A Shade of Dragon 2

  We didn’t speak as we left behind the light and noise of the shelter’s cavernous foyer. The tunnel which led above ground was claustrophobic, as the earthen walls smothered all sound and surrounded us in darkness.

  It was only when we reached the wide wooden door, set into the ceiling which now crowded down against us, that any of us attempted to communicate. We all went still and exchanged glances. “It may have sealed shut again with ice,” I said. I wondered if Einhen and Khem had even seen what was out there. “It appears that the ice dragons now have control of the weather itself.”

  “We know,” Khem replied, morose. “When we were driven from the city, it was a bright day. But after settling into the shelter, when we moved to return and gain information, we opened this door to the most dangerous storm of wind and ice we had ever seen.”

  “And that is why you’ve stayed?” I wondered, preparing my sword to spear the slat between the door and the ceiling, cracking the ice which might have formed in the nighttime hours. “For fear of the environment?”

  “We have stayed because the queen willed it so,” Einhen said.

  At this, I grimaced and nodded. I was glad that she had not seen me leave.

  I slammed my shoulder into the door, sending it upward against the shattering ice formed atop it.

  The world outside was a blistering white.

  The sun had risen a quarter into the sky. Had our days somehow lengthened? Was it not noon? Sunshine filtered onto us as pale and cold as reflections on water, trapped behind its sheen of cloud. The snow, powdery and crisp, lifted to our upper knees and thighs.

  “All right,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  * * *

  We moved through the tundra under the shadow of clouds and trees for hours. There was no shelter; we ate as we traveled, exposed to the elements and any roaming predators. I passed Michelle a bun of wheat, and this time she did not balk. She grabbed the food and tore into it like a beast as we walked. I felt a twinge of victory at this—like the pride of a parent who had finally broken the tantrum of a willful toddler.

  It was a short-lived feeling.

  “Where the hell are we?” Michelle demanded, looking to me for the answer. “You don’t even have a map, Theon.”

  “I hunted with my father in these wildlands for an entire season every year while the women harvested,” I explained, my voice patient with superiority. “My brother and I would chase each other on horseback through these fields, and hide in its hidden wells; I know it better than I know myself.”

  Michelle grimaced, but relented. “I could go for one of those horses right about now,” was all she said.

  Her gaze moved to Einhen next. He’d shown no interest in her since the voyage began, so he had unwittingly become her latest target. “Why do you keep doing that?” she asked, gesturing to his face, tilted up toward the opaque sky.

  “There are fleeting slivers of stars revealed when the clouds part,” he answered her, not turning from the sky, blinking away snowflakes. “I’m trying to see the planets to verify what I believe is happening.”

  “And what is that?” Michelle asked sweetly.

  “Their positions have altered inexplicably.” His voice was low, almost inaudible over the wailings of the wind. “Like returning to a room to find that the chess pieces on the board have been rearranged.”

  “That is riveting.” Michelle paused to let her insincerity sink in. “How long do we have before we reach the city?” I had stopped counting how many times she had asked.

  “I see the spires of the watchtowers now,” I informed her tersely. “We will be at the gates within the hour if we do not stop.”

  Michelle had been insisting we stop as many as three times per hour so that she could cuddle with Khem and warm up again.

  “I don’t see anything,” Michelle retorted. “I don’t see any watchtowers.”

  “Your eyesight is inferior to that of a fire dragon. The watchtowers are there. Why would I lead myself and two trusted companions into a frozen wasteland with no destination other than death?”

  “Oh, so, I’m, like, not trustworthy?” Michelle shrilled. I whirled on her, but she didn’t shrink back, even though she was almost a foot smaller and less than half my weight. “You were the one who showed up at my house and invited me!”

  “Because the damned Oracle forced me!” I bellowed. “Do you think I would choose, for a mission as crucial as the life of my beloved and the safety of my kingdom, the accompaniment of a spoiled, vain concubine?”

