A Shade of Dragon 2 (5 page)

T
here 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.

W
hile 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—

“Can you light another fire in here?” Michelle asked, shattering my thoughts. “You have no idea how cold this is.” Her fox furs had been tightened around her body again as I’d been staring off into oblivion.

I grimaced and shook my head. “No, I can’t build another fire. The fire for Khem was already one fire too many. It was… foolish.”

But I’d had to do it. Perhaps I was a slave to tradition.

“Well, in that case… can you spare some of your big coat?” She was referring, I assumed, to the bearskin mantle draped over my shoulders. I supposed it did give sufficient warmth; besides, to share in the body heat of a fire dragon was no insignificant detail. It was like cuddling next to an open stove.

I opened my mantle and allowed her to share its warmth. “I wonder what time it is,” she grumbled.

“Deep night,” I answered her.

“So, like, two.”

“Midnight.”

“Let’s call it one-thirty. Do you think we’re safe enough to get some sleep?”

“I do not know that I could sleep,” I muttered.

“Well, then, will you just lie down with me until I fall asleep?” The desperation which gilded her voice gave me pause, and I looked closer. Her eyes were shiny with panic. Her makeup had worn away as the night had progressed, and now her lips seemed colorless and rough. Her mascara was smudged and flaked onto her cheekbones.

She looked like a different woman. The securities of her world had been stripped away, and as the new reality sank in—for the sake of weeping goddesses, had she not just seen a man in his final moments?—she had become more of an animal. People like Michelle, the privileged, the elite, of any society, became the most ruthless in such scenarios, my father had once told me.

“And you can get that stupid look off your face,” she added. “I’m not scared. I’m not all, like, ‘Ohhh, hold me, Theon’; it’s just that you’re crazy hot, and I’m cold, and I’m tired.”

“All right,” I told her. “I meant no disrespect… with my face.” Clearing my throat, I pulled her with me through the shop, our bodies connected in a halo of warmth by the bearskin mantle and my own natural heat. Meanwhile, I tried to shake the heavy specters of doubt. Altair… and my father… Nell… Khem… I felt them all twisting and shriveling away from me, becoming gray and weightless.

The back room of the place had a cot.

“Here we are,” I announced. “I will lie down. I know it must be uncomfortable… to be an Earth woman in these conditions.”

Michelle gave me a stormy look, but didn’t comment, and the two of us lowered gingerly onto the paper-thin mattress. “Oh, my God, these people live in total poverty,” she moaned.

“They have rich and prosperous lives. It is you who live in obscene wealth.”

“No more obscene than a castle, Theon!” she snapped. “Just… shut up.” Michelle wiggled closer to me, until our sides touched. “Can I put my head on your shoulder?” she asked. I glanced down at her and saw, in the darkness, how she nibbled her lower lip. “Please?”

“You don’t need to do that… with your face,” I told her, smirking slightly in spite of myself. “You can put your head on my shoulder. I know of our temperatures compared to yours.”

“Yep, that’s the reason,” she agreed, curling against me with the familiarity of a former lover. She threw one of her thighs over mine and laid her hand across my chest.

I had a lot on my mind. I couldn’t be distracted by the nonsensical patterns she was drawing on my chest.

“Sorry about your friend,” Michelle whispered, drawing my eyes back to her. “Really. I am.”

I hesitated, genuinely surprised. I summoned a smile, however unconvincing. I couldn’t think of what exactly to say. “Thank you.” There it was. The only thing one could say.

“I have to tell you that I admire your strength,” she went on. “I mean, this night has been hell for you, hasn’t it? I would be an utter wreck, if I was you.”

Grim tidings.

“Thank you again, I suppose,” I said. “But I was once told that an Earth man gained fame for the insight that war is hell.”

“I didn’t even mean that,” Michelle murmured.

