* * *
Michelle and Einhen stayed close to me as we moved through the tundra, but I could not allow it any longer. Our time was short; certainly, ice soldiers would be sent to blockade the city, and would be swift in dealing “justice” to attempted escapees. And my father… He did not have a moment to lose. On foot? With nothing but some furs, some mason jars of berries, and the gods-forsaken love letter from Pythia? What good were these trinkets to him? He would be dead by nightfall, and we couldn’t make it to the shelter in time.
I had to transform. It was our only hope. If I didn’t lock up in flight—and, of all the fire dragons, I was one of the least likely, because I was one of the biggest—then, when we arrived at the shelter, my torn clothing could be immediately replaced. I had faith in my people. They would rescue me… if I could only make it to their door.
“Michelle! Einhen!” I called to my two companions. “I must transform!” On the steps of the castle—we had only just passed the first barrier of shops—a sudden surge of ice dragons came pouring out. Reserves from the servant quarters. “Einhen! Take my father, and place him onto my back!”
“Are you sure, my lord?” He asked the question, knowing its answer, and so I said nothing in response, but bowed my head and allowed the natural fire in my body to overtake me.
The spines tore through and shredded my clothing. I usually preferred to undress and fold my clothing, not destroy it uselessly, but I had no time now. In dragon form, my hide would become almost impenetrable, but my size was also a setback. The ice dragons would see me take flight… but I could only pray they would be too mired in other fire dragons to follow suit. Michelle had set half of their dungeon free in our escape.
As I elongated, ballooned, and felt invigorated by the fire within, for a few moments, the surrounding ice land would not hinder me. I had managed flight in the December of Penelope’s country, but that December had not been as harsh as The Hearthlands were now.
Einhen nimbly ascended my shoulder blades, and I felt him secure my father at the wide base of my scaled neck. Michelle next straddled my shoulders directly behind Einhen, and with a powerful downward thrust of my wings, I tore into the sky, glaring against the frosty clouds overhead, beating my way over the city below—I could easily see the chaos in the streets—and then, as arrows of ice sang in the air around us, we passed the entrance to the city itself, blocked as I had expected… and, finally, the long and lonely stretch of arctic wasteland, on the tip of which we would find the fire dragon shelter.
Nearly collapsing into the deep snow drifts surrounding the dead trees which marked the entrance to the shelter, I realized that my left wing had gone totally numb and only continued to beat by sheer perseverance. After Einhen pulled my father and Michelle down into the snow with him, I shrank into my human form, shuddering uncontrollably, and my eyes bulged with shock. Gods. An ice arrow had sunk into my left shoulder, and the skin around the wound was turning blue.
Einhen moved swiftly, recognizing the severity of both my wound and my vulnerability nude. He and Michelle worked together to find and open the shelter door, sealed shut with ice yet again, whilst I held my now unconscious father with my one good arm. He was so light… It was incredible how, when I had been a child, he had loomed with all the brightness and intensity of a mountaintop. Now, though, he fit into my arms like a wilted damsel. Oh, Father. He was so very frail. His pulse fluttered and whispered like a fairy messenger meant only for my ears.
Behind us, ice crunched and the shelter door groaned open.
Einhen took my father from me. Michelle offered her support. I blinked with surprise, but acquiesced. I would not reject the gesture, especially coming from Michelle, who so seldom made selfless gestures.
We traveled down the earthen steps, pausing only to close the shelter door behind us. The snow would blanket it again, so the odds of an ice dragon spotting the dark speck in the landscape from on high were very low. Unless they had a spy in the castle from the beginning, their people would remain unaware of the existence of the shelter, much less its whereabouts. They had likely assumed that I and mine were merely fleeing like the cowards they themselves were.
Kidnappers.
Murderers.
Savages.
As we left behind the narrow stairwell and entered the sweeping caverns of the shelter, we were immediately swamped with concerned fire dragons. “King Erisard!” voices cried. “The king has been returned to us, praise the gods, earth, wind, fire, and sea!”
Hands sprouted from the crowd to carry me away from Michelle’s supportive embrace, and I let them, weakened by the cold. “My gods, the prince has been shot,” someone announced.
“He’s frozen to the bone! A bearskin! A bearskin for the prince!”
But to me, it all passed in a blur.
I had not seen my brother, Altair, moving in the throngs of prisoners.
Which increased the likelihood that he was dead, did it not? Had I not seen Einhen and my father because they still lived?
I had rescued my father, but left behind my beloved.
And the mirror was gone now.
And the skeleton key had not unlocked the door to the castle when I had turned it. It had not unlocked my father’s manacles, either.
What did that mean?
And Nell, standing there, staring down at me, saying nothing, doing nothing, not even moving a muscle… just staring. Lethe’s arm around her. Wearing the vestments of a bride-to-be. Three floors between our eyes. She had been in the wing of the royal family all along. Nothing like a prisoner.
What did it mean?
I had to know. I had to know…
Around me fire people cropped up, murmuring amongst themselves, and then bled away again. I was led to the quarters of the medical workers: apothecaries, surgeons, and mystics alike. I didn’t hear a word of it. The arrow was ripped clean. I grunted. A poultice was applied. A bearskin mantle was draped across my naked body. A cup of broth was shoved into my hands.