  Michelle’s mouth opened, but nothing came out. Her eyes glazed over, and she settled back onto her heels and closed her mouth. She turned from me and continued to trudge through the snow.

  I’d done it. I’d finally shut her up.

  Nell

  The masked guard carried me, my face beginning to thaw and blazing with pain, down a twisting flight of stone steps. I feared I was being taken to the Aena castle’s dungeons.

  The walls were lined with torches, spears, and shackles; at least they were well-kept. No blood on the stones. No rust on the chains. You could tell that the recent residents of this home cared very much for its maintenance, comfort, and style—or perhaps they had imprisoned few people.

  But you could not say that for the dungeons of Castle Aena anymore.

  Each cell was filled with men, though I struggled to find any women, and none were beneath middle age. I was dumped outside of the cells, and manacled to the wall.

  “You don’t need to do this,” I told the guard, panicking as he turned to exit the room. Would there be mice in here? Rats? My dad always said that when it snowed outside, it drove vermin indoors... I scooted closer to the wall, then away from it, thinking that perhaps they hid in the crevasses of the stone. “Do you want me to be a chamber maid? I can be a chamber maid!”

  The guard exited the dungeon without glancing back. Now it was just me in here: me and the meager torchlight, and the other weathered, exhausted prisoners. Starving prisoners. Forlorn and doomed prisoners.

  One of them called out to me. He was young and dark-haired, with a tattoo of a fireball on one hand. “Hey. Where did you come from?”

  “I was kidnapped.” I might as well trust him; we were both prisoners now, after all. “I’m from Earth…” But I was beginning to think that this would be the country where I’d die. My eyes panned warily around the dungeon before returning to his. “I was kidnapped after passing through the portal, kidnapped by Lethe.”

  “That cowardly, conniving—”

  The dungeon doors behind us groaned as they opened, and we broke eye contact, lapsing into silence.

  Five guards entered the room, each prying spears from off the wall as they passed them.

  I swallowed.

  “There she is,” the guard announced, indicating me. “I found her wandering in the west wing. She’s no chamber maid I’ve ever seen. And look—look at her hem, there. Singed. No ice dragon could get so close to a fire.”

  “She looks like an Earth maiden,” a short, broad guard observed. They all wore masks, so it was only possible to differentiate them by their body types.

  “Friends with a dragon, are you?” another of the guards asked. He was the tallest of them, and he stuck his spear into the spluttering flame of a torch until it turned a hot coral red. “Perhaps you’d be wanting to give us a name right about now, as to who let you into this castle and why?” As he spoke, the tip of the spear hovered closer and closer to my body, and I shrank away, trying to disappear within the folds of the dress.

  “Prince Lethe Eraeus! He brought me from the ocean gate! He—he was keeping me as his prisoner!”

  The guards shared a look amongst themselves.

  “And why wouldn’t he tell anyone he had captured an Earth woman in our territory?” the blue-masked guard asked. “Why hide you in royal quarters?”

  Because I’m the claimed mate of his sworn enemy, part of me answered. But another part of me wasn’t so sure. Why had he taken me to
a royal chamber, when he could have just as easily dumped me in this dungeon? Why hadn’t he tortured me, or had me tortured for him, when the guard staff was clearly amenable to the practice? Why had he stripped the freezing wet clothes from my body and dressed me in rich blue velvet—the gown of a princess—if I was nothing but a prisoner?

  “I—I don’t know,” I stammered. It was the only way that I could answer.

  “Not good enough.” The tallest guard darted forward with his spear and jammed it into the ribbon which bound my dress together down its center. I was mortified as the corset loosened and opened to reveal a sheer white slip underneath. Thalissa had dressed me; no one else had seen me this way.

  The spear moved against my side, and I threw back my head and howled. The reaction was so intense that I wrenched against the metallic shackles until they bit my wrists and smeared themselves in a lacquer of my blood.

  “I’m sorry! I don’t know!” I howled. “Anyone could tell you that torture is one of the least effective methods for gaining information!”