I propped myself onto my elbow, stealing from Michelle her pillow shoulder, and looked at her. She blinked up at me, innocent. It was nigh impossible to differentiate between glimpses of her inner child and masterful manipulation.

“You meant Penelope, didn’t you?” I asked her.

“I did mean Penelope. I mean, I was there, Theon. I… saw it, too.”

It wasn’t the kind of sight one could soon forget; the throes of erotic passion, even between total strangers, could be hypnotic. But when it was your own lover, that same expression could become gut-wrenching…

“Maybe that’s why that oracle told you that she wasn’t the one for you,” Michelle went on softly. She was biting her plush lower lip again, her eyes disguised beneath a fringe of lashes. “I never would have done that to you.” Now her eyelashes flashed upward, and her eyes caught mine with a beseeching shimmer. She raised one hand in the air and snaked it along my shoulders, playing with the hair at the nape of my neck. It felt wrong, and my skin crawled, urging me to reject her touch.

But why? Why bother being fair, being noble? Was it not equivalent with being a joke to an Earth woman? My heart was flooded, and if there had been a fire on the hearth, it would have burnt this establishment to the ground.

“Theon.” Michelle had leaned closer. “It’s not too late. You can still be with the woman you were meant for.”

With the woman for whom you were meant, I opened my mouth to correct her, but Michelle slid her lips against my own, the gesture possessing an unexpected gentleness.

For a moment, I was torn. Where she touched went numb, became a pit. I did not want to be touched. I wanted to mourn my lost love, Penelope.

But, at the same time, the hell with Penelope.

One of my hands carved powerfully through Michelle’s thick curls, and the other clawed along her hip, dragging her on top of me. Her response was immediate, her body moving over mine with both fury and passion. Usually, such aggression would be wholly unsettling, but in this scenario, I found it paired well with my emotions. Like her, I was determined to ravage something, but unlike her, I felt completely cold.

I
had been manacled
against the dungeon wall for hours now. What time was it? No windows. No clocks. But it felt like sometime between two and four in the morning—the portion of the clock reserved for true despair.

I wanted to sleep, but I could not. The height of the manacles forced me to stay standing, or else slowly break my own shoulders. My arms went numb from the lack of blood flow. My wrists were rubbed raw by the drag of gravity alone. I hadn’t even been struggling. And my head spun with sickness. The human body wasn’t designed to endure such stress. I needed a drink, but no one had been down for hours, save an occasional glimpse of a guard in the changing of shifts. It was too late in the night for any of the other prisoners to be talking amongst themselves—I had been brought in while they slept. For many, the new girl would be a morning surprise.

Every now and then, a groan slipped unbidden from my lips.

“If you can convince the guards to move you into one of these cells,” a young man whispered to me, “we can get you some water. There are several leaking pipes overhead.”

My puffy eyes peeled open. I was so tired… and I needed a drink… and I had to pee, too.

“What?” I murmured.

It was the same man as before. The man with the tattooed hand: the fireball. “Convince a guard to place you in a cell. We will be able to get you water then. It shouldn’t be too hard. They don’t like when you spit on them. That should get you a cell right quick.”

“Thank you.” I swallowed. “What did you say your name was?”

“Didn’t say,” he replied.

The sound of a door clapping shut nearby brought us both into tense silence. Our eyes fell to the left corner of the room, where guards would enter. Was it shift change again so soon?

A shadow moved across the wall, and Lethe stepped into the torchlight.

My heart gave a strange little flutter of gratitude. Lethe’s eyes met mine… and warmed, darkening.

“Penelope,” he greeted, stepping closer. “I thought they would give you a cell.”

“The cells are too crowded,” I grumbled, turning my eyes from him. I was so tired. “Did you—” My voice caught in my throat. “Did you capture Theon?” My heart solidified to stone at the thought. Theon hadn’t been brought here, into the prison. Which meant… if they had overtaken him in battle, he was probably…

“We were able to wound, capture, and even annihilate some of his men,” Lethe answered, becoming cold. “But no. We did not capture Theon himself. He—and a beautiful young woman, reportedly—escaped together into the streets.” His eyelashes lowered, and a nasty little smile spread over his lips.

