It couldn’t have been so.
The floor dropped out from beneath me, and I just stood, breathless, certain that I was seeing things wrong.
Michelle approached behind me.
I ignored her.
She cleared her throat.
I ignored that, too.
Every now and then, Penelope and the wearer of the pendant would separate for mere seconds, and I would catch a flash: her jaw, thrust upward; fingers in her messed hair; the shadow of cleavage exposed, or a hickey not quite hidden by the shadowed contours of her throat.…
“Kind of ironic, isn’t it?” Michelle murmured off to my right.
“Not now,” I warned her.
The mirror had gone completely black. I wondered what they were doing… Was it smothered between their writhing bodies? Had the pendant been torn off and forgotten in a puddle of clothes?
“I mean, here you are, having just rejected the hottest piece of—”
“I said shut up!” Behind us, the fire in the fireplace gusted as if in a sudden wind. I was losing my grip on the element, letting the emotions override me, fumbling away the self-restraint every dragon was taught early in life.
The mirror lit again, and I saw Nell leaning down, peering into it intently.
My stomach rolled with sickness at the sight of her. The hair, everywhere, as if someone’s hands had been deep inside of it. The blush on her fair cheeks. The way her dress remained undone, and the slip beneath was so sheer, so generous to the viewing public. Who had she been with? And why? For the sake of all that was pure inside her, why?
But she didn’t answer that question. Instead, she pantomimed that she loved me.
My jaw clenched, and the hearth at my back roared again.
Did she love me? Did she, truly? Or had the Oracle been right all along? Was my destined mate beside me now, however vain, however petty? Was Michelle not also strong? Was she not also clever?
Penelope went on to pantomime her location within the castle, and finished with a ridiculous and nigh insulting question: Why is she here? directed at Michelle.
Michelle caught it, too, and sprang forward to defend her dignity.
“I’m not the one cheating on my dead-sexy, crazy-famous boyfriend, Nell!” she said, pointing into the mirror. Before my eyes, I saw the both of them transform into children. I imagined them as best friends in their earlier years: vindictive, back-handed, jealous, and childish.
Behind Nell, the door to her chamber swung open, and Lethe stood framed in the light of the hall.
Thinking fast, I whipped the cloak from off my shoulders and tossed it across the mirror, blanketing the room from view. I could not allow him to see the quarters we kept lest he recognize them, nor could I afford his realization that Penelope was communicating with us. In spite of everything… I would never want harm to befall her. It would be better if he saw her holding a dark and empty crystal, and knew nothing of this brief exchange—even if he, Lethe Eraeus, enemy of the Aena dynasty and abductor of my beloved—even if he had been the one with whom her face had entertained such an elated expression…
I glanced to Michelle at my side. For as thick as she could be, there was a thoughtfulness to her now, even while still drunk.
“What should we do now?” she asked me.
“It is wise to find shelter elsewhere, lest our location is compromised.” I hated to go so far, but it was possible that Penelope could not be trusted anymore. “Wake Khem and Einhen; I will prepare the bag, and we will go.”
“But it’s freezing out there—”
“Michelle, we haven’t any other choice,” I rebuked her, allowing my stress to spill into our conversation. “You were the one who wanted to come. You were the one who used my own honor against me in order to secure yourself a position in this troop. And now you must face the harsh environment we have all agreed to travel in. Yes, it is freezing out there. It is freezing out there because the ice people are cold, and wicked, and without a single heart amongst them! My father is imprisoned within the castle walls. Your best friend—”
“Ex-best friend,” she corrected quietly.
“—has been abducted by their prince, never mind the semantics. And my own brother has been lost, and is likely dead.”
As if to punctuate every proclamation, the fireplace behind us burst into life again and again.
“If you want to go home now, believe me, I will take you,” I whispered, my tone as dark and dangerous as any ice dragon could manage. “I will happily be rid of you, back to that young man who is so proud of the alcohol in his system, and the palaces of the Ballinger house, the world of inheritance awaiting you.” I loomed over her. “Shops, shops, and more shops, Michelle; that is your world. And I will gladly return you from whence you came.”