  At this, the tallest guard leaned close and pulled his mask down. He was fabulously ugly, with cratered cheeks and beady eyes. “It is an effective method of intimidation.”

  I went still with horror as the realization dawned on me. This was all for the benefit of the other prisoners—the fire dragon men. They were torturing me to set an example.

  “No,” I murmured, letting my damp eyelashes close. I’d been crying.

  “This is your last chance, my lady,” the tall guard leered, his glowing spear tracing the lace of my dress. Sweat prickled over the neckline and soaked the slip beneath. “Confess who allowed you entry to this castle.”

  “It was Lethe!”

  The spear came down like a whip and burned the top of my right breast. I shrieked.

  “What the hell is going on here?” A familiar male voice intruded into our horrific little bubble of heat, and sweat, and pain. “Just what do you think you’re doing? Let me through! I said let me through!”

  Lethe shouldered his way through the hedge of guards, and his eyes opened wide at the sight of me. We gazed at one another in a moment of sudden stillness, and then he turned from me.

  “Unchain her,” he commanded coldly. “On whose authority have you tortured this woman?”

  There was another moment of quiet as the guards refused to step forward and receive credit.

  “Was there no command given? Has our guard become a rogue faction unto itself? Confess, you animals!”

  “It was I.” The blue-masked guard stepped forward, his head high but his eyes averted. “I thought her a threat to the castle security, my lord.”

  “Am I truly your lord?” Lethe hissed. “Or are you your own lord? I said unchain her, you barbarians!”

  Three guards rushed forward to unclasp the bloodied manacles from my wrists. As the irons fell away, I collapsed forward. A pair of arms suspended me mid-air. I gazed up into Lethe’s face, but he was not looking back at me. He still glared at his guards.

  Lethe gestured to the blue-masked guard. “Manacle him.”

  I heard screams of protest, a scuffle, and the clank of chains fastened as Lethe pulled me from the dungeon. He did not speak to me as we ascended the winding stairwell. I peered up at him. Hadn’t they tortured me exactly as he would have done? And yet…

  But he did not return my stare. He kept his eyes straight ahead and his jaw firm, as if I was not there at all.

  When we reached the top of the stairs, stepping into a sweeping marble foyer, Lethe covered my eyes with a silken handkerchief from his pocket, securing it behind my head as a blindfold. I didn’t struggle. He took my arm—his hand so very cold—and dragged me along winding corridors, up two more flights of stairs, down another long hall, and then finally through a door into a warm room. The blindfold came away, and I recognized it immediately. The windows dominating the northern wall. The roaring fireplace. The bookshelf. The feather-down mattress. I had been returned to my new quarters—“home.”

  I turned to face Lethe. There was something different about him now, and he seemed aware of his own vulnerability, as he returned my gaze with eyes more distant and harsh than I had seen yet.

  “Thank you.” I didn’t need him to acknowledge my consideration. I just needed to express my gratitude.

  “Do not thank me,” Lethe commanded, turning from my eyes and retreating to the exit. “You would never have been discovered if you had not disobeyed my commands. You deserve your marks.” He hesitated and glanced over his shoulder at me. The dress was still undone, my slip singed on one side and the burn still red raw on my chest. “Perhaps, with this next opportunity, you will trust me.” He laid his hand on the door’s brass knob and turned. “Are you hungry?” he demanded, as if it was not a question but an insult.

  “Y-yes,” I murmured, uncertain of the proper response. I hadn’t eaten since last night; it had to be close to noon now, or midday, or however time worked in this place. I cleared my throat. “Yes, sir, I am.”

  “Good.”

  With that, he wrenched the door open and stepped out into the hallway, slamming it behind him.

  Next, a key turned in a lock, and I flung myself toward the door, jiggling its frozen handle.

  Dammit.

  Trapped.

