The sky slowly turned less black, and then gray, and then white…
When the sun rose again, I would have no way of knowing it. All the hours were the same in a blizzard.
I shivered and forged on, still hugging the glowing astrolabe to my torso for what meager warmth it provided.
In the distance, a cluster of skeletal trees whipped in the wind.
How far had I come?
I could feel my heart beating in my palms, and in my lips, and in my ears, like the rushing of a river. It seemed as if my pulse was receding bit by bit from my veins. My body was shutting down. Soon I would slip off to sleep in the snow.
In fact, that sounded nice.
Just kind of… let it take me.
After all, I still had so far to go.
And I was so tired…
My knees locked and graciously let me descend into the drifts of snow.
It was so much easier to join the snow, so much easier than fighting it. It wasn’t even that cold. Not anymore. It was a relief to succumb.
As I rolled across the ground, I felt more than heard a crunch.
What was that? I wondered. My eyes didn’t open. They felt too stiff and thick with ice. How long had I been walking now?
Had my face gone numb, or had the snow finally relented?
I hugged the disc to my midsection, feeling how its spines and notches probed at my frozen flesh.
Theon fluttered through my thoughts, dim and distant. I wondered if he was even still alive.
If he wasn’t, maybe we would be reunited soon.
Theon
It was the first dawn since my return to The Hearthlands that my bones and muscles hadn’t ached. They weren’t nearly as stiff as they normally were. While I had found it necessary to do intensive stretching first thing in the morning just to move, this morning, I managed to stretch without groaning in pain.
Except from my memories of Michelle’s third or fourth failed attempt to seduce me, anyway.
It wasn’t that there was truly anything wrong with her. Ruthless? Yes. Manipulative? Without a doubt. But she was still a human being. I’d seen her as an innocent child through the window of her memories while I had been gazing into her soul that night on the beach in Beggar’s Hole. She hadn’t been ruthless then; she’d been six. All she had wanted was love and attention. It was the ruthlessness and the manipulation which allowed her to experience the love and attention she still craved as an adult woman. I could understand it. I couldn’t blame her, not when I’d come from a doting mother and an invested father, who had given many responsibilities and high praises.
Poor Michelle.
She really didn’t belong here.
In her own world, she had more power, more leverage. She would have been happier there—and I’d been forced by a mentally unstable oracle to bring her along due to a questionable prophecy regarding our future together.
I cared about Michelle.
When we had first met, she’d been a curiosity, a contradictory friend and enemy of Penelope’s, but now I had seen into her soul. I had trusted in her help, fought alongside her, and even willingly kissed her—almost twice.
And meanwhile, the last time I’d seen Penelope, she’d been staring down at me, no expression on her face, with another man’s arm around her shoulders.
And the time I’d seen her before that?
His tongue had been thrust into her mouth, and she seemed to have been relishing it.
How could I have become one of those men who obsessed over the wrong woman while the right one had flung herself into their lap, and they just shoved her off and continued on their hunt for that adulterous one, the one who had abandoned them?
I wondered where she was.
Nell.
Was she waking up enshrouded in quilts somewhere in the Aena castle—now the Eraeus castle, I supposed—and would her toes curl as she yawned and stretched in front of the roaring fire? Was Lethe lying beside her? Would she crawl out of bed and dress in the garments of the bride-to-be, perhaps with the aid of ice dragon servants, while Lethe continued to sleep on the feather-down mattress, blissfully unaware of his good fortune to have captured her from me?
If only I still had that damn mirror. In my anger, I’d lost all foresight and abandoned it in the clothing shop.
Not that it would have done me much good, anyway. Nell wasn’t in need anymore. She’d never be in need again now.
And yet…
When we had used the mirror to communicate that one time, and she had pantomimed to me her location in the castle—why? If she was happy, why had she said anything at all to me? If she was happy, why had Lethe shaken her and thrown her to the ground when he’d discovered her communication through the crystal pendant? Why had he smashed her first pendant into pieces?
