But Theon laughed softly, and his hand left my cheek. “No,” he answered simply, unfastening his tunic without paying much mind to my stare. “The greatest gift of all is a healthy child.”
The tunic came up over his head and I lost my breath a little bit. Even though I had seen this fiery prince fully nude before, it had never been in a context wherein I might be lying with him that night. In fact, we were married now. The realization kept occurring to me in surreal and giddy washes. In fact, tonight was our wedding night. I didn’t know about fire dragon customs, but in America, that was the night that you were finally ravished by your groom. He had said, after all, that I was going to give him the greatest gift: “a healthy child.” I hadn’t really thought about it before, since I wasn’t sexually active; did I even want a child? I was only nineteen, and still a student, but then—had I not already, in so many ways, shunned that life for this new world? And if there was one man in the entire multiverse with whom I wanted to have children, was it not Theon?
And even if I wanted to wait, did this strangely medieval realm practice contraception?
Theon turned and glanced over his shoulder at me, smiling as if he could read my thoughts. The firelight fluctuated on his bare golden skin. He smiled, suddenly impish, and turned toward me again. The crotch of his pants protruded blatantly, and I pretended like I didn’t notice and it wasn’t distracting.
“You know,” he informed me, “you have seen all of me before. But I have only seen your eyes. While your soul is laid bare in every kiss we’ve ever shared, other parts of you remain shadowed and mysterious.”
He took a step closer to me, and his eyes threw the firelight back to me like two golden coins.
His hands reached around me, and untied the corset of my gown, letting it unfurl for him.
I shuddered as the warmth of his touch moved over my body, and seemed to spread downward like ripples fanning from a fingertip.
“A receptive woman, they say,” Theon murmured, his hands returning to my face, coming to cup my chin and jaw, “is the key to a man’s longevity. In life, and in love.”
With this, he swept me into a kiss of such depth and magnitude, the city around us seemed to crumble. He pulled me against his chest and scooped me off of the ground, carrying me to the bed and laying me out as tenderly and reverently as if I was a priceless shroud. Again, as his eyes moved over me, I had the sensation that he was not only enamored, but drunken with readiness.
When he descended atop me, our bodies tangling as easily and naturally as if there never were any boundary at all, the heat which swept and ballooned through my body brought me to the edge of ecstasy in and of itself. Clothing fell away, and we left them behind, soaring together. His electrical fingertips danced along my most sensitive skin, and I forgot that we were in a hostile city; I cried out for him with a head emptied of all rational thought. When I thought that I would become delirious with the satisfaction, sodden with sweat and hardly able to use a single muscle without trembling, it was only then that he allowed himself to let go, and I wondered if he too forgot where we were, as he called so loudly to the gods. For the briefest of moments—though, in retrospect, it must have been an hour or two—we forgot the desperation of our circumstances, and expressed our love like the king and queen that we would someday be.
Theon
It took me several minutes to remember exactly what was going on when I woke up the following morning. The only thing of which I was immediately aware was my own bare flesh pressed firmly to Penelope O’Hara’s—and then, still floating in the afterglow even hours later, I realized that her name was now Penelope O’Hara Aena. My queen, no matter how small the kingdom. My queen… even if only the queen of this simple little suite in an abandoned inn at the entrance of the city walls. At first, in those precious moments of ignorant bliss, I was only aware of the soft bedding, and the fireplace crackling with embers, and Penelope O’Hara Aena cupped lovingly against my chest.
But then I opened my eyes.
The window she had insisted on leaving unshuttered still peered out into the world beyond, and the snow that had been falling gently, which she so clearly found endearing, had mounted the windowsill in a drift. My arms tightened around Nell, and she snuggled against me, still sleeping and oblivious.
I would take back this kingdom.
I would not relent until The Hearthlands were green and bright with sunlight again. I would see the Aena crown on my beloved’s head, and she would bear the heir which would ensure the continuation of the dynasty. There was no alternative. Gods be damned.
I climbed from the bed and dressed in the meager warmth of the fire, ice stealing into my bones. Nell, still oblivious, curled deeper into the blankets and smiled in her sleep.
I wished that I could leave her as innocent as she was, but now that she had become my queen, she would need to be as vicious as an ice dragon in order to best them.
I was considering leaving her a message, explaining that I had traveled deeper into the city in order to run reconnaissance, but she interrupted me as I was hunting for a writing utensil. “Hey.” It seemed that she, too, had forgotten the dire straits into which we had been borne. “What are you doing?”
I turned to her and my heart, made hard with the strife of losing my father and brother—so many kinsmen—softened for her. She wore dark disheveled hair like a proud crown, her eyelashes low and her body language languid with satisfaction. The smile spread across her lips was full-bodied and unabashed, and how I wished I could join her.
“I must go deeper into the city,” I explained. I knew my tone belied how much I loved her, and how happy I was to have her fight by my side as my other half. “Will you come with me? I believe there is enough costuming for both of us to pass inspection.” Granted, the ice people did not wear nearly as much as the fire dragons and humans needed in such a climate. We would be very cold as we went undercover among them.