I didn’t even know where I was anymore.
After a while, I found myself removed to the men’s sleeping quarters and placed on a cot. I was told by an unknown face that my mother would see me soon. The face receded. I couldn’t even have told you with any degree of certainty what the face had looked like. They were all so blurry, and melted from one to the next, more like a painting than a picture.
A nurse maid came, and her face was Nell’s… Michelle’s… and Mother’s.
“You’ve got to rest, darling. Let your poultice do its work.”
“Mother,” I pleaded, my eyes rolling weakly in my head, my pillow soaked with sweat. “What would you do if you saw the woman you loved, standing at a great distance, another man at her side? And she stared back at you… unfathomable?”
Her cool hand whisked the hair from my forehead. But a fire dragon never had cool hands…
“You’re not making any sense,” she told me. “You’re mad with fever.”
“Have you never loved in uncertainty?” I demanded of the ceiling, my voice ragged, my hands grasping for my mother, although she was no longer there. She bled and faded away, and as my eyes adjusted, I realized that the torches had been snuffed out. It was no longer daylight—the torches were only snuffed to simulate night. I must have fallen asleep, and she had left me in peace. She would be in the women’s sleeping quarters now. The question still echoed in my head without answer: Have you ever loved in uncertainty? What would I do? What could I do?
What was this damnable, wrenching feeling in my chest… and could I snuff it out like the torches?
Shaking, I propelled myself upward, and the room did a little spin before settling around me again. I could only pray that the poison of the ice arrow would be out of my system soon, but until then, this half-reality was my world. Feeling drunk, I shoved myself to a standing position and wound my way around the shadowy cots of the men’s sleeping quarters, through the labyrinthian caverns of the shelter, and into the main hal
l. I almost stumbled over my leather satchel, propped against a wall.
With a surge of relief, I dug my hands into its depths and rifled through its contents in search of the papyrus of the love letter, discarded as meaningless in war… but there were many varieties of war. And in some wars, a love letter was exactly the weapon you needed.
Procuring the love letter and a writing utensil, still half-mad with fever and poison, I scrawled in almost illegible script:
“Are you falling in love with him?”
Nell
After the breakout, the mood in the castle shifted to one of vigilance and vengeance. The ice people had insecurities, as their superiority was so new and so flimsy. Seeing almost two hundred prisoners escape into the streets was an affront to their dominance. They had not captured the instigator—whom they believed to have been Theon—but my celebration was a secret one. On the surface of things, I lamented Lethe’s laments. I rallied at his cries.
It was the only way I could foresee an exit from this palace.
Perhaps the dungeon had made its impression on me. Perhaps the dungeon had done its job indeed, and now, no matter how high I carried my head, I remembered with every step that I had been starved, and peed on myself, and slept in freezing temperatures due to sheer exhaustion.
I tried not to think about how I had seen Theon.
I tried not to think about the look on his face. The anguish…
No. I couldn’t think about it. Not when I was so powerless to do anything.
Lethe had been en route to return me to my former bedchamber, with the fireplace, the bookcase, and the feather-down mattress. I couldn’t bear to tell him the truth — that Theon was the man I loved… not when I had been shackled to a wall overnight. I couldn’t return to the frigid floors, the chains, the filth, when I knew that a real bed, a warm fire, regular meals, all those things awaited me in exchange for one teeny, tiny lie.
That I did not love Theon.
After taking me to my former chambers, Lethe had left for the throne room, where a council regarding the breakout was being conducted. I was instructed to remain in my room until he returned, and the key had turned in the lock. He didn’t trust me… yet. But I was getting to know Lethe now, and he was eager to trust anyone. It wouldn’t be long until he allowed some more length to my tether, and I could roam the palace, if I played my cards right. It would ruin Lethe to be disappointed again. He was, in so many ways, still a child.
And was it possible that I could lose Theon?
That look on his face…
Utter betrayal.
And with Lethe’s arm around my shoulders, I hadn’t been able to call out to Theon. I hadn’t been able to run to him.
How might things have been different if I had?
I didn’t know. I’d been too far away; arrows had already been tearing through the air; there had been no time. It was a lost cause. A missed ship. I was trapped here, and Theon was gone—for now.
It was deep night by the time Lethe finally returned from his carousel of meetings. I was huddled by the fire, appreciating its warmth. A servant had brought me a dish of sugared biscuits, salty potatoes and oil-drenched string beans. Half the plate had been gone by the time the key turned in the lock again. I hadn’t even thought of leaving—not if they were going to feed me and keep me warm. I stared bitterly into the fire. Dammit, I was still a human being. I had a survival instinct. I was not a bad person.
I was just trying to live, wasn’t I? Would anyone else not do the same? Was there a woman better than me, with such honor and virtue she would rather let her arms be broken by shackles than to pretend, even for a moment, to love a man unfaithfully?
The sound of the tumblers falling in the lock startled me from my stare into the flames.
Lethe entered, sweeping the door shut behind him without bothering to lock it. His trust was beginning to thaw again.