There was a bang on the door, and the signage—Gordon’s Instruments—shuddered from the impact.
The ice dragons.
“Wake the men!” I hissed to Michelle, snatching my cloak from off the darkened mirror. I pulled on the garment and moved to fill the leather satchel with our few and crucial rations. I didn’t glance over my shoulder. She would not stray from orders. There was something about her which spoke of a soldier.
But it didn’t matter.
With the crunch of splintering wood, the sign gave way to the force of the dragon’s weight, and the door blew inward, the night beyond spewing into the room with the fragments of shattered wood.
Ice and the fire were pressed against each other now. Even if our fire was nothing but a spark, it was a weapon. I couldn’t shift in this environment and lose my clothing, but I could still use the element to my advantage: I opened my mouth and sent a swath of flame against the front entrance of Gordon’s—which caught as easily as kindling.
“What the hell!” Michelle cried behind me.
The ice dragons hesitated, and I unleashed another fireball in their direction. The fire would not hold against the storm outside. I only hoped to allow us enough time to escape. I glanced over my shoulder—Einhen was still groggy-eyed, Michelle was holding a broken bottle of mead at the ready, and Khem joined me with his own orange tongue of flame—but when I turned back to face the entrance of the instrument shop, the ice dragons were spilling inside, extinguishing our heat as they entered.
I was forced back, and turned to Michelle.
“There is a cellar door in the back room. Go there and find the exit into the street. It is certainly encrusted in snow, and potentially in ice; the dragons will not be guarding it, because it will be hidden by the very element which serves them.”
“Okay,” Michelle piped, fleeing into the back room of Gordon’s Instruments. Although there were four ice dragons in Gordon’s shop, they all let Michelle go without much interest. Of course. It was me whom they had come for.
One of those four dragons—a shimmering, slender, white creature with black, bottomless eyes—dove for me with a blast of ice as sharp as dagger blades. I felt my face, the only unprotected part of my body, lacerate in several places, and I staggered back, shaking off the pain. I was so dazed by these turns of events—Michelle’s heavy-handed persuasion, the mirror coming alight, Penelope and the ice prince entangled together, the spat with Michelle and now the ice dragon infiltration—I still held the damn lute.
When I exhaled a plume of white-hot flame into the wooden instrument, its interior cavern sparkled with flame, and when the white dragon converged on me again, I smashed it against his throat. He went down, stunned, and I delved into the leather satchel slung on my back, extracting a sword from within. Again, I burned the blade with my own orange tongue and sent it hurtling through the air, sinking into the white throat of the offending dragon. He went down and I vaulted atop him, gripping the hilt of the Aena sword and extracting its dripping, bloodied blade from his throat.
When I looked up again, one of the other ice dragons, also white, had come closer with a strangely human expression in his eyes. I assumed that they were family, and I reeled
back with the blade, prepared to strike in this dragon’s moment of weakness… but then my arm relaxed, and I held the sword again at the defensive position. I could not let the atrocities of the ice people make me become like one of them.
Turning from the carcass of the fallen white dragon, I observed the scene at the hearth and saw that Einhen was in the grasp of a dark blue dragon’s jaws. He struggled and bled, but appeared to be very much alive; the dragon had secured him at the shoulder. Khem, meanwhile, had been cornered near the front window of the shop, squaring off with another dragon, this one small and black laced with blue. The dragon was too small to be of major concern, even though Khem appeared to be cornered. His body language expressed no despair as he engulfed the other dragon with his flames.
Forced to choose between the two, I dove to Einhen’s side and slashed at the offending dragon with my sword, taking half of one wing. The dark blue dragon wailed, jaws falling open to release my wounded friend. Einhen collapsed, groaning and wounded but alive.
The dark blue dragon relented, reeling backwards toward the front entrance of Gordon’s. As he receded into the winter storm beyond, a bloodcurdling wail emitted from the street—and I realized that Khem was no longer in the store.
