Theon found us not long after the ice dragons had retreated, his expression sour and doomed. “I could not find Father,” he confessed.
“The astrolabe is gone,” I burst out, unable to hold the information from him for a single second.
It was as terrible as I thought it would be.
His gold eyes darkened, and he stared at me as if I must surely have been mistaken. As if I had told him that the sky outside was falling—and I supposed I had.
“And Michelle?”
I smiled sadly, too exhausted and depressed to be jealous. I would have to believe that he was simply a much better person than I was; all told, this was one of the better realizations one could have about their significant other.
“Michelle is gone, too,” I told him. “It looked like—well—I don’t know what it looked like.”
But Mrs. Aena, who had stayed close to me ever since the skirmish in the shelter, would not give Michelle Ballinger allowances. “She gave them the astrolabe, Theon. She approached an ice dragon while she held it into the air like an offering.”
Theon opened his mouth, as if he might disagree, but he had nothing to say. He didn’t know Michelle as well as I did; this was no surprise to me. I just nodded grimly, and Theon closed his mouth.
“They will return when the sun is down—and when the astrolabe has been reset,” Mrs. Aena informed us. “We must migrate. If we stay here, we may as well dig our graves here.”
“Many of the fire people have already abandoned the shelter in search of safer grounds,” Theon confirmed. “I saw a herd preparing their few salvaged possessions, and I overheard them discussing their schedule and route. They were flocking in the direction of the portal at the ogres’ island. Finding a safe house on Earth, it would appear.”
“More storms will be coming,” his mother agreed. “It is wise to relocate.” She held his eyes in a peculiar way as she spoke—as if her words carried two meanings.
“We cannot relocate. Father is imprisoned again. Altair is still missing. The ice dragons possess the astrolabe.”
The former queen hesitated, but then said, “Of course we cannot relocate, but many others will. For the first time in all our battles with the ice people, we may find ourselves outnumbered, for many of our people will not stay in a climate where fighting is almost impossible. We must move into the city and fight, even if we will be fighting alone, because it is our family under attack.”
I placed my hand over Theon’s and gave his fingers a gentle squeeze. But when he looked at me, it was with doubt in his gaze.
“Penelope,” he said to me, his voice husky and remorseful. “Mother, would you give us a moment, please?”
Mrs. Aena looked between the two of us and stood, nodding. As she passed behind Theon, she ran her hand over his shoulders and gave his neck a tender squeeze.
As soon as she was gone, passing into the next cavern, Theon turned to me and grimaced. “Nell,” he said again. “We need to talk.”
Augh. “Okay,” I said, steeling myself for the absolute worst.
There was a pause in which he just stared at me. “I think that Beggar’s Hole is the safest place for you.”
“What?” I shrilled, regardless of the obviousness of this truth. “What?”
“Before the storms return, the ice dragons will be weak, and their patrol of the skies will be significantly reduced,” he went on, continuing to look me in the eye with that steady gaze. “If we are to move you safely home, now is the time. If we hesitate—”
“Theon,” I cried, though I had very little by way of logic to interject. For the first time in a long time, my actions, my desires, had nothing to do with logic. For the first time in a long time, there was something—someone—I loved enough to make me stupid.
“—then we may not get another chance to transport you,” he finished, as if he didn’t know me at all.
But he did know me. He loved me. I didn’t doubt that with any fiber of my being.
“How could you think that I would leave you?” I asked him, my voice low and accusatory. “You think that I would go back to my world while you stayed here, an entire universe away? You think that I would just go back to DC, to the Shenandoah Institute, explain away how I disappeared days ago, and just stay, and do nothing, and know nothing, and pretend to be okay, while you fight for your life? Do you know me at all?”
Theon’s eyes softened. “I know you very well,” he assured me. “Trust that this is difficult for me to say. And I know how you must feel to hear it—”
“You must not know! You must not know, or you wouldn’t have bothered. I understand that you have thoughts, and feelings, and I respect them… but I am a woman, Theon. I’m a grown woman, and I have complete autonomy over my body. So unless you’re going to physically force me through that portal and back to DC, this conversation is over.”
“You will not leave my side. You will not leave my side, even in war, even in the blistering cold, even when I am telling you to go.”
“That’s right. You will need to force me through that gate.”
Theon angled his eyes away from me and sighed deeply. “Then that is what I will do.”
I blinked.
“You wouldn’t. You wouldn’t do that to me, because you know that it would make me hate you—forever.”
Theon nodded. “I know,” he said. “You will have to hate me, then. I would rather die knowing that you are safe, and home, and full of hate for me, than to live, even forever, and know that you have died fighting at my side; I could not bear to live another day knowing that you died because of me, even if the entire kingdom was secured as a result. I would rather—”
“Stop!” I snapped. “I don’t want to hear about all the things you’d rather! I can’t believe you’d give me so little! Like I’m not a real person—I’m some kind of doll to be protected from breaking. I’m not a doll, Theon; I’m a woman. I can make decisions. I love you enough to make this decision; I will hate you forever for taking the decision away from me. I don’t want to be safe. I don’t want to be home. I thought you were so advanced… so aware… but if you take this decision away from me—”
Tears of rage filled my eyes unexpectedly, and I looked away from him before they spilled.