“Penelope,” he greeted. “I’ve been thinking only of you all day. With the country teetering on the brink of genocide, I thought of nothing but you.”
“Genocide?” I murmured, clambering to my feet and hurrying from the hearth.
“That is the path of which my father speaks. It is tragic, yes, but there is no steering his hand. As a leader… I’m afraid that he will be a merciless one.” Lethe raised a finger to trace my cheek. “At least I have you up here. The lone dash of sunlight on this clouded eve.”
“Lethe.” I pulled his hand away from my face. “I thought you were intended to take the throne from your father.”
Lethe nodded ruefully. “I am. But my father wishes to first see me wed. He believes that a bachelor king with no heir appears weak to the surrounding lands, and is an obvious target of malintent. But an established king—with a queen, and a son—is almost immovable, save with a powerful insurgency such as our own.”
“And you want to be wed, don’t you?” I whispered up to him. “You want the throne you’ve been promised your entire life.”
Lethe smiled. “Wouldn’t you?” he asked. “But I will not take the scepter with any healthy female. My father says that ice dragons cannot love.” He hesitated, and his fingers rose again, brushing my cheek. This time, I let them. “I don’t believe him,” he said. “If I cannot love, then what is it that I feel when I’m with you?”
I opened my mouth, but no words came out.
Lethe swallowed, and his fingers crept along the frilled edge of his princely tunic. He peeled both panels of fabric to the side, exposing his chiseled pectorals, as white as marble.
“Why does it hurt?” he wondered.
I was reaching forward to touch the heart he claimed ached so when an inky black scrawl appeared across Lethe’s flesh.
“Are you falling in love with him?”
I withdrew my hand with a gasp. Another mysterious, disembodied message… and Lethe had sworn before that it was from Theon. Was it really? Had Theon known? Was he somehow watching us now?
The question certainly made it seem as if its author was invested in my romantic inclinations.
I blinked as it faded away to nothing again.
“Well?” Lethe whispered.
My eyes flew to his. He’d seen it.
“Are you?”
For a moment, my mouth moved slightly, but no words came out. I felt as if I’d been punched. Not now… not this… but I knew the right answer. The only answer.
“Yes,” I told him in a breathless hush, letting one of my hands drift through the air, rising to caress his cheek.
Lethe’s eyelashes fluttered shut, and I winced. Would I only join the retinue of enablers and abusers in his life?
I swallowed.
This wasn’t my fault.
He had kidnapped me.
I didn’t have any other choice.
I had to return home somehow.
And if I told him I was in love with him, it was possible he would set me free… but if I told him I was not, he would thrust me back down into the dungeon.
Lethe leaned into me and pressed his cold lips to mine. I surrendered myself fully. His tongue cracked my lips apart with eagerness and hunger, all ten fingers kneading deeply through my hair. I shuddered from the cold in which he had steeped me and his lips trembled to my earlobe.
“If you love me,” he whispered, his voice trembling with his lips, “then you must be my queen, and damn the rest. Damn it to hell, Penelope.”
Theon
Throughout the next day, refugees filtered down into the shelter, many wounded and bringing updates from the mad city.
A cobbler with frostbite on his wings: “They’re sending ice dragons through every shop. They’re destroying everything in the hopes of discovering even the tiniest hidden child of fiery heritage.”
A student who would permanently have a scar on his wrists where the shackles had been, said: “They’ll kill us all. The orders are to shoot on sight, no questions asked. No prisoners this time.”
And finally an out-of-work, ancient toymaker w
ith two arrows in one wing, having made the flight to the shelter on sheer determination: “A coronation will be held for their prince, Lethe… He is to take the throne from Vulott.”
At this, I started. Vulott would never have given the throne to Lethe. Not yet. It was too soon. He had said it himself. He wanted Lethe first to take a wife… make a child…
“And,” the toymaker went on, coughing plumes of misty ice as he spoke, “the supposed prince has announced his engagement to a new empress. Gods know that this is the dawning of a new era.” His eyes searched in a kind of glazed panic amongst our faces. “Is it not? Is this not now the dynasty of Eraeus?”
The mere words caused my eyes to throb in their sockets. No. This is the dynasty of Aena, and it always will be.
“To whom will the prince be wed?” I asked. My voice sounded quiet to me, but my mother and Michelle both looked at me as if I had yelled. “Well? Did the decree note the bride?”
To me, it seemed as though I had slipped, stumbled, and brought my hands up around the old man’s tunic, all in a blurry slow motion. But it was my mother, aghast, who pried me off of him. She did not seem to think that I had slipped at all.
“Let him be, Theon,” she hissed. “The toymaker isn’t the man you think he is.”
What did that even mean? “What man do I think he is?” I asked her, glaring.
“You think that he is the ice prince. He’s just an old man.”
My chest rose and fell, though our voices were low. “I do not think he’s the ice prince, Mother.”
But she would not be swayed. “Yes. You do.”
I shook her off and stormed deeper into the shelter, the world around me rocketing away. Some fire people might have thought I was reacting to the icy poison leaving my system, but it wasn’t just that.