” Michelle continued, “but I’m just a human.”
I glanced at Lethe, who had said nothing so far. The man said nothing still. His eyes were full of sadness as they beheld his traitorous wife, the product of an ill-advised union. “Perhaps,” I answered, “I would have believed what you say about ice dragons some weeks ago, when the only ice dragons I knew were those of stories told by my history tutor in childhood. But… I have seen that Lethe Eraeus would intervene on behalf of my innocent wife when his own father sought to end her. Flawed, certainly, the ice dragons are—but they do not possess uniform flaws… just as the fire dragons do not.”
Altair nodded with grim sincerity. “I must agree with you, brother, and I’m relieved to hear you say it first,” he said. “That will make telling Mother that much easier.”
“Telling Mother what?”
Altair grinned sheepishly and waved the matter away with a hand. “Oh,” he said, “nothing… nothing.”
Nell grinned back at him, and my brow furrowed. “Okay.”
“I feel like we’re getting off the topic here,” Michelle interrupted nervously. Her eyes brightened as a toothy smile spread over her face. “Give me another chance,” she said. “I can impress you again. I impressed you once, didn’t I?” Her eyes moved from my face to Nell’s, which was less than half as forgiving. “Nell,” she gushed, her hands moving to my wife’s arm, “give me the same opportunity I gave you. I let you stay in the palace. I took care of you.”
“You made me your servant,” Nell snapped, “for the joy of humiliating me. You weren’t trying to do me any favors. You were just… amusing yourself, Michelle, because deep down, you’re sad. Deep down, you can’t enjoy yourself without tearing someone else down. That’s how sad you are. And I’m sad for you. I am. But.” In spite of her words—and I believed that Penelope did, yes, feel a degree of sympathy for her old friend—her face remained unforgiving. “I don’t have the same problems you have. I love my life.” She squeezed my arm at these words. “And I don’t need to use anyone else’s embarrassment or pain to feel that way. The only service you could have provided was trustworthy, enjoyable companionship. Since you can’t provide that, you’re useless.”
Nell shrugged, having already made her peace with their history, but Michelle gaped at her in shock. I supposed she’d never imagined that the day would come, that someone would look at her and just reject it all. Not for any special reason. Just because her wares were not appealing. “But—but—” she spluttered.
“Good luck with your beach house, Michelle Ballinger, of the Boston Ballingers.” A courteous adieu had been long engrained in my muscle memory. In spite of everything we’d been through, in spite of the betrayals, in spite of the fact that she was as callous and cutthroat as any ice dragoness, I couldn’t stop myself from wishing her good luck. “May your future here in the land of Maine, among mortal men and the company they keep, the business they entail, aid you in your quest to find happiness.”
Michelle’s eyes bulged, and she must’ve been panicking, because she turned next to Lethe. I had never before pitied an ice dragon as I pitied one now. “Lethe, m-my king,” she pronounced, striding past Nell and I, going to brace Lethe’s cheeks in her palms and force him to peer into her eyes. Like some kind of demon witch intent upon casting a spell, I thought. “You can’t leave me here. I’m your wife! Your queen! You can’t abandon me… not any more than you can abandon all of it. Everwinter. Your people. Your vision for the future.”
But Lethe pulled his eyes easily away from hers. “I would not have; you’re right,” he murmured. “But allow me to stop forcing you.” He took a step back and regarded her with more warmth than Nell or I had, strangely. “I know that you fear your life will have lost its magic without the world of the dragons,” he went on. “But there is magic all around you. Even here.” He bowed low. “I wish you all the best in finding it.”
“Come,” I said, mostly to Altair, and slightly to Lethe—who was, oddly, beginning to win my respect. “Michelle. Enjoy your life here, in Beggar’s Hole, among its human peoples. Not the portal of The Hearthlands, or any other escape to any other world, but an appreciation of the average things in your own homeland, for your own destiny—that will be the key. I am sure Penelope and I both hope that you find it.”
With that, I shifted back into my dragon form, and Altair and Lethe followed suit. It was much easier to ignore the sting of Maine’s fading winter with the thick scales of a dragon’s hide. I nudged Nell onto my back, and she shifted into position with surprising fluidity and grace. What a relief to know that, although the physical might have come naturally to Michelle… Nell was the one who was willing to work at something to make it better, whether that thing was as fantastical as the riding of a dragon’s back or as mundane as a day-in and day-out marriage.
My wings came down, up and down, up and down, pulling us together into the sky. Michelle grew smaller and sadder on the beach below. It was amazing how, when one was first introduced to Michelle, she seemed more grand than the average woman. She had all the aura and presence of a true queen, of an almost magical being. And yet, when stripped of the glamour to her spells, she was even less than the average woman. More like a sick child, hungry and cold. She grew small, and the twisting vortex of Beggar’s Lake filtered by beneath us.