And beyond the doorway was snow streaked with blood.
“No,” I breathed, lurching forward.
In all my years as the prince of The Hearthlands, I had only seen peacetime; I had never seen the horrors of war.
Leaping over the corpse of the first white dragon, the one I had stabbed in the throat, I raced into the snow-choked streets to see that Khem had been dragged into the distance, and the other white dragon—the one I had shown mercy—had its bastard head lowered over the torso of my friend, ripping through his remains. Its glistening white snout shone with Khem’s vitality.
My mouth fell open.
There was no possibility that Khem would live through this. His head was hanging, boneless and slack, at the end of his neck. So much blood… and the viscera which clung to the white dragon’s teeth… Khem wasn’t even struggling…
Still, I was electrified, spurred through the shock and driving snow toward the white dragon and Khem.
“Get off of him, vulture!” I roared, slinging my sword through air. The white dragon, stained red, scrambled backward, abandoning Khem. Not because he was afraid, I was sure, but because he was not hungry for the carrion of my old friend. There was nothing to be gained by protecting him from me, nothing to be gained by taking him off into the sky. There was no way Khem would survive, but I couldn’t just let him be eaten alive.
“Khem,” I breathed, dropping to my knees beside the fallen form of my friend.
Although Khem’s eyes were open and moving, his mouth was not. Blood coursed down his chin.
I had just scooped my arms around him and was gently lifting him when an explosion of fire rattled the very roof of the instrument shop.
Dammit! Michelle! Einhen!
The shop was utterly engulfed… with the exception of one patch of ceiling, fallen through, blackened, but extinguished by a layer of ice. The fourth dragon, forgotten—a tortoiseshell of black and white and chilly blue—was receding in the sky above, snow spilling down into the inferno surrounding me… and Einhen was gone. Wounded and dangling like a doll in the mouth of that serpent.
Dammit!
Wincing, I forged through the collapsing shop and backroom, into the cellar, and then up a small stairwell and through the cellar door, which Michelle had left open for some reason…
Not Michelle… not Michelle too…
Dragging Khem’s limp legs over the shallow stairwell with me, I trudged out into the snow, scanning the dark and solitary street as Gordon’s Instruments collapsed behind us.
Theon
There she was. I saw her in the distance, cowering near another storefront, partially obscured by some crates. “Michelle!” I called, scanning the street once more for any ice dragons and then plowing through the tundra. My shoulder supported Khem’s limp weight, and he jostled with my every step, unconscious.
Michelle drew forward, her eyes starry, her breath shallow. “Is he dead?” she whispered.
I pursed my lips. Khem’s labored breathing rattled against my shoulder—it wouldn’t be long. Not in this cold. He wouldn’t be able to heal. I didn’t want Michelle to see it. I’d meant it when I’d said that her kingdom was comprised of markets and maidens; she didn’t need it bloodied by this memory of a far-away place, choked in snow and battle.
“He’ll be fine,” I lied. “We just need to find shelter as quickly as possible.”
Michelle nodded. “What do you want me to do?”
“You are going to look through every window in Luna Quarter,” I commanded. “It is the adjacent street just ahead of us, across from the castle. We must find a hideout until the alarm dies off. And I… I will stay with Khem for just a moment. He needs… to lie down.”
Michelle nodded again, and wound her furs tightly around herself, pushing off through the snowy crust toward Luna Quarter. A bittersweet swell of pride rose in my chest as I realized that I was not afraid for her safety. Michelle would take care of herself first and foremost. She would have been a natural queen… if I’d never met Penelope.
Receding to the darkened line of buildings at the side of the street, I eased Khem down and tried to get a look at him. His eyes were barely open.
As the snow fell around us, softer now, Khem shuddered and gripped my hand. Then his grip loosened. He let out a rattling breath, and a plume of pearly smoke filled the air.
His fire was gone.
He was dead.