“—then I know that you were never as advanced and aware as you seemed,” I choked out.
Theon sighed, but I didn’t dare look at him, didn’t dare see his face for one moment. My body vibrated with indignation. How dare he? I had finally done something that, to me, was a hallmark of growth—and he was rejecting it! He wasn’t going to give me the chance to love him as deeply and as fully as I could.
“In my culture,” Theon explained haltingly, “a maiden is considered to be of the highest value. We have not had women of mating age in thirty-five years now. We have been taught to guard them with our lives—and that, so long as they are maidens, their safety is even more important than their autonomy. But…”
“But?” There had to be some loophole to keep him from forcing me back home. If I was trapped in DC, unable to see him, talk to him, even know what was happening in The Hearthlands, I would go mad. I would be driven to such bitterness and resentment.
“But,” Theon continued, “if you were to become my wife… our staying together would be condoned—because we also encourage our men and their wives to work as a single unit. A man who would not believe in his wife—who would force her off of the battlefield—would be seen as weak, for his wife, or his faith in his wife, would be weak. This is why my mother will not leave The Hearthlands until Father has been secured. They are soulmates now. They operate as two halves of a whole, and as long as he is imprisoned, so is she. She cannot leave. And if we were married—I could not fight without you.”
I looked around the blackened cavern where we stood together, suddenly feeling as if we were being watched. But no one was there. “Theon,” I said, “are you… asking me to marry you right now?”
When I turned back to him, his eyes met mine with
a kind of evenness I hadn’t anticipated. There was no fear. No embarrassment. Only honesty. “I am telling you to marry me right now.”
It felt like it’d been years since we’d seen each other, and I remembered him—everything which had brought us to this point—vividly now. My heart ached, and my throat became tight with joy.
“Okay,” I whispered.
I wasn’t sure who came to who first, or if we drifted together like leaves caught in the same vortex of autumn wind. The stress dissolved, and we dissolved with it. I was in his arms; his fingers were in my hair; our mouths crashed together and danced against each other like long-lost lovers, reuniting from across a crowded room. All the tightness from my muscles drained away and I believed Theon when he said that married couples were soulmates, were two halves of the same whole. I no longer felt the boundary of his body against mine. I felt only complete.
* * *
It was during the same twilight in which the dead of the fire and ice armies were buried that Theon and I were wed. I was still clothed in the white garments of a bride-to-be, garments into which Lethe had forced me, hoping to coerce the same bond from me that had naturally sprung between Theon and I.
Although his mother suggested that we marry in the shelter, for it was safer to stay out of sight—and I had to respect her practicality—I also balked at the notion. “How safe are we here? In an enclosed space of which the ice dragons are now well aware? They can come back at any time; they don’t need to see anything anymore. We’re just as safe outside as in, and”—my eyes roved over the interior of the cavern, with its splashes of blood, its sooty craters, the collapsed piles of stone choking doorways—“forgive me for saying that this is not the most romantic of settings for a wedding.”
Mrs. Aena demurred with a smile of understanding. “Yes,” she said. “I’ve forgotten how it felt to be young, and to want everything to be just so.”
When we ascended the earthen stairwell and let ourselves out of the slanted wooden doorway, The Hearthlands beyond were a different world than I had ever seen. The last time I’d been aboveground, the snow had been slushy, the mud thick. For this moment, however—while the astrolabe slowly reset its stars and planets—the world was lush and green again. The sky was clear. The sun was going down, and deep pink and purple streaks laced the sky. A cool breeze threaded through our hair, and I knew that it was only the labor pains of a much deeper cold settling in.
But Theon took my hand, and I reveled in his warmth, as I always did. I had somehow become used to Lethe’s icy touch, and almost forgotten the comfort of Theon’s body—much less of Theon himself.
Einhen, one of the priests of the royal court, stood before us with one arm in a sling and an ancient, fraying book open in his good hand. He read from this, explaining to us exactly what was expected of a couple married in The Hearthlands. “You will be one flesh,” he commanded. “Theon Aena, both human and dragon, fire and prince; Penelope Aena, both human and dragon, fire and princess. You cannot wish the other ill, or act against them, for to do so is to act against your own body. When Theon fights, so shall Penelope; when Penelope labors, so shall Theon. There is no difference between these two anymore. They are one. They are complete. So seal this decree with the fusion of their lips, never again to part.”
Theon pulled me into his embrace and, when our lips touched, it seemed that they grew together like two foreign plants, forming a tangle of some second, new vine, and I had to wonder if the magic of this world imbued the ceremony, for when we separated, I no longer felt as if I was staring at a man I loved; I felt as if I was beholding another part of myself reflected back at me, rediscovered through the looking glass.
