My words gave the harpy pause, though her glare did not relent.
“I am well-fed,” she eventually admitted. “I have no need of your meat. But my children—they will not eat.” Her eyes strayed from mine to the fledglings. “They cannot see. They will not eat. One could not breathe and died. And they will never fly. But this is the plight of the harpy. It’s none of your concern, woman.”
Of course. A breed solely comprised of females. They couldn’t reproduce. Not naturally.
“There is nothing to be done,” she added.
“What’s your name?” I asked her. Perhaps she had endeared herself to me after her attempt to feed her dying offspring, ill-gotten by the seed of mismatched men. Maybe she had tried to mate with a gnome, or a troll, or something.
“My name is Parnassia. Parnassia Thundercliff.”
I frowned at her mention of a last name, a lineage. “If you’re a Thundercliff, and your sister is a Thundercliff—”
“It is the name we share with all our sisters who make use of this shore,” Parnassia spat. She was certainly a temperamental thing. “I have no father, no mother.” Her face twisted with bitterness. “I was crafted as a harbinger. A demon creature.” She gazed away from me—out toward the tumultuous black Atlantic. “We were never meant to bear young. Not like the mortal creatures do. Some wish they could live forever, but all things have a price.”
Stranger things.
“What if…” I swallowed, considering my next words. In my heart, I believed that I was infertile, but even if I wasn’t, this harpy could never follow me throughout my life, ensuring that I kept my promise—could she?
Not like the mortal creatures do.
She probably could follow me throughout my life and ensure that I kept my promise. But I would cross that bridge when I came to it… if that bridge even existed. For now, I saw the route ahead.
“What if I could promise you my own young?”
“What?” the harpy hissed.
“My own young,” I repeated. “I am the mate of Theon, fire dragon. Our children will be winged. My firstborn… male or female… is yours to take. No one needs to know. It would be an accident. Just an accident. You could cross the barrier between the worlds in the dead of night and steal it from its crib.” The words hurt to say, knowing how unlikely they were, what a horrible fate if I did manage somehow to conceive. But I would need to consider all these things later. Right now, there was only one task in front of me: return to The Hearthlands. And then I would uncomplicate the mess of my life I had made back on Earth.
I took a deep breath and spoke again. “Take my firstborn, Parnassia. And raise it as your own.”
Theon
The ogres’ beach was dark, lit only by the glow of our torches. The sea rolled in all around us, the sky was eerily quiet. To an outsider it would seem peaceful, a vacation for the lot of us. But this was not the case.
We had been forced to congregate on this beautiful beach, as our homeland was unlivable… all because I had foolishly trusted a woman alongside whom I had briefly fought. I couldn’t forget my rage with her; I could hardly understand her reasoning in doing such a thing. My mood was as dark and icy as The Hearthlands had become. “Everwinter,” the ice dragons had christened it. Everwinter.
And my father, King Erisard, had been publically beheaded only days ago. The knowledge hummed through my body, a great vacancy felt to the tips of my fingers. My brother, Altair, was certainly dead as well. He had been unaccounted for since last month. I had witnessed death in a way I had never experienced before this bloody battle began; I had seen my friends ripped apart before my very eyes. Khem. A member of my court and machinist to our people. I had seen him gutted and thrashed.
And I had dragged my loving wife, Nell, back to Beggar’s Hole, through the portal in the snowy banks of Everwinter, all to rescue her from the fate she might suffer. But she had promised me that she would hate me in return. Hate me forever.
Dark waves rolled in. It reminded me of the ocean along Beggar’s Hole, although this sea was warm and only given contour by the ribbons of white foam at the head of the waves.
Somehow, stupidly, I felt as if Nell and I were still connected by the black waters, even if it wasn’t possible. We were under two entirely different sets of stars.
What a disturbing realization.
“Theon!” A male voice broke through my thoughts, drawing me from the crashing ocean. Charis, a fellow fire dragon and my senior, approached at a lope across the sand. “The hunt was most successful. It looks like we’ll be fed another fortnight.”
Charis in his dragon form, although blind in one eye, continued to hunt with the pack, and the ogre they had secured was being quartered and skinned in the distance. I grimaced, even though I was relieved to know that our resources weren’t entirely depleted following the destruction of our shelter. I just couldn’t be happy. Nothing could make me happy anymore. For all intents and purposes, my grimace had become my smile.