Grimacing, I laid Khem flat on the ground and stared at him. I didn’t know quite what to do. I couldn’t just leave his body, nor could I carry him to our next safe house. He had left a trail of blood from the cellar door to the middle of the street and back again. Tracking us would be simple.
I took a deep breath, assuaging the sting of tears. I could have buried him. Crisp white snow fell all around us. I could have shoveled it onto him and dusted my hands, satisfied, but it haunted me to think that Khem would be buried by the very element that had killed him. If it weren’t for the damn snow, maybe he could have healed.
Though it was probably unlikely.
Still, it wasn’t a proper burial for a fire dragon. To bury a fire dragon in ice was nearly as disrespectful as burying him upside down.
Standing, I breathed one swath of white-hot flame over Khem’s body. It was slow to catch, but then the snow surrounding us melted away, and the fire took hold. He was briefly a pillar of fire in an otherwise bleak and colorless landscape.
“Theon!” Michelle belted out my name as if we weren’t committing espionage very near to the castle. “Are you okay? What’s—Khem!” Her mouth dropped open and her eyes swung, uncomprehending, as she reached us. “What did you do to him?”
“I gave him a farewell,” I whispered, still watching the flames and smoke trail up into the sky.
Michelle stood near to me for a moment, but then she said, “We should go.”
I knew it was true; an exposed fire would bring ice guards within a matter of minutes. It wouldn’t be long now—and they’d be searching all the surrounding shops, unless the snow put out this tongue of flame before they observed it.
“I wish Khem had waited to die until after my good news,” Michelle mourned.
I glanced over at her in disgust. How could a creature as selfish as Michelle Ballinger exist? She had to have been a sociopath.
“I found an abandoned clothing store at the far end of Luna Quarter,” Michelle explained. “It wasn’t even open. I forced the lock all by myself. Like a badass.”
“You’re something else,” I murmured, shaking my head.
“Thank you,” Michelle purred. It was as if she’d forgotten that Khem had been her friend, or that she had seemed to enjoy his company during the brief time they’d known each other… and that it was her insistence which had
led him here in the first place. To his death. I looked away from her beautiful face.
“Fire’s dying down now,” I informed her.
Michelle took my hand, and I let her. She pulled me toward Luna Quarter, and the clothing store she had so valiantly broken into.
Theon
While we settled in the shop, sound muffled and fell away from us beneath the heavily falling snow. I was in the process of removing the magical mirror from my satchel when I thought better of it, and slid it back inside. I had already seen enough.
As I gazed out the window ruefully, it looked like another storm was brewing. It wouldn’t be long before the entirety of my home country was beneath ice, inaccessible to the fire dragons who had reigned only days ago.
Michelle sauntered forward and leaned on the window ledge across from me. “These shops all look like something I could build with Lincoln logs,” she sighed, winding the fox furs from around her body, loosening their grip.
This clothing store—Maude Dresses and Taupe Hats—was filled with peasants’ apparel. Aprons. Bonnets. They had an entire section for widows in the back, the dresses hanging like shadows lurking in the distance.
In the fire dragon community, a widow or widower was expected to mourn for the rest of their life.
Although we tended to our vows—all vows—with an undying sincerity, death was not a frequent visitor to our strong people, and I had never in my life met a real widow, unless she was widowed during the last war with Emperor Bram and the ice people. But that had been a mere skirmish in comparison to this. What did they have in their possession that would cause the entire kingdom to become blanketed in eternal winter?
And now look what had become of our strong women, who had never known widowhood. Our strong men, who had never tasted defeat. I had never lit a man’s funeral pyre before. And now my brother might or might not have been dead. I was certain that my father—a good man—was tortured for the amusement of born enemies. The vibrant country I had loved all my life, before I’d even known what to call it, had become a frozen wasteland… and I had just witnessed my love, her eyelashes fluttering with pleasure, her hair a mess with someone else’s fingers, reflected in my own mirror. How could she have allowed it? Why? Did I—