I swallowed, thinking of what I knew regarding the realm of the ghouls.
I was certain we would never have to worry about the machinations of Vulott again, and I had anticipated that Lethe would follow him into the vortex. But he had not, perhaps confirming Nell’s approval of his character, or at the very least, his wits.
But he hadn’t known that the vortex of Beggar’s Lake led to the portal of the ghouls. If he had known, he would certainly have stopped his own father, wouldn’t he? If he had known that the vortex led into the portal of the ghouls, and he had allowed Vulott to go without warning, that spoke to his feelings regarding the war his father had started and passed to him like a torch. But ice dragons were also notoriously uneducated—perhaps, in part, due to being relegated to Obran’s peninsula, the coolest zone of the island—both on foreign lands and their own. I was willing to bet that he hadn’t known… which meant that he simply hadn’t been willing to even move to pursue the critical device.
And what of the remainder of the ice dragons?
Would we find them clustered in wait for an edict from their throneless king, as the fire people had awaited my father, and then as they had clung to me?
I doubted it. Without a determined figurehead, their dreams would shrink to encompass only the simple luxuries of their own lives: the accumulation of wealth, and the production of children.
Nell and I
, Altair and Lethe at our rear, left behind the shore of Beggar’s Hole, approaching the rock island which would lead us directly onto the soil of The Hearthlands.
Perhaps the gods had been watching all along.
Could it have been mere coincidence that the love of my life would live so near to our earthly portal? Mere coincidence that her town would be famed for its natural wonder, unknowingly celebrating—and likely suffering— their connection to the dimension of ghouls?
The more I recalled the recent weeks in my mind, the more connections I saw, like the joints of a constellation. If a single shard of the magical mirror, an Aena family heirloom, had not remained behind for Lethe Eraeus to collect and use in his espionage, he never would have known that I had been led by Pythia’s call to Maine. He never would have procured the services of the harpies in distracting and disturbing me, which in turn had caused Nell to consider them for help when I had abandoned her, safe with her parents, so that I could return to the war. It was the harpies who had suggested the use of that oft forgotten and unused portal.
Perhaps even Penelope’s infertility had been a thread in the grand, unknowable design. After all, had it been the order of the gods, woven into the stars over The Hearthlands, that I have a son who would be king? A daughter who would be a queen? Or had that merely been mortal machination? Nothing more than a tradition, an expectation. Not fate. Decree.
And it was that infertility which had allowed her to strike the deal with Parnassia she knew she would never be able to satisfy. The deal with Parnassia which had led our paths to cross when Parnassia became lost in the sky, and brought about the alliance which ultimately disposed of the ice dragons…
They might have been a threat to us still, as they would doubtlessly rebuild their society—even if only by concentrating on themselves—but it would be a long time until they struck again. Perhaps another fifty years. Perhaps the grandson of Lethe, if he chose to remarry, or to rekindle his sham marriage to Michelle, even. The poor sap. Maybe, though. Maybe there was some way we could rebuild which might de-incentivize a rebellion by our brothers to the south.
I pointed downward and dove into the center of the ring of rocks, the dazzling cosmic portal at its center. There was the unpleasant sensation of being stifled, of darkness, and then we burst into the fresh air of my homeland. The clouds, which had been low and thick since I had returned, had broken apart. A pale blue morning sky shimmered down on us, and with it a few threads of sunlight. The snow had split into patches and appeared to be melting, but slowly, and the city…
The city on the horizon was black and smoldering still.
Theon
As the four of us descended to the ground at the city walls—the moat had stopped its infernal burning and was now the burbling, effervescent river I had always known it to be—Lethe, Altair and I shifted into our human forms, again nude. Penelope had the grace to let this go unacknowledged, which was kind of her, as the men of fire heritage were seldom aware of their own nudity unless a female was present.
“Theon,” Altair called to me, frowning and shaking his head. There was a message scrawled across the city wall, fading into thin air before us.
Children, the letter began, if you are in condition to read this letter, know that the castle has been almost wholly retaken, with the exception of one willful ice dragoness who refuses to vacate. Find me the moment you return. I am in the throne room.
All my love,
Your mother
“It was a gift from the oracle of Thundercliff,” I explained to Altair. “A letter which allows the writer to transcribe across any distance to anyone they truly love. I suspect Mother has taken charge of my satchel.” We pushed through the ruined gates and into the blackened shell of a city beyond. Large swaths of snow had melted away to reveal the dead and brown grass beneath.
“I suspect that is not all she has,” Altair grumbled.
“What do you mean by that?” I asked.
Altair cleared his throat. “I know a particularly willful ice dragoness,” he said, shaking his head. “She would have stayed behind… and she wouldn’t have bent to the will of the former queen, attempting to banish her.”
I frowned and caught a glimmer of smile playing at the edges of Nell’s lips. “What?” I asked. “What am I missing?”