But, as if it was second nature, Nell sprang to meet my call. “Absolutely,” she said. “Just tell me what to do.”
After outfitting ourselves in tunics and breeches, boots and scarves, we went out into the deep snow beyond our door. We left behind the majority of our possessions in order to travel more lightly through the streets, and I was unsurprised when we found the ice dragons stealing. There was no sense of pride to anything they did. They saw themselves as stars, as gods. They did whatever they wanted, and that mentality would eventually kill them all—after it robbed them of any comrade they might once have had.
But still they milled through the streets of the fire people, setting up in the homes of others, paying little mind to anything, even their surroundings. They were not a particularly shrewd people. They were only self-indulgent, and as long as they were satisfied, they ignored you.
It was a decree on the side of a shop window which stilled Nell and me on our journey through the city, during which we verified that the military presence was almost none. I couldn’t justify how open and available the city was, unless the ice dragons were truly that smug about their new territory. Even the fire dragons had not been that smug in our time, and we had reigned over The Hearthlands for centuries uninterrupted.
The decree announced a public ceremony to be held at twilight.
COME, ALL PEOPLE OF ICE! THIS IS A RITE OF FANTASTIC IMPORT! CELEBRATE AS WE SOLIDIFY THIS, OUR NEW KINGDOM, EVERWINTER!
Nell reached out and touched the corner. “What do you think this means?”
“I am sure it is Lethe’s coronation,” I replied, my face set into a scowl as I glared about at the decadence of this, their “new” kingdom, “Everwinter.” What a disgrace they had made of our proud land. “Now that they’ve driven most fire people from the country, they believe they have won.” The great sickness of my heart was that it was possible they were right. After all, if you had decimated a population, had you not bested them? Who had remained to fight? Had most not fled Everwinter?
“Well, they haven’t,” Nell reassur
ed me. “They haven’t won.”
I nodded, but the truth was that I had hardly heard her.
I was thinking.
I would attend this “rite of fantastic import,” and if it featured a certain ice prince bowing to receive a crown and scepter, he could be assured that they would both roll across the ground, lashed in blood.
* * *
The first thing that struck me as odd was that the ceremony was to be held on the front steps of the castle. Coronations were typically formal events, and not open to the public. If they were open to the public, they would at least be heavily guarded and held within castle walls. After all, had they performed an official census of the land yet? Had they any records of the properties therein, and who held them? More examples of a frivolous, marauding people best left relegated to a meager peninsula, in spite of certain soft-hearted opinions. But this event was on the main steps of the palace, not within, and there was no military presence, either. What the hell kind of coronation was this?
No members of the royal court had even attended—and my weaponry would certainly go to waste.
Then I did recognize one member of the royal court.
My father.
King Erisard Aena was led with his head bowed onto the front steps of the castle. His face was drawn and gray, but expressionless. He was not even strong enough yet to hold himself on two legs, and both his arms remained in slings. Still, he was heavily guarded, and led to the very top of the staircase, where two guards bowed with him, forcing his head down.
What warmth remained in my body drained out through my feet.
Dear gods, do not let this be.
But it was so.
A third guard approached, this one holding a heavy ax.
Fire surged through my veins, and Nell’s hand tightened on my arm, but there was no time to do anything—no time, and no hope. In this cold, dressed as an ice dragon, my abilities were halved at best. The ice dragons, on the other hand, would be able to perform at peak condition, and there were several hundred surrounding us, not to mention the guards themselves.
The ax fell, and as it did so, my jaw went slack. My eyes filled. And my heart broke.
In one moment, as my father’s head was separated from his body, I let go of all hope for our dynasty, for our future, and for our land. I even let go of all faith in the cosmic bureaucracy of good and just gods. The world turned black. And even Nell was no asterisk in this proclamation; even Nell was no footnote, no exception. She was just another gem in a crown doomed to be stolen. Just another beautiful soul, doomed to torture and execution at the hands of fate.
I couldn’t allow this world to exist. I couldn’t allow these truths to hold strong.
And yet there it was, a head rolling down the same stairs he had strolled across as his own in life.
The decree had been right.
This was Everwinter.
Nell
I watched Theon’s father, who I had never even had the pleasure of meeting, murdered in front of his very eyes. I held Theon’s arm. Please, be okay, I begged him silently, even knowing that he never would be again. How could anyone be okay after witnessing such a horror? How could he ever return to the Theon he was for me only one night ago? I couldn’t even imagine our future—it seemed a vast nothing, because what was there after such a terror was visited upon a man? Would he be able to laugh? Would he be able to dream, unless it was a nightmare?
I pursed my lips and stared only at him. His expression did not move. He seemed to be made of stone.
Trumpets blasted from the castle doors, but even then, I did not turn away from him. I held his arm as tightly as I could and silently pleaded for him to look at me, return to me, even though I did not know how to call back a soul from such torment.
“Strong and cunning people of Everwinter!” a voice called from the castle stairs.
I finally was able to turn my head from Theon, and saw that the supposed royal family had assembled there: Vulott, and Lethe, and… and Michelle?