She hadn’t called out or even gestured to me when we had broken from the dungeon, but what could she have possibly said? There had been ice arrows soaring through the air all around us. Lethe had been holding onto her, scanning the crowd for me. He would have certainly killed me if she’d brought my presence to his attention. She must have known that he knew I was in the village somewhere… because he had, after all, seen me in her pendant only moments before raiding Gordon’s Instruments.
Knowing Nell…
She would have protected me, even if it meant agreeing to marry an ice prince.
And she would have looked for her opportunity to escape, and taken it.
And forged out into that wasteland overhead.
And her fragile human body would never endure it. Her nobility and her honor, despite all the opportunism therein, would lead to her demise.
Pursing my lips, I thrust some boots onto my feet, shouldered my leather satchel, and marched through the caverns toward the steps leading to the outside world.
“Where are you going?” Mother called to me as I shot past the kitchens, ignoring the hot breakfast being poured into bowls.
“Outside,” I called back. “I’ll be back later. I’m looking for someone.”
“Who?” she yelled over the din.
“Nell!”
As I exited the kitchen, a familiar female voice muttered, “Pathetic.”
I paused and glanced over my shoulder. “What?”
Michelle reclined on the cavern wall, waiting in the line outside of the kitchen for her breakfast. Her eyes were tired and her hair in disarray, but she was gorgeous as usual. She, like several other people in the caverns, had shrugged off the furs we had worn for warmth, and she was now dressed in the same party attire she’d been wearing on the night that she came here—with the exception of some fur-lined boots she’d pilfered from the depository.
“I said pathetic. Last night, when I went to see you, you were practically crying for her in your sleep. And now you’re just going to wander around in that freezing cold looking for her, like she’s some lost dog? Theon. She’s not lost!” Michelle shook out her curls and stared up at the ceiling, her eyes caught in mid-roll. “I had no idea Penelope O’Hara could make such a fool out of a damn prince.”
My eyes narrowed. “You wouldn’t understand intuition. You’ve never connected to anyone the way I have connected with her.”
Michelle opened her mouth to retort, but I was already walking away.
“You mean the way she connected with that other prince!” she yelled at my receding back.
But I couldn’t be bothered. The certainty that Penelope would never have willingly stayed in the castle—as Lethe’s bride, no less—was too palpable, too strong.
I moved through the winding stairwell, Michelle fading from my mind with every step, and forced open the horizontal wooden door which led up from the shelter.
It came up with ease, though it had been caked in ice every other time. Stepping onto the spongy, slushy soil of the ash grove, I gaped at the strangely blue sky. The cloud coverage had cracked, and sunlight broke through, shimmering down onto the snow… and… melting it.
What had been snow up to my kn
ees now showed patches of earth.
It couldn’t be.
How had the ice storms relented? And when?
A surge of relief battered my weary heart.
We would be able to fight again.
The kingdom—if the sun would only continue to shine—was as good as ours. And the throne. And even Nell…
There, on a hilltop several yards from the shelter, I saw a splash of ermine strewn, capped by a spill of mahogany hair as dark as the richest beer.
It couldn’t be.
Could the sun really be shining on Penelope O’Hara, or was I still asleep?
Nell
For a moment, I couldn’t help but believe that I had died and gone to heaven. Maybe I’d never made it out of that cave, which seemed so long ago now. Perhaps the past few weeks had really been purgatory, and I’d finally been allowed into heaven. And perhaps Theon was my guardian angel. Now we would spend eternity together. Lethe had been a test—even a momentary fumble through an upper circle of hell. Michelle had never really been with Theon at all. It’d just been another exercise in spiritual growth, to overcome my jealousy and pettiness, to overcome my worldly attachment to competition and victory. If this had truly all been some test, it would explain the arctic wasteland surrounding us, the inability to even go outside, the dungeon, the restraint, and the staff of servants who were really demons in disguise, sent to simultaneously torment and supervise me. Ice dragons. What if that had all been a metaphor? And now…
The fog had cleared, and the sun had broken through.
