A Shade of Dragon 2 (15 page)

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 into 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.

I realized with a thrum of compassion that she was on the verge of tears.

“I am fine,” I promised her. And in a way, it was true. Because it had only taken a split second to make the decision, and now that the threshold had been crossed, I felt lighter. I no longer felt doomed. She was the key. I only needed to keep her in a safe place. “I have been ruminating on the strategic movements ahead of us, and realized that there is one paramount gesture I must make, and it cannot wait until the morning.”

“Can I come with you?” she asked, after considering her words for a moment.

“I cannot go without you,” I said.

After the hot bath, my muscles were at least loose enough for the necessary transformation. I packed my leather satchel with a change of clothing and requested that Penelope place it around my neck afterward. I explained to her that while taking flight in the city was dangerous, it was unlikely that they would recognize me—or even be at high alert, it seemed as of late—in the nighttime hours. “Even if they do, it doesn’t matter. All that matters is completing this mission. Once this is done… we can be certain of our victory, love.”

Nell watched me, as if she knew that something was amiss. “What is this mission?”

“I have to deliver a precious item to a safe location. Don’t worry. It will not take long. The most difficult part will be exiting the city undetected, and even then, we are on the outskirts as it is, very near to the wall. You don’t need to worry about anything.” I smiled at her and felt weightless, freed from an anxiety which had haunted me from the moment Lethe had stolen her at that portal on the rock island off the coast of Maine. “Everything is going to be fine.”

A
s we soared
through the Everwinter night, Penelope clinging to my neck, I did not let myself think of the coming days, weeks, months. I was resolute, and my hand was steady. My wings beat the wind and carried us toward the portal, though Nell had no hope of recognizing the path. Too much time had passed since she last traveled through it, and as traumatized as she’d doubtlessly been, I wouldn’t be surprised if she had blocked out huge portions of the venture. In any case, the countryside was as monotonous as the surface of a pearlescent ocean now.

With the exception of the portal, which remained a smoky and iridescent triangle, even in this bleak weather. It was not blanketed in snow. It ate the snow.

As we descended toward the gate, Nell hunkered down into my ear and hollered, “Are we taking something to Earth for safekeeping?”

I pretended not to hear her. It would be easier this way.

“Theon, what—what are we taking?” she asked, louder now, and I heard the edge of panic in her voice. But I still did not respond. I didn’t want her to start fighting while we were still in the air, and hoped she would chalk my silence up to wind resistance pulling her voice away from my ear. “What are we taking?” she cried again.

But I dove through the portal without answering her, and she had no choice but to cling to my neck or plummet to the ground below.

S
he still held
out hope for the unlikely—that it was some item in the satchel which needed safeguarding, coincidentally, on her home planet—as we flew over the dark Atlantic Ocean and landed on the beach where her father’s home was located.

But when she dumped herself from my shoulders and whirled to face me in the bitter January winds, it was with a horror in her eyes. “Theon!”

There was so much I wanted to say to her… but I thought it best if we waited to get some space from this moment. I could write her later. She would see me later. I would not allow myself to die without coming to her side again. But until our emotions subsided, I thought it best that I remain in dragon form. I did not want to be approachable. I did not want to be human. I couldn’t bear the thought of her hands grabbing my arm, of her desperate fingers finding their way to my cheeks. I couldn’t do it.

It would be better like this.

And even without transforming, it was too much.

Tears budded and spilled in her eyes, and I turned from her, unable to keep looking.

“You said a man who would not believe in his wife was weak!” she bellowed after me.

I glanced over my shoulder at her; she was advancing on me with violent intent prickling in her aura. Her pain had mutated into rage.

“You said you could not fight without me!”

I was right. It was better this way. It was better if I did not resemble a man just now. I would be tempted to stay and explain to her that she was right. I had become weak… and I couldn’t take another loss. I was breaking down even at the thought of being separated from her by this portal, so what would become of me if we were separated by the veil between worlds? She was right; I was weak. I was selfish. I was faithless. Cowardly. Manipulative. Opportunistic. All those things.

“And I said that if you did this to me, I would hate you! Forever!”

Still, the words reached my ears, and with them came a thousand arrows of ice. I grimaced and hung my head; she was right. She was right. I had lost the war before I’d even begun to fight. Flapping my wings, I took to the sky and ignored her shrieks falling away in the distance.