She stood with the royal family as naturally as any ice dragon would, decked in furs of pure white, her coffee-colored curls coiffed. Her makeup was intense and powerful, her nails manicured to appear like talons. Was she trying to pass herself off as an ice dragon to these people? How long could that possibly last?
Then again, they did seem concerned primarily with themselves.
“It is with great vigor and victory that the court of Eraeus announces to you the coming coronation of Prince Lethe Eraeus, as well as his betrothal to Lady Michelle Ballinger, of the Boston Ballingers!”
A cheer went up from the crowd, but I had gone utterly blank.
And to think… it had only been last night that our union had made the falling snow seem so pure, so innocent, and romantic.
But now the world around us, encrusted in snow, was hostile. And lonely. And I couldn’t bear it.
“Let’s get out of here,” I begged Theon. “They might recognize us.”
“I wish that they would,” Theon murmured, hardly seeming there at all. I pulled him through the crowd, careful to keep our backs turned to the new royal family. At least we were in a crowd of a few hundred. It was easy to disappear there.
* * *
We returned to the suite where we had left our things. Night fell quickly with the ice people in control of the astrolabe. The sky turned black, and no stars winked at us from above; there came no reassurance from the gods. The clouds were low, and the snow fell. It would be up to our knees and thighs again soon.
“Theon.” He hadn’t spoken a word, and I’d been overwhelmed by the gravity of the events we’d witnessed that evening. What could I say? “Theon… I’m so sorry.”
“There is nothing for which to be sorry,” Theon informed me stiffly. “It is the consequence of war. In truth, there is no reasoning behind one man living, another dying. Any of us could die at any time. There is no reason for it. No right or wrong.”
I stared at him, uncertain where to go from here.
I reached out to touch him, but he shook my hand from off of his shoulder.
“Theon—” As much as I wanted to tell him something, nothing but his name would come out, as if I could call him back from the abyss into which he had been flung by this tragedy.
“Leave me be,” he commanded, standing and drifting toward the bathing quarters of the suite. “I must be alone with my thoughts.”
But he didn’t need to be alone; I knew that much. He didn’t need to physically remove himself from me.
He was already gone.
Theon
I sighed and sank into the bathtub; my natural heat was the only thing which brought the water to a steam. The pipes themselves were frigid, and would only expel water likewise.
I tried to let my mind clear, but I could not. The corridors of my mind were crowded with banshees, wailing of loss. My father, publicly decapitated, and my brother, missing, and my mother, left behind to organize the remainder of the kingdom. We were now outnumbered by the ice dragons, and the astrolabe was in their hands… No soak could wash these woes from me. The only thing I had left was Penelope, and I couldn’t even properly love her in this amount of pain, and doubt, and even fear.
I had seldom seen the face of fear until now. It was not until Nell and I had returned to The Hearthlands to find them shrouded in a perpetual winter that I had first tasted the acidic potion of anxiety and depression. And now I could not shake its mantle from my shoulders. Things just got worse, and worse, and worse.
And Nell… she was the only thing I had left. My companion. My lover. My wife.
What would I do if they took her from me, too?
I stared at the ceiling, the faucet dripping. In the other room, through the ajar door, I could faintly hear Penelope preparing for bed. Faithful Penelope. Just Penelope. Innocent Penelope.
And someone like that… someone who would deviate from her path to offer help to a wounded stranger, someone who would follow the cries of a child int
o the wilderness… was an easy target for the ice people. My jaw tightened as I thought of how Lethe must have played on her sympathies, hinting at his history as an abused child—like every other ice dragon was—and masterfully manipulating her tenderness—like every other ice dragon would.
The bath water began to bubble around me. My jaw clenched as I thought of the lot of them. Gutless and heartless and wicked.
And Nell—she was just a human. She didn’t have the thick hide of a dragon, fire or otherwise. She couldn’t withstand this climate. She couldn’t do battle with the versatility of my kin, and was relegated to ground combat and to melee forces. As much as I loved her, and desperately wanted her by my side, as much as we were two halves of one whole… I could not deny her vulnerability. And any ice dragon, even one who “loved” her, would take advantage of that. Even Lethe, who had claimed her as his bride-to-be, had stalked toward her in the fire shelter as if he was going to kill her. Any of them would kill her if they had the chance, even Lethe.
The bathtub was bubbling just thinking about it. My last hope. My one love. And they would snuff out her delicate flame. It wouldn’t even mean anything in the tumult of war—it would be symbolic at best—but no ice dragon would be able to stop—
“Theon?”
Nell’s voice brought me from the deep trance into which I’d fallen. The steaming water settled as my concentration broke.
Nell nudged open the bathroom door and observed me, steeped in the tub of smoldering water.
“Hey.” She bit her lip and averted her eyes; I didn’t blame her. I wasn’t the most approachable just now. “Are you—” She hesitated before finishing the question, realizing its ignorance. “I mean, is everything—” Again, there was nothing she could say which would make any sense. Of course I was not all right. Of course everything wasn’t okay. What did she want from me? “I just wanted to check on you,” she finished in a rush.