And Theon’s dreamy eyes, the color of honey, were gazing down at me with warmth and acceptance again. I had forgotten, almost, what life had been like with him. How it had felt to be secure, and tranquil, and understood, and appreciated. And now I was home. No matter where I was—strewn across some hillside, apparently, with mud streaks on an ermine mantle—I was home whenever I was with Theon.
“Did you know that you will have saved my entire kingdom twice now?” Theon asked me, his rich baritone as smooth and comforting as hot tea with honey.
“Theon,” I whispered up at him, bedraggled in my sodden ermine mantle and strangely… warm.
But the last thing I remembered was collapsing into deep snow, my pulse receding from my extremities, and the snowfall slowing to a stop. But had it? Or had I only gone numb?
“Did you know that you will have saved my entire life twice now?”
A smile cracked one corner of Theon’s full lips. “More than twice,” he reminded me. “You’re forgetting about the harpies.”
I struggled up into a sitting position to embrace him, but found that my torso was unyielding and hindered. Peeling back the ermine, I remembered the mystical astrolabe. It tumbled from out of the mantle, and Theon and I both gaped at it as it rolled several feet and collapsed onto one side.
“You got the astrolabe,” he whispered. “In the western tower.”
For a moment, I thought of letting my response go, but we couldn’t just ignore this invisible wedge between us: Lethe. “I gained his trust,” I explained, still in the muddied mantle, as if Theon could possibly ignore from where I had come. For God’s sake, look how I was dressed: like an ice queen. Like an ice queen who had been through war, and was finally melting away. “He led me through the castle and showed me its treasures.”
At this, Theon turned from where he had been staring in awe at the returned heirloom. “Because he believed that you loved him,” he said. The glow in his eyes had faded, and I realized that I had been selfish in my time away. Amid all the anxiety about Theon as a fire dragon, and the imminent war, in addition to my personal depression, I hadn’t truly thought about Theon as a man. What it must have looked like to him. How it must have eaten him from the inside. And I had been fuming over merely seeing him with Michelle.
“Yes, he believed that I loved him,” I confessed, stepping closer to Theon, daring to touch his arm. I was almost afraid that it would burn me. “I did what I had to do to get out of there… and get back to you, Theon. I never really loved him. I promise.”
As I said the words, Theon’s eyes shifted down to my ermine mantle and the heart-shaped ruby clasp. My cheeks flooded with self-conscious blush.
“Um, this was a gift,” I explained, “and I—I didn’t ask for it, I just needed—”
“How long have you been here?” Theon demanded, his voice sharpening.
“I don’t know,” I said defensively, as his fingers dug into my arms. “I passed out sometime last night, maybe this morning. The snow…” As I thought back, I remembered that the snow had been deep, and it had still been falling as I’d collapsed. But the sky had been white, not black, so perhaps the sun had risen somewhere behind the clouds. “The snow hadn’t melted yet.”
Theon winced. “Damn it. And you wore this mantle the entire way here.”
“Well… of course.” I frowned in confusion. “I would’ve frozen if I hadn’t. Theon—”
Without any explanation, his hand shot out to wrap around the ruby clasp, and he tore it from the ermine mantle so viciously that the fur itself ripped and fell from my body. My hands went instinctively to my throat; even though I wasn’t cold anymore, I was shocked at the violence of his gesture. Could he really be so jealous? Of a man I had just told him I didn’t love? A man I had obviously betrayed, and from whom I had fled overnight?
“Theon!”
But Theon didn’t respond. Instead, he squeezed his fist until I heard a crunch, and when his fingers opened, the ruby heart filtered down to the earth in tiny shards. I gaped.
“Are you really that angry with me?” I whispered.