“I wish you’d come with us,” Charis said, seeming to sense my melancholy. Who couldn’t? “Perhaps that would have… helped.”
“Perhaps.” I knew the truth, though it didn’t help anyone to say it aloud. They all knew. The only thing that would help would be to reclaim The Hearthlands as my own. Only then, with my rightful kingdom beneath my feet and my bride at my side, swollen with young—the heirs to the Aena dynasty—would I ever be happy again.
Nell
Parnassia moved closer to me, regarding my body with shrewd eyes. Behind her, the young continued to languish. “If my sisters knew, they would certainly steal the child. Or kill me for my weakness.”
“They’ll never know,” I rushed to say, even though I had no way of knowing that. “You can say that you stole it. You can say that you had it yourself.”
Parnassia considered. “My sisters will not like that I struck a deal with Theon’s mate. The same Theon who broke Astrid’s wing.”
“They’ll never know!” I cried again, beginning to lose my patience. How long did we have until another harpy approached this nest? “Take me. Forget your sisters. You have lived your entire life without a child. Constructing nests for eggs that would never hatch, nests for eggs that were filled with… accidents. Mistakes. Don’t you deserve something of your very own?”
Parnassia’s eyes gleamed. I had found her Achilles’ heel: selfishness. Perhaps that was the reason that a harpy would want a child: a thing she could mold and control and never give away. It had nothing to do with love.
“Let us go, mortal,” she cawed, flapping her wings and lifting into the air. “Before any of my sisters see.”
I raised my arms into the air to take her talons and hold them like hands, but she didn’t quite grasp the concept—or maybe she just ignored it. Her leathery digits seized my shoulders and lifted into the air with a powerful flap of her massive wingspan, carrying me through the dark and frigid sky, toward the rock island just a few miles offshore.
* * *
When she lowered me onto the black ring of rock, waves exploding along its outside, the harpy seemed eager to depart, like a companion at the close of a business meeting. She lowered me to the rocks, and asked no more questions, as if she needed no more answers. Did she not need to know where she could find me later? Did she not need to even know my name?
But the mottled brown harpy lifted into the air. Her portion of our deal was complete. I could only pray that my fruitless promise to the creature—some sort of deity? A demon, she had called herself—would never return to haunt me.
“Don’t forget,” Parnassia commanded me, tone clipped and cold. The severity of her eye contact and her willful mouth—filled with those spiny canines—were enough to assure me that Parnassia would never forget. “I will be watching you… Penelope O’Hara.”
I was speechless and filled with dread as the huge harpy glared at me.
I shuddered and shook the transaction from my head, turning my back on her. That couldn’t be
my primary concern right now. First, I had to get back to The Hearthlands, to Everwinter. And then, then I could explain to Theon what I’d done.
I peered down at the fluctuating, smoky substance which stretched from one metallic bolt to the next. It looked at first glance like a flat, cosmic jelly, some artist’s dreamy creation in the middle of nowhere… but I knew better.
I took a deep breath in anticipation of the claustrophobic sensation which would come from leaping through this portal, then let my feet leave the rocks.
A moment, a gasp, a squeezing sensation and disorienting corridor of absolute dark, and then I was thrust through the portal, onto my knees and into deep snow.
I shouldn’t have been surprised by the frosty bite of Everwinter. I bundled my arms around myself, springing out of the snow. At least it wasn’t snowing currently, and the sky above was pitch black. Perfect visibility, though. A traveler on the ground would be totally unobscured from any skyward dragons. A good thing, or a bad thing. Lethe had been crowned, so he was in control—or he had been last week. Was he still? And was there any love left in his heart for me? Any sympathy to soften his edicts?
Better to hope to pass into the city undetected. The last time I had seen Theon…
Well, the last time I had seen Theon, he had been deserting me on the beaches of Beggar’s Hole. I narrowed my eyes bitterly at the memory.
But the next to last time I had seen Theon, we had been staying at an inn on the edge of the city walls. I wondered if he was still there, or nearby. Probably not. But there was nowhere else to go, nothing else to do, but try. Just try.