I had to.

I had to.

I did not look back.

I
t took
me several minutes of trembling to accept the fact that Theon was not turning around. He had not made a mistake. He’d abandoned me in Beggar’s Hole. And I had no idea when, or even if, I would ever see him again.

I shuffled up the beach to Dad’s stupid beach house, loathing its singular light—the bedroom—as if it was his fault that I was back here. I supposed hating my dad was familiar, and hating Theon was so foreign and uncomfortable. But how could he?
How could he?

I ascended the wooden staircase to the front porch, then took a deep breath and knocked on the door. If I wasn’t freezing cold and without my wallet, I probably wouldn’t have, but there was nowhere else to go.

It was just going to be so much to deal with all at once.

The door came open and Dad was there; his face crumpled with relief as he collected me into his arms, and I summoned the will to return his embrace. His fiancée and her son were there, too, but I couldn’t be bothered to remember either of their names at the moment.

I was dragged inside and there was so much light and noise; how I hated this place. And Theon had just dumped me here, like an unwanted dog alongside the highway. They draped me in quilts and demanded to know where I had been, why, who, how, blah, blah, and Michelle, and the police, and Mom would need to be called too… Dad went to the phone and dialed… I didn’t have the strength to stop him. The fiancée checked my pupils and suggested that I was “on something.” Her son asked if I’d been abducted.

I’d told Theon that I would hate him forever if he did this to me, and he’d done it anyway.

My heart felt like a canyon in an earthquake.

Someone deduced that the hospital was where I needed to go. Dad got on the phone with my mom. My mom was on her way, he said. She’d been in Beggar’s Hole since January second, he said. I didn’t ask what day it was. I didn’t care. It didn’t matter. Streetlights washed by in the window as we drove to the hospital; the glass vibrated against my temple. I wanted to sleep for a million years.

The police were at the hospital. They wanted to talk to me. They asked me if Michelle had been with me. I shook my head. They asked if I’d been with this young man—witnesses called him “Theon,” and attested that he was my date on the night of my and Michelle Ballinger’s disappearances. Did I know him?

“No,” I answered flatly.

I didn’t know anyone by the name of Theon, bearing that description?

“No,” I said again.

They wanted to keep me overnight for observation. Mom freaked out; I didn’t care. I stayed. Whatever. They sent me home the next day with a prescription for mood stabilizers.

M
om tried
to convince me for days to return with her to DC. I wouldn’t go. I didn’t know what else I could tell her; I didn’t want to leave the portal, the cave, the beach where I had met Theon… even though I hated him. Even though I hated him, I couldn’t bear to leave this place, like a widow condemned to her widow’s walk for every month that her husband was out at sea.

“Stay as long as you need,” Dad said.

Mom fumed. She said she would stay in Beggar’s Hole too, then. She would stay in the hotel until I was ready to go home.

I was “just in shock,” she said.

Just in shock.

Yeah.

I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I stayed up at night and sat in the window seat, gazing out across the strip of beach which seemed a memento from another lifetime. Yet here I was, back again. Reporters called. Mr. Ballinger’s lawyer called and threatened the answering machine with legal action. I wondered where I could get a waverunner. I wondered, if I could rent a boat, how hard it would be to sail it, realistically.

That was when the tsunami hit.

I’d been numb for days, and this atomic bomb of self-pity swelled in my chest and burst, allowing me to finally wail with tears. I couldn’t even make it to my bed to sob into a pillow; I got halfway across the room and crumpled onto the carpet. I sobbed for the hopelessness of my situation. It was no longer under my control whether I ever saw my husband again. Theon was my husband! And he had abandoned me in another world! With no means of contact! Without a word, he had stranded me here, subject to the battery of questions and theories and pleas and judgments. I couldn’t take it. How could he?

I sobbed with bitterness and rage and loss and heartbreak, because dammit, I still loved him. In spite of everything I’d said… I missed his warm, even golden eyes. I missed his steady baritone and his kindness, his logic, his firmness, his fairness.

How could he?

When I roused myself from the marathon of weeping, my eyelids were swollen and my face was sopping wet, but I felt… better. I did feel better. I just needed some answers. I needed to think. Think. How could I get back to Theon?