Theon stared down at the shattered ruby for a moment, and then glanced back to me and grimaced. “We must hurry,” he said. He turned his back on me and paced to the astrolabe, snatching it up and tucking it down at his side. Then, whirling, he stalked to me again, and I shrank back with uncertainty, as if he might snatch me up and tuck me down at his side too. “Come with me,” he said. Taking my hand a little rougher than he needed, he wasted no time in pulling me across the hillside, his strides so wide that I almost tripped. I’d never seen him with such a lack of gentleness, particularly when dealing with me. We abandoned the ermine mantle in the mud and advanced on the cluster of skeletal white ash trees: the last things I remembered seeing before I’d lost consciousness the night before. Or that morning?
Reaching down into the sodden, muddy earth—only traces of the snow now remained—he wrenched open a hidden door I hadn’t even noticed. Beneath its wooden slats tapered an earthen tunnel, traveling deep into the earth, chiseled into a stairwell with tightly packed dirt walls. Theon said nothing to me as he led me deeper and deeper down the winding passageway. He’d never been so cold. Could he really have been that angry about my perceived infidelity with Lethe?
I supposed, in a way, I had come to care for Lethe…
“Theon.” I relented in my steps and forced him to a halt as well. “You have to tell me what is wrong.”
Finally, Theon turned.
“While you were speaking, I noticed how the ruby at your neck would pulse with your words.” His jaw was set, and his eyes flashed. “I realized too late that the pulse was a transmission of sorts. Lethe… Penelope… Lethe did not give you the ermine mantle because he trusted you, or because he had fallen in love with you, or even because he cared if you were cold. He gave you the ermine mantle to track you.” He swallowed, his golden eyes never leaving mine now. “Do you see what I am telling you?”
“He knows where I am,” I whispered, beginning to share in his dawning horror.
“It’s not just that,” Theon returned, taking my hand in his—more gently now—and pulling me down the final few remaining steps, until the walls of the stairwell fell away and revealed a sweeping, expansive cavern which housed hundreds of people. “He knows where all the fire dragons are. And he’s probably on his way now.”
Theon
Just as the words had exited my mouth?
??“He’s probably on his way now”—a blast echoed overhead, and our eyes trained on one another’s in complete understanding… and horror.
They were already here.
He might have been tracking her all night. I had no way of knowing exactly how far the device could go, and if it had monitored her vital signals. If it had, that could explain why he had not come sooner—she’d been alive, but merely idle. Perhaps he had been infuriated, and hoped for her death as a fitting punishment by the elements. But it had not come… and when my voice had sounded on the line, he must have immediately dispatched his men, realizing what his paranoia and jealousy had discovered: the downfall of the remnant.
And we had been on the cusp of victory, but now—now we were trapped, and our numbers had come to be severely limited, so that the fight would be a fair one.
It was our only hope that they would be too weak from the sunlight to do significant damage to my people.
At the explosion overhead, the shelter tensed and every eye panned upward. A subtle scattering took place as people sought out their kin immediately. Fire dragons, unlike ice dragons, were deeply attached to their family, their lovers, and their friends. In that moment, I had to wonder at where my own mother was. I even worried about where Michelle was, and she hardly qualified as anything at all… but she was still my responsibility.
Where is Mother?
Knowing her, she would probably have remained in the kitchens until every last portion of the breakfast had been taken; it hadn’t been so long ago that I had stormed past her, suddenly and inexplicably certain that Nell was nearby.
“Come with me!” I commanded for the second time, gripping Nell’s wrist with an uncharacteristic brutality and pulling her forward into the throng. “Mother! Mother!”
“Theon!”
I whirled at a touch to my shoulder and found her there, with a stab and a swell of vast relief in my chest. She had instilled such strength and comfort in me throughout my youth, I could not part with that reaction now, even as an adult man, even after the taste of battle. “Mother,” I breathed, embracing her, though I did not dare release Nell’s hand. Not after finally getting her back now.