From what I remembered of being snatched up and carried to the castle before, the portal and the kingdom were not a great distance from one another. Still, I was cold. I wanted to move quickly, and avoid the detection—
The rush of wind beneath pounding wings caused me to half-turn as a set of shiny black talons stretched to grasp my shoulders and lift me into the air. I cried out and thrashed, but this dragon—probably an ice dragon—was much too large to be very moved by my squirming and shouting. With his snout lifted away from me, his eyes peering ahead, the dragon carried me onward, toward the shadowy city beyond.
Everwinter.
It looked like my wish had been granted, and perhaps at a great expense. I had reentered the fray.
Nell
This time, no member of the Eraeus family came to inspect me. I was not given an elaborate guestroom in the royal wing. The guards took me to the dungeons below. I spouted the same pleas that a person with hope might utter, though I had none. The guards ignored me. I was slapped into manacles which dangled from the stone wall, near the first set of steps. Dear God, I knew my way around the dungeon now. And it didn’t look like I was getting the luxury of a cell this time, either.
Maybe this had been a bad idea.
Lethe will come, I told myself. I’d never just languished down here, not for any longer than a few hours. Someone would come. It wouldn’t be over. It was never over. Someone would come.
The shadows moved across the lit stones of the winding stairwell leading down here, and with each one, my breath jammed in my throat and I sat up a little straighter, anticipating aid. Lethe? A guard? Anyone?
“I see you over there, girl,” a male voice murmured from one of the cells. I peered into the shadows, but could see nothing. “Thinking somebody’s gonna come,” he added.
I stretched my neck, but couldn’t see.
“Who’s there?” I asked.
“Ha,” the voice barked. “Doesn’t matter now, does it?” A fair face came to the bars, the puddle of torchlight barely touching his features. He was familiar. I squinted at him. Where—where did I know him from?
Then I saw the tattoo of a fireball on the back of his hand. I remembered that tattoo. He’d been a prisoner in that same cell the last time I’d been here, too.
“If you can convince the guards to move you into one of these cells,” the young man whispered to me, “we can get you some water. There are several leaking pipes overhead.”
“Hey,” I said, my voice changing into something like a greeting. “I thought all the prisoners got released from here.”
“Yeah, well. You got out for a little bit too, didn’t you?” Although his tone seemed harsh, the light of the torch glinted off his teeth. He was smiling. “But now we’re back.”
“I’ve been gone for a week,” I told him. “What have I missed?”
“I can’t honestly say I’ve had the best view of the goings on in the city from here.”
A shadow moved over the stones of the winding stairwell corridor, leading down into the dungeon, and I held my tongue. Someone was coming, and I feared what a guard might do to us, finding us conversing. I pressed my back against the wall and tried to imagine that I was invisible. I had begun to think that it somehow helped.
“Well, well,” a familiar female voice, throaty and cultured, purred. My shoulders sagged. Dammit. Michelle. “You know, I’d heard some maids saying that a human had been brought to the dungeons, and I dared to hope, but I didn’t really think you’d be dumb enough to come back.”
* * *
There was no point in maintaining the old window dressing of this friendship, which had served us well in our adolescence but was now useless. After she’d spent the past few weeks covertly attempting to steal my boyfriend—my husband, now—and then betrayed our people in battle… there was no sugar strong enough to coat that kind of history. No “How are you holding up in the castle?” or “Oh my gosh, your dress is so… chic!” could remedy such sabotage. We. Were. Enemies.
“Speaking of humans in the castle,” I muttered, “what kind of gestation schedule do they have you on?”
“What?” Michelle snapped, eyes narrowing.
“I was sure that Lethe would have mentioned.” I wouldn’t have been surprised if he hadn’t mentioned the overbearing pressure to continue the lineage as soon as possible; he’d been so sensitive, it was hard to imagine that he’d procreate for political necessity—without prodding from his father. Then again, maybe I didn’t know Lethe at all. How could he want someone like Michelle? “How did you pull this off, anyway?”
“Oh, like you don’t know just how easy it is. The man switched fiancées like hats, didn’t he?” Michelle laughed. She pulled the diadem from her head and traced its shimmering spikes with her fingertip. “Lethe is so desperate for a woman’s touch