Because damn it, if he wasn’t going to come back for me, then I was going to go to him. Maybe he didn’t believe that we were truly two halves of the same whole, but I did, and I couldn’t live without my other half.

I was googling astral projection when I gasped to myself and dropped the phone.

An oracle.

He had said that he’d consulted with an oracle before leaving for The Hearthlands again.

An oracle in the cave.

I
had
to wait for nightfall; the entire house watched me with hawkish vigilance. But when the time was right and the house was asleep, I pulled a sweater over my head and a jacket across my shoulders and pilfered a flashlight from the catch-all drawer in the kitchen. It was the first day I had been able to act like everything might be okay—because I had realized that maybe everything would be.

I slid out onto the beach and down towards the cave. The tide was out, and I crept inside with a cavalier regard for the suicidal vigor it would require to go spelunking at night. But love had a way of making you suicidal from time to time.

I walked through the cave—over the formations, up the shelf, through the domed room, down a corridor, and into a wide area of many pools—until I reached the teal-colored, luminescent cavern of the Oracle.

As soon as I entered the room, the top of her head appeared in a puddle, creating a halo of bioluminescent ripples. She emerged and spread her spindly arms across the cavern floor as if lounging in a hot tub; partially submerged in the puddle, she was nude and golden. Small breasts. Long fingers. No eyes.

I knew you’d come,
she cooed directly into my brain.
Young love has a way of twisting even the brightest minds into pretzels.

“I need your help,” I blurted. I had lost all traces of a bedside manner after Theon had dumped me here like garbage.

But do you want it? Even if it hurts?

“Of course,” I insisted.

The Oracle laughed in my head, an echoing, maddening sound.

“Stop!” I cried, pinning my hands to my ears. “Yes, I want your help!”

Even if I must tell you something you hate to hear? Even if I make your little monkey hands claw at your little monkey ears?

“Yes,” I hissed.

Go home,
the Oracle purred. Though she had no eyes, her lips spread into a syrupy smile.
Forget Theon Aena.

“That’s not an option for me,” I informed her hotly. “He’s my husband.”

All short-sighted fools see the error of their ways, sooner or later. Theon is no different. The fire dragons have a very specific need for women, Penelope O’Hara. Let’s not be coy now.

“What the hell are you trying to tell me?” I demanded, losing my patience.

The fates sing every song that has ever been sung and will ever be sung, my darling would-be queen. Did you think that your body could escape the thread of their designs? Come closer, Penelope O’Hara, mortal lover of the fool prince. Come closer, and let me touch you.

I obeyed her, lowering to my knees at her pool, and I shuddered as her clammy fingertips suctioned themselves to my lower abdomen.

Yes, yes
, she cooed inside my head.
I’m afraid it is so. Where many women bear flowers which bloom, yours yields infertile sands.

The words circulated meaninglessly in my head, refusing to settle.

“What?” I whispered.

Your eggs are half-count and spoiled, would-be queen. I have told the fool prince all of this before—that he will not find in you what he seeks. But if I must, I will tell you, too. One day, one night, one of you is bound to accept it.

“Accept that I’m… what? Barren?” One of my hands moved to my abdomen, and the Oracle’s creepy fingers popped off of my skin.

Accept the law of the stars,
the strange creature replied, dipping down into the puddle again. She submerged and vanished, but her voice continued to echo in my head.
Accept that the fool prince—your so-called husband—is destined to continue the Aena dynasty. But his children will be born from the womb of the Everwinter ice queen.

D
earest Shaddict
,

Here are two awesome new releases for you to mark in your calendar!:

Ben and River's journey will continue in
A Shade of Vampire 22: A Fork of Paths
!

A Fork of Paths
releases
January 22nd 2016
.

Tap here to pre-order your copy now.

And here’s a preview of the gorgeous, wintry cover (you may need to turn to the next page for it to be visible):

The FINAL book in Nell and Theon’s trilogy,
A Shade of Dragon 3
, releases
February 5th 2016
!

Tap here to pre-order your copy now.

Here’s a preview of the smoking cover (again, you may need to turn to the next page for it to be visible):

I will see you very soon!

Thank you for reading.

Love,

Bella xxx

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