Nell
In spite of how a bride might picture her wedding night, we didn’t exactly spend it sipping champagne on a bed of rose petals. We spent it packing, preparing ourselves for the coming storms, and abandoning the shelter on foot. Deciding that the skies were no longer safe, the two of us were relegated to the coverage of barren trees. Theon tried to convince his mother to come with us, but she insisted on staying behind and helping the few remaining fire dragons to booby-trap the shelter with fire tricks. “This shelter took almost ten years to outfit,” she explained. “We cannot let it be destroyed overnight. Not by the lowness of ice dragons—and not without taking away their men, as they took away our women so many years ago.” I was surprised to hear her speak so harshly, but then, I could only imagine the harshness of my words if Theon was ever taken from my side again.
Theon and I forged together through the winds as their bite increased against our faces, our fingertips. Although we began our voyage in simple day clothes, within an hour or so, we needed to don hats and scarves in order to protect ourselves from the dropping temperature.
“It’s coming,” Theon warned me. He grimaced and we pulled forward into the winds. “The astrolabe has put the stars back into their secondary positions.”
I hadn’t noticed, but, glancing up at the sky, I did wonder if they held the same positions as the night before again.
It was very late when we reached the city walls again; part of me was surprised to look upon them. It was such an affront to logic that I would return to the castle which had held me prisoner until I had lost all track of time. But love is an affront to logic.
We were bundled heavily in our furs now. We had moved as quickly as possible, with an almost cavalier regard for our own safety, and yet we still had not beaten the cold front. It would surely be snowing soon enough.
The doors of the city remained open against all reason, and I expressed as much.
“No,” Theon replied, “it is one of many tactics in warfare. With unlocked city walls, they express to us their dominance and their confidence. Now that they’ve taken the shelter and decimated our last stronghold—” Here, Theon’s voice caught for a moment, and he had to clear his throat before he could continue. He averted his eyes from the city walls and trained them onto the ground, almost as if ashamed. “You know, I visited an oracle in that cave on the beach, just before I returned to The Hearthlands for you. She gave me three gifts for the journey. One of them was a skeleton key forged by the fates; it would only unlock the doors which destiny would will to be open. And…” His eyes moved again to the city walls. He would not look at me. “It wouldn’t open when I tried to enter the castle and rescue you. As if I wasn’t meant to be there—or as if you were. I tried again to use the same key with my father’s shackles, and it would not work… as if he was meant to be their prisoner.” His jaw clenched. “It’s enough to make me think—”
“Don’t. Don’t think that The Hearthlands are fated to belong to the ice people. You know that they had the astrolabe this entire time, and they changed the position of the stars and planets to change the will of the gods. At least, that was what Lethe—” Dammit. I had not meant to call back to the days I had spent with his rival. “—told me,” I finished.
Theon nodded, not acknowledging my slip, and took my hand. His warmth, as always, was reassuring. He pulled me through the opened city walls. “Perhaps,” he said, his voice low now.
“Shouldn’t there be guards near?” I wondered.
“It’s hard to say where their manpower has been diverted, and why,” Theon replied. “The gods may be with us in spite of the stars.”
The city seemed hauntingly empty, and I wondered where everyone was. My gut crawled with the possibilities, but, on the bright side, we found an inn abandoned, and were able to unlock a room for ourselves. It at least had a spacious bed, a fireplace, and a beautiful view of some twisted and dying gardens along the city wall. This was the lone aspect of the night which seemed a morbid parody of the common honeymoon.
“Theon,” I called to him after we had settled in for the night. “You said that the Oracle gave you gifts. What were the others?”
“Well—that bottle you had, the one that exploded,” he answered. “And a love letter. It’s enchanted paper that can send a message to anyone you
love, no matter where they are. The message will appear before them and then fade away. It was the way that I was able to communicate with you while you were in the castle.”
I chirped, “Could I borrow it?”
“Why?” Theon asked with a smile. “Who else are you in love with?”
I rolled my eyes. “My parents,” I explained. “I’d like to be able to let them know I’m okay—but I’m sure the inter-dimensional mailing rates are insane.”
Theon grinned and brandished the yellowed scroll of paper from within his leather satchel. I scratched out a simple message and prayed that it would cross whatever vortex of time and space separated me from Mom and Dad:
Mom and Dad,
This is real, and you have to believe your eyes. If everything works out all right, you should both be able to see this message. I’ll be able to explain when I come back… but I’m safe—and I’m doing something that I have to do. I know you can both understand that. Just know that I love you. And I will be home soon. I’m with Theon.
Love, Nell
Nell
It was nearly midnight when the snow began to fall again outside of our window. Though Theon insisted on the fireplace, it was I who insisted on the curtains being parted. When I glanced over my shoulder at him from where I was sitting, still in my bride-to-be vestments on the window seat, Theon smiled at me sadly.
“I know you hate the snow,” I reminded him.
Theon approached the window, and though he did not gaze out across the wintry landscape, he did raise a hand to my cheek and run his fingertips along my cheekbone and jaw. “And I know you find it romantic,” he whispered back to me. “It is one of the many fire dragon customs that the night of our wedding should revolve around your preferences, my love; after all, it is the night that you give to me the greatest gift of all.”
A blush clouded my cheeks. “My… virginity?” I asked meekly. How did he even know that I was a virgin?