“You’ll see,” Nell replied. She shared a knowing glance with Altair. “Hopefully your mother hasn’t tortured her too much.”
The castle loomed before us now, clearly damaged but not nearly as destroyed as the surrounding village. There were some burnt portions of the wall, some windows that had been knocked out, but it seemed that the acquisition of the palace had been a quick and relatively painless one.
We moved into the foyer. The central chandelier had crashed to the floor and shattered, now it was little more than twisted, golden sculpture. Muddy footprints tracked up and down the carpeted castle stairwell. And, naturally, the odor of smoke clung to everything. What a mess.
Still. Altair was alive. Penelope was my wife. And the shadow which had sought to guide the crown of ice—Vulott Eraeus—was forever vanquished now.
“I wish we’d had more time to talk about our families before being thrust into all this,” Nell said softly to me. “I was so sure that I had heard mention of Altair’s name somewhere before, but you never told me that he was your brother. I didn’t know who he was until Altair’s girlfriend told me that he was a fire prince.”
I gaped at this. Altair had never been much the type for commitment. At times it seemed even fortuitous for him that we were lacking in fire dragonesses. “You have a girlfriend?”
Altair’s cheeks flushed. His grin was part boyish, part sheepish. “Technically,” he said, “I have a fiancée.”
How was it possible that so much had changed, so quickly? From a peaceful countryside to a blizzard-choked, war-torn country, and then… this. Charred and trembling, but alive. Our father was gone… but I had Nell. And Altair had… A fiancée? As if the upheaval of our land had also been necessary for undergrowth to flourish.
But how had he met her? Where? And when? During all of this time, when had he had the opportunity to meet an eligible fire maiden? I frowned, confused. Where did such a creature even exist?
“Altair,” I said, “have you met… an older dragoness?”
Altair grinned and swept open the throne room door for me, bowing so that Nell and I could enter. Lethe followed behind us. “Not exactly,” Altair said.
There in the throne room—untouched by the fire—Mother sat before a host of fire dragons, the entirety of the camp we had brought from the ogres’ beach. At the side of the throne was a young woman wearing manacles. She had the porcelain skin characteristic of ice people, and long, thick auburn hair… and a resolute pout.
“Mother!” Altair cried, springing forward. I had expected his tone to be ragged with relief and gratitude, as mine had been the first time I’d seen Mother and affirmed that she was alive and well. But his was almost a reproof. Regardless, Mother seemed to not notice the tone, and stood from the throne, advancing down its aisle, and embraced him. The exchange was over almost the instant it had begun, as Altair pulled away. “You can’t—You have to let her out of those chains, Mother; by the gods, this is humiliating. Merulina—I’m so, so sorry.”
Mother glared at him, even as she advanced to impart her hug of welcome onto me, and Altair sprinted the remainder of the aisle to where the ice dragoness—Merulina—was stationed. According to his body language, they were quite intimate. He touched her face, and she panned her eyes readily to track him as he lowered and kissed her lips… Oh. That was why there had been no older fire dragoness. He had, ahem, befriended one of the insurgents. An ice woman.
My brow furrowed.
But it was nothing compared to Mother. Her jaw dropped. “Altair! That woman—She’s a prisoner! She refused to vacate the castle, even when all her people had abandoned it, and all that remained were the rightful heirs of this land. Even t
hen, she would not relent. She must be punished for such insolence, if only to be made an example.”
Altair grimaced and gave her a grim look. “Merulina stayed because she is to be my bride.”
Mother’s cheeks fumed. “What?”
“This castle is just as much hers as it is Penelope’s. She will be a rightful heiress of this land, too, in time.”
Although Merulina’s expression had been chilly and somewhat bitter when it was turned toward the fire people—who had, admittedly, chained her up—it was soft and open, nearly shining with admiration, when Altair spoke.
“This is ridiculous,” Mother insisted. “We cannot begin anew by integrating the vipers who tore asunder our—our—and just what the hell is this?” She gestured to Lethe. “You’ve brought with you the imposter king of the ice people, too? Into this very throne room? Have you gone mad, the three of you?”
Nell squeezed my hand once and stepped forward. “If I may be so bold,” she began, “the reason that Lethe has returned to the palace with us is not that he considers this to be his home, per se, but—”
Her eyes shifted to Lethe himself, and he stepped forward to take the helm.
“To express my most sincere apologies at having been compliant in the move to appropriate this city for the uses of the ice dragons,” he said. “I don’t expect that you will forgive me with ease, or with speed, but I do wish for you to know that my father—as he encouraged my people to always be—was stern, and cold, and narrow-minded, and single-minded. He was tutored beneath my grandfather Bram, and absorbed all his teachings too well. And I… my father found to be lamentably soft by comparison.” Lethe grimaced. “He would take this land at any cost. It was his life’s ambition. But I would like you to know that I have, perhaps not greater ambitions, but better ambitions, for myself.”