Mother grimaced and nodded to him. “I see,” she said. “And what is it that you wish for your own future, if not the shackles of our dungeon?”
“I might like to be a history teacher someday,” Lethe confessed bashfully. “Power, and servitude, and even the accumulation of wealth, they hold no particular gleam in my eye.”
“Then you are no ice dragon,” Mother replied testily.
At this, Lethe laughed, and a plume of frost exited his lips along with it. “I assure you that I am,” he said. “But we are people, my queen. We share a land, and a culture, and a history, but we are each individuals, with our own dreams and histories, our own secrets and weaknesses. I am not exactly like my father, just as I am not exactly like the young woman you have shackled at your feet.”
Altair sighed loudly. “Can we do something about this?” he complained to Mother. His tone reminded me of the tone he would take in childhood, which had always made him the more spoiled one of the two of us.
Mother’s expression was dark, but she gestured for one of the sentries to advance and unshackle the young woman.
“I suppose mine is also not the correct way to begin anew,” she allowed.
“Aye,” Altair agreed, pulling the manacles from Merulina’s wrists. They embraced passionately. “It did not serve us well in the wake of Emperor Bram, did it? Rather, it seemed to radicalize the remnant of their people.” When they pulled away, he touched Merulina’s face and smiled down at her tenderly. “I can attest that this dragoness is as pure as the driven snow, and yet as steady as our own flame. The only reason she does not wear a ring with the Aena crest is that I wished to receive your approval before placing it upon her finger.”
“But—Altair—how will she dwell in the palace with us?” Mother asked, cocking her head to the side. “I do not mean to be rude, but the sunlight has always been concentrated heavily on the palace, and heat radiates into the city itself. This is why the ice people stayed on the Obran peninsula, where it was cooler. She won’t be… comfortable… here. You see, I am thinking of her when I express my… doubts as to this union. I am also thinking of you… Lethe.” Her eyes moved with cool judgment between the pair.
“Things will be different from now on,” I told her. I tried to be gentle. Mother was older. She’d been taught long ago to treat the ice people a certain way, to think of them in a certain way. And it would be harder for her than it would be for the rest of us to change, but I had faith that she could do it. She was not made of stone. “You see… Mother… Altair and I followed Vulott, who had confiscated the astrolabe, to the nearby portal of the ghouls.”
Her weathered hands trembled up to her lips. “By the gods,” she breathed. “You went to the portal of the ghouls?”
I winced, thankful that she would never learn how Lethe and I had fought—albeit more a sparring match than a true fight, with fang and claw to draw real blood—in the air over the lake itself.
“But that doesn’t matter anymore, because we are fine,” I reminded her. “What matters is that the astrolabe, amid the scuffle, was lost in the gate of the ghouls, and Vulott, in his desperation to control this land, followed it.”
Mother’s hands slowly drifted away from her mouth. “But there is no returning from that gate,” she breathed. “Not for anyone, or anything.”
I nodded once. “Yes. Vulott is gone… and the astrolabe is gone.”
Mother shook her head as if to strike the words from the air. “But if the astrolabe is gone, we have no control anymore. Not over anything!”
“That’s true. The weather and the stars will follow a new pattern. They will follow their natural order and forget the prescribed motion of our preferences, fire or ice.”
“That is why the chill remains in the air. It is, indeed, a true winter. The first true winter this isle has seen in centuries.”
“But it will see a summer.” Merulina spoke up. Mother looked at her sternly, as if she wished to reject that the young woman was being quite considerate of her. “It will see the course of all four seasons—and my people, the ice dragons, will no longer be forced to stay on the Obran peninsula. We will be able to live and work in the capital city, if we wish.” She maintained eye contact with Mother, which was an admirable feat for anyone, particularly an ice dragoness. “Even in the palace.”
Mother’s expression was still sour. “Yes,” she admitted. “I suppose you are right.”
“And we could use the help of any willing ice dragons,” I interjected. “If they can live in the city, they can help rebuild what we, well, destroyed.”
“What we both destroyed,” Lethe added darkly. “The war we began was the war you ended. We worked together to ruin the land.”