  Nell

  I wrapped my arms around myself and curled up near the fire, rocking back and forth. It had been hours since Lethe had disappeared, locking the door behind him. I’d tried screaming and pounding on the door, even though I’d known it would do nothing. This was a castle. Entire wings stood vacant of all life in the wake of this insurgency. I’d pressed my ear to the door and listened for footsteps, voices, anything. But there was nothing.

  Bedraggled with exhaustion and hunger, I collected the quilt off of the mattress and trudged back to the meager halo of heat produced by the dying embers of the hearth. It was becoming colder… and colder… and colder. Even inside the blankets, I rubbed my hands together and blew warm breath into them.

  My eyes wandered to the northern windows.

  In their lowest corner, the wavering sun descended.

  It was almost nightfall.

  I wondered about the time. Was it, like on Earth, almost five o’clock, or six, when the sun was low in the winter season? Had it been almost an entire twenty-four hours, and on Earth, had a day passed as well? Had my mother gone to Dulles, anticipating my flight from Portland International to DC, and found I had never boarded? Had my father already called her in a panic when I had never returned from the going-away party the night before? Had Michelle’s family, the Boston Ballingers, realized that she, too, was missing? Did the evening news blaze with our images, information as to when we were last seen, tearful interviews with our friends and family?

  Footsteps in the hall, muffled by the heavy oak door, distracted me from my thoughts.

  “Hello?” I called, climbing to my feet and hurrying to the door. I banged at its frame until my fists ached. “Hello, is anyone there?”

  The sound of a key turning in a lock made me pause.

  It was Lethe.

  The door fell open, and with it came a warm, lemony scent which caused my mouth to water. I moved back a step and allowed him to enter. He held a large, steaming bowl. My eyes followed it, ignoring the door, which he shut behind him with his foot.

  “I have brought you a stew for dinner,” he informed me. “Please, have a seat. There is a small table near the window—”

  “No,” I said. He cast a glare at me and I shrank back. “It’s so cold,” I explained, and his icy stare relented.

  “The fire, then,” he said. “I will rekindle it. Have a seat.”

  I settled by the fire, and he rested the meal in front of me. I didn’t wait as he stuffed the fireplace with kindling. I only heard an occasional exclamation of pain; it seemed that the ice people could not withstand fire, as the fire people could not withstand ice. Still, he built the fire for me as I shoveled the stew into my
eager mouth. It was almost entirely gone, spoon scraping the porcelain bottom of the dish, when I finally raised my head and saw the roaring hearth now between us, throwing its warm orange light into the chamber.

  The fire bothered him, and it was purely for me that he entertained its presence. I remembered Theon with a pang of gratitude: the day we’d been at the ice rink near the mall in Beggar’s Hole. He’d told me he detested the ice, but agreed to skate on it only to please me. Heart swollen with appreciation of Theon, I looked to Lethe, thought of him, and smiled.

  Somehow… somewhere in that icy cavern of this self-proclaimed prince’s heart… there burned a small fire, maybe even only a pit of embers, for the welfare of others.

  I cocked my head, intrigued.

  “Thank you,” I said again.

  Why did he imprison me, if he seemed to not care much for the needless cruelty of his compatriots? What was I to him—some sort of pet? A bargaining chip? What did he want?

  “Does it hurt terribly?” he asked, turning from the fire and treading deeper into the room, away from its heat. He stood silhouetted against the frost-encrusted window, all color bleached away by the dying of the sun. “Your burns? Do they still ache, or is the way of fire inoffensive to you? Do you, perhaps, lover of fire, treasure the pain?”

  I hesitated. “It hurts,” I admitted.

  He nodded and turned toward me again. “I have brought a salve,” he said. “Come to me. I cannot stand to be near the fire.”

  I stood and trod toward him, still enshrouded in the blanket. He held a glass disc, brimming with a dark orange cream, and I saw that his hands were scarred from their fleeting contact with the flames. I cracked the blanket open and allowed him to see the marks on my body again. Did he wince at the sight of them—or was that only my imagination?