A Shade of Dragon 2 (8 page)

A
fter 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.”

T
hroughout 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 with 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.

I pushed through the spinning kitchens, vaulted across the cellars, and stumbled into the depositories, drunken while sober. Weapons… medical supplies… I collapsed into a bed of mink, hyperventilating.

How could a man have so much in one instant, and then so little in the next? My brother was missing, and with increasing likelihood, dead. My father had been sequestered to the infirmary since our return, and though he showed marked improvement, he was bedridden. He could not lead a kingdom, much less regain one.

And me… What was I, if not a prince?

Without the kingdom at my feet, without the princess at my side, what was I?

Just a man named Theon.

A man with nothing.

W
hen Michelle found me
, I was huddled between a row of shields and a large crystal mirror—this one not necessarily magical.

“Hey,” she said as she lowered onto her haunches beside me. “Are you… okay?” She cocked her head to the side and squinted her eyes at me. Where had she found mascara in this shelter? Or had she been desperate enough to dig soot from the hearth?

“I’m fine,” I lied. “Go away, Michelle.”

Again, Michelle acted strangely. She did not retaliate. Instead, she placed her palm on my thigh and stroked it.

“What do you want?” I snapped. “Do you think that now, now that I’m weak, alone, sick, and single, is the best time to strike?”

Michelle grimaced. “Maybe I deserved that. I’ve just never seen you so… so…”

“So what?” Not that I cared. A kind of catatonia had taken its grip on me—after the panic attack, anyway.

“So… pathetic.” She winced, finally meeting my eyes. I glared in response.

“You think that’s why she chose him?” I demanded, within inches of grabbing her and shaking the answers out of her head. “You think he’s more of a man than me?”

“Jeez, no,” she answered, shaking her dark curls. “Truth?”

“Always,” I reminded her.

“She’s a woman,” Michelle said. “She’s probably just making the best of a bad situation. You’d be surprised how many women ‘love’ their captors… in whatever way they have to… to get by.” Her eyes became melancholy, as if she spoke of herself. “And besides, Theon,” she said, nudging my shoulder with her own. “I can’t imagine anyone picking somebody over you.”

I threw a glance her way. “That’s kind of you to say,” I allowed. I still did not know how much I could trust her. She was like a domestic cat who had been raised roughly: at times sweet, and then in an instant clawing. Beautiful things could be so treacherous that way, like fire roses. “Thank you… I think.” My gut pulled me in two separate directions when it came to Michelle Ballinger.

Michelle’s eyes, softened by the torchlight, tipped to mine, and then down to my lips. In an instant, I knew what she was thinking, and in another instant, she was leaning toward me.

I leaned toward her, too, still torn.

Had Pythia been right? Did Michelle love me more deeply and truly, in spite of her flaws, than Nell ever would? And could I find my way to love her?

“Theon!” Mother’s voice intruded on our moment.

Michelle and I reared away from each other simultaneously.

“What?” I asked, feeling caught, as if it had been Nell calling my name—but then, did I owe her anything anymore?

“I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” Mother went on, sweeping in front of Michelle and me. With her looming and us seated, I felt mired in a second childhood here with Michelle. Caught. “The Theon I have known my entire life has never been dependent upon the emotions of his females. Are you not a man of your own?”

“Mother—you don’t understand,” I told her, shaking my head. “You don’t understand what it’s like to think that you’re showing your future queen your kingdom… and then, when you cross the portal, you find that the entire world has been turned upside down. Even the winds themselves know no reason, and she’s robbed from you, to become the bride of the same man who would have killed your father, given time.” I pursed my lips and trained my eyes on the floor, determined not to let a single tear fall. “How did they do this to us, Mother?” I whispered, my vision blurring as the tears culminated and spilled nonetheless. “How did they rip the entire kingdom out from under our feet?”

I dared to look into her face for the answer, even though I was ashamed to have been crying. The gods knew it was not a common sight to behold, and so did she, as she seemed to go still and to harden as the gleam along my cheek caught the light.

“We would have taken it back immediately,” she whispered. She too swallowed, and I realized that the sight of my tears had weakened her own resolve to not cry. “But they have discovered the astrolabe, Theon. They have discovered the astrolabe… and they know how to use it.” She pursed her lips and broke eye contact. “They know how to plunge The Hearthlands into eternal winter, and it’s not only that.”

“My gods, Mother. What could be worse than that?”

“They have reassembled the very cosmos.”

“The cosmos?”

“The stars, Theon, and the gods. The gods have been set against us.”