“The land isn’t ruined, though.” Nell finally spoke up. I looked to her, and I remembered, suddenly, vividly, the woman I had seen when I’d gazed into her soul, on the stoop of a beach house in Maine one December’s night.
It was her, and it was not her. This woman was older than she was, and she had thick, wild black hair lifted off her back by some phantom wind. She was taller than Penelope, and held herself with a noticeable confidence: square shoulders, chin up, eyes even. Although she was slender, like Nell was, her body still wasn’t quite the same. Her cheeks were a fair pink, and her tan skin bore with it a delicate smattering of freckles, as well as a delicate smattering of scars. Her face bore the exact same structure of Nell’s, angular and petite. It wore not one single crease, and I knew, somehow, I knew that this was because of her effort to appear strong, and not because she was never bothered by anything. She wore a blue gown and an armored breastplate: a warrior and royalty in one.
Nell looked like that queen I had seen, fleeting and illusory, those many moons past.
“Does the soil operate differently here than it does on Earth?” she asked pointedly.
I frowned and shook my head. “We may have different flora, and the enzymes will never quite match, to be sure,” I said, “but it is still soil. If you mix it with water, it will still make mud.”
“In America, we let our forest fires burn wild.” Although she had never before addressed my people as a whole like this, she spoke with confidence. “It’s even beneficial to the forest overall. The heat from the flames—which causes seeds to spring open that have been waiting for years—helps the new growth to germinate. And then they fall and flower in the debris of the wreckage… which acts as a fertilizer, providing a rich, nutritious base for the development.” No one reacted to these seemingly random facts, but Nell’s eyes were bright with optimism. She speaks with such passion! “Don’t you see?” she asked them, turning from one face to the next. “This war was your forest fire, burning wild. And now all of the tensions boiled over, all of the history which seems to be charred to a crisp, torn into pieces, and lying at your feet, are really a fertilizer. This—this is a tragedy,” she said, twisting to face my mother. A wise decision, as my mother’s eyes were the hardest. I had always known my mother to be a soft and tender woman, but the war had changed her, as it had changed me. It had taken more from us than from anyone else. It had taken not only Erisard, her husband, my father, but it had taken the land we assumed would always be ours, a gift from the gods themselves. It had taken our faith in the stars, and our bond with our people, and most of all, the innocence with which we could see the world.
But Nell had enough steadfast, resolute innocence—as if it was an oasis within herself she had been guarding her entire life—to share with the rest of us. To teach us how to let our own optimism spring forth again.
“This is a tragedy. But it’s also an opportunity. It’s an opportunity given to you by the gods themselves, Mrs. Aena. Queen Aena. It’s an opportunity to heal this city, and I don’t just mean the burnt buildings, the ruined businesses. I mean the relations between the fire and the ice people who share this land. You can start again by fully integrating your city. You said yourself the astrolabe used to be fixed so that the sun would shine brightest on t
he castle. Naturally, this felt perfect to you, but it also kept the ice dragons from ever being able to interact politically, or economically, or socially. And now—you have some good ice dragons here who are ready to start over with you. To help rebuild not just the stores and homes but the entire culture.” She looked significantly to Lethe and to Merulina before continuing. “You even have the opportunity here to heal the schism between your people by welcoming the birth—I mean, maybe, no pressure, guys”—she blushed and directed this aside to my brother and his bride-to-be—“but you could welcome the birth of a new breed of dragon. A breed of dragon who might have control over both fire and ice. Who might be comfortable in the summer and in the winter.”
Nell grinned between my mother and my people, pleading with them, revealing to them their own greatest avenue of success. She wanted them to believe in her, but not because she was desperate; because she was right, and she wanted what was most beneficial to all the people. A true queen. My heart sang with pride and gratitude that I had found her, and that I had chosen her, against all odds. Against even the will of the gods.
Nell went to stand directly in front of my mother. She looked much smaller by comparison, as humans are generally smaller than dragon people, but something similar passed between them. A kindred air to the straightness of their backs, the evenness of their eyes. They were a pair of queens.