I said nothing to this. I didn’t want him to know how the news both elated and disappointed me. Theon was safe. He had escaped. And apparently, now he was alone with Michelle.

I wondered what they were doing. Had she already pulled her more obvious material? Getting drunk, getting flirty? Had she moved on to the more advanced stuff? The pouting? The lip-nibbling? Would they sleep side by side? In the same bed?

“I talked to my father,” Lethe volunteered.

At this, I perked. “And what did he say?” What did you say?

“He told me again that this is a pivotal moment in my story.” Lethe’s eyes refused to meet mine. “We have just seized the castle again. It was the life’s work of my grandfather, and it has become my and my father’s life’s work. He always questions my strength.” His face soured as he went on. “We must show unwavering leadership, he said. He would prefer that I marry as soon as possible to solidify my position here. There are two things he commands that I do prior to assuming the throne: marry… and execute Theon.”

My blood ran cold. Execute Theon.

“Perhaps I could convince him to let me execute Erisard instead,” Lethe suggested.

“Who is Erisard?”

“The fire king. Theon’s father.”

My jaw went slack. “Lethe…”

But Lethe looked to me with flashing eyes, as if he knew that it was horrible. “I suppose you think that I’m bloodthirsty and power-starved, like the other ice people,” he muttered. “I suppose you think that I kill often, and easily.”

I shook my head, mute.

“The truth is that I’ve never killed a man in my life.” Lethe’s gaze was distant and unfathomable. It reminded me, briefly, of those starry gates: the portals to and from Theon’s world. “And that it saddens me to know my father’s prejudice will undoubtedly play a pivotal role in the selection of my mate.” His eyes shifted to mine. “And I’m sorry for that. Because ice women…”

Lethe let his words hang, staring off as he ruminated on the subject.

“Ice women are cold. They’re ruthless, and powerful, and they can be sexy. They can be very sexy. But…” He shook his head, still not looking at me. “There’s no softness. There’s no warmth. There’s no trust.” Now his eyes shifted to mine. “I didn’t put you down here because I was angry,” he blurted.

“Are you sure about that?”

“I put you down here to keep myself away from you.” His eyes… How were they so deep and dark now, but so bright when he was mad? Now that blue had become almost blue-black, like the enfolding waves of the sea at night… “If I will never be able to have you—then I must stay away from you.” Even as he said this, his attention poured over me. “For the sake of my kingdom.”

He tore his lustful gaze from my body, and his back stiffened. His gaze hardened.

“He once told me that I would be required to kill, and that I did not understand the severity of that… But I have already died a thousand times for my birthright. I’m much stronger than my father thinks,” he went on, though he seemed to be speaking more to himself now. “He has no idea what I am capable of. Then again…” His gaze slanted to me and his body turned, closing the space between us, pressing our torsos and hips against one another. “No one does,” he finished, his hands sliding up my arms and onto my chains. His lips descended to kiss me fully on the mouth.

Even against my own wishes, my body responded to a shocking degree. Was it the trauma and despair which made me so emotionally vulnerable? Stability and security were like water to me, and without them, I was thirsty for even the wayward affection of a mad prince.

His hands trailed up my arms as his tongue played over mine, and when his fingertips reached my manacles, they became slowly encrusted in frost. As we kissed, and his excitement became increasingly obvious, I even hoped that he might still relieve me of my chains.

But as he pulled away, his blue eyes trained on me, I knew such was not the case. His expression was one of deep remorse. “This is why you must stay where I cannot see you,” he whispered into my ear, before grazing it with his teeth and receding from me, leaving me manacled by frozen chains.

He had reached the stairs when he turned and added, “But I will ensure you receive your own cell, at the very least, my lady.”