“During the war, so many people ran,” she reminded my mother, her voice soft and private, something for Mother alone to hear. The speech was over, but a conversation had begun. “Now all that remains are those who would not leave for whatever reason. These are your truest people. These are the people who will pour themselves into the earth like rain so that it will spring up again.”
Mother watched her closely, thoughtfully, and I took a deep breath. She had that glint in her eye that she would have whilst appraising a jewel or hearing a request for a loan. “You are almost right,” Mother allowed. A small smile spread across her lips. “But these are not my people, Mrs. Aena. Not anymore.”
With that, Mother descended into a deep bow before her, the gathers of her gown buffeting down around her legs like the explosion of a flower’s petals in bloom. She clasped her royal brooch in one hand—the brooch which bore the family crest—and lowered her eyes until her chin almost touched her sternum.
When she stood again, her smile was hardly any larger. It trembled slightly, and her eyes were crusted with tears. “You, my dear,” she whispered to Penelope. “You are the wife of my eldest son, the prince of this great land. And although the coronation has not yet been held, it will be forthcoming. These are no longer my people.” Her tearful eyes turned from Nell to me, and she nodded again, a nod of approval and of departure. “They are yours.”
Theon
That night, after the remnant of our people had been secured wherever there was room enough to house them, and after Nell had excused herself to bathe in the steaming atrium, I gazed across the wounded expanse of The Hearthlands—the snow silvery and broken like shards of glass, not melting, but also no longer falling in thick swaths—and thought about the coronation to which my mother had alluded. “Forthcoming,” she had said. It was a lot to digest. Before me lay this ruined kingdom. But at the same time, Nell was right. Within its ruins lay the seeds of great potential, and if we didn’t turn our backs on that, if we instead allowed this new course to germinate, perhaps the capital city could be more magnificent than ever before. I was relieved to have her at the helm with me.
“Hey,” a soft voice called behind me. Before I turned, I saw her reflection shift, milky and blurred, on the glass. There was a pensive quality to her features now which the outside world seldom ever saw. So often, for others, she was cheerful at best and stoic at worst. But for me, she was vulnerable. She was bare.
I turned to behold her, swaddled in a silken, pearlescent bathrobe, her hair down and damp, her eyes deep and pained.
“Hey,” I replied, advancing to brace her elbows with my fingertips. I scanned her face for some clue as to her melancholy. We were together, back in the castle, and my own mother had bowed to her as the new queen. What could weigh so heavily on her still? After everything we had been through? “What’s wrong?” I asked, my brow furrowed.
Nell averted her gray eyes. “Queen,” she breathed, breaking away from my touch to stand near the glass, where I had been when she’d entered the room. “Queen in a day. It’s an awful lot to handle, isn’t it?”
“And I’ll be king,” I said, touching her shoulders. It had been so long since we’d been in the same room, unfettered by circumstances. I couldn’t stop touching her in my dream-like wonderment. “It won’t be so different. It won’t be so hard.” My reflection smiled at her in the glass. “Were we not already kings and queens?”
Nell smiled, but the smile was melancholy, and her eyes wouldn’t quite touch mine. “There are pressures on a queen—archaic pressures, really—which your culture places there.” Even as she said this, one of her palms came up and laid over mine on her shoulder. “You knew this… and you let that device, the astrolabe, go.” Her eyes fluttered down to her feet. “You knew it was our only hope. To manipulate the stars of The Hearthlands. To change the will of the gods, and make me”—she cleared her throat, and a tear darted down her reflection’s cheek, cast against the dark night sky outside like a falling star—“make me the woman with whom you were destined to be.”
I gripped her shoulders and twisted her gently to face me. I could not stand to continue having this conversation with the window. “Fate can be cruel,” I said, an unintentional bite to my tone. “According to Pythia, the gods had set me to fall for Michelle. It seems that you were to be with Lethe. It certainly would have been easy for Michelle and I to be together, and in truth, there were a few times where I stood at a crossroads between the two of you, and hers was the path of least resistance. I could have chosen her. Easily. But the gods… They crush even their most devoted followers at times. They make play pieces of us, and games of our lives. What about Romeo and Juliet?” I asked her. “It would seem, to consult history, that they were destined to die together in the Capulet tomb. But is that the way their lives should have gone? Two mere children in love, unable to reconcile the feud of fools? Was destiny good in that moment? Was destiny fair?”
Nell cocked her head and smiled, even with her eyes still faintly pink from shedding tears. “How do you know about Romeo and Juliet?”
I grinned. “It would depress you to realize how well-educated I am.”
My grin must have been contagious, as it leached onto Nell’s mouth in turn. “Then you’d have known that they weren’t real.”
I rolled my eyes. “Fine. But give me my point, would you?”
“Your point?” she goaded, feigning obliviousness.
“What do the gods know about you or me? Who is to say that they didn’t pair me with Michelle from sheer spite, or boredom? So… just forget them.” I ran my fingers lightly over her cheekbone and into her hair, tucking a strand behind the crest of her ear. “I want to follow my heart. And if the path under my feet doesn’t take me in the same direction, I’ll cut a new path. I’ll shave my obstacles down into stepping stones.” I took a deep breath and offered her a deeper smile, a warm smile of sympathy and consolation. “I knew that I was throwing more than just a weathervane into that vortex. But—Nell—look at where manipulating the stars has brought my people. You said it yourself earlier today. Maybe, if we hadn’t altered those discs to make us the most comfortable and secure people on this island, we could have avoided the war altogether. Maybe we should just stop trying to force our flawed notions of perfection.”
“Your logic is inconsistent,” Nell complained. “In one breath we should denounce fate, and in the next, we should allow it to run its course.”
“In all our breaths,” I said, “we should let ourselves be happy… and trust the pieces to fall in the right places. Or not. And it doesn’t matter. The question shouldn’t b
e, ‘Was I perfect? Did I do everything the way I was told that I should? Did people stand back in awe of me? Did I beat everyone else?’”
Nell grimaced, and I knew she was disturbed by the notion of being non-competitive. You didn’t have to be a psychologist to understand that the basis of her friendship with Michelle was largely a twisted urge, in both of them, to show the other one how they were supposed to do it.
“The question,” I finished, “should be, ‘Was I fair? Did I treat others with respect? Did I enjoy my choices? Did I appreciate what I had?’” I put my mouth close to her ear, to make sure that she could hear this. “I appreciate what I have,” I whispered. “I couldn’t ask for anything more. And tomorrow, if the gods themselves came to the coronation and offered me the stars in exchange for you… I wouldn’t take a single one of them.”
Nell smiled at me, and though the sadness had broken away from her, her eyes still shimmered behind tears. “You wouldn’t?” she replied, hoarse with the restraint of a sob.
“Of course not.” I laughed and touched her cheek. “A teaspoon of star stuff weighs about ten million tons. How impractical would it be to own one? Where would we even put it?”
Nell laughed, but shoved at my chest and broke eye contact, trying to step away from me and my insistence on merry-making, but it was the night of my coronation! The war was over—for now, and maybe forever, at last—and we were wed! I pulled her to me and crushed her laughing mouth against mine, driving one palm into her reams of silken hair and the other lowering to caress the curve of her lower back. I felt the chill from the window melt off of her as our body heat mingled, built, and coalesced.
“Be serious,” she breathed between our mouths, though I knew that she didn’t mean it. Her body bowed and flowed with mine as if we had been welded together.
I pulled away from her—only enough to gaze into her eyes—and offered my own ragged, windswept smile. “I am being serious,” I told her. “I knew when I threw that astrolabe into the portal that I was sacrificing more than just our eternal summers on the island. But… I don’t need any more than just you. Perhaps the astrolabe gave my dynasty a power which was too great, and too far-reaching, to bind the hands of the gods as it did. To ensure that our wishes were always held in their favor.” I cradled her torso against mine, pressing our foreheads together so that there wasn’t even a sliver of space left. “We have destiny, and we have free will, and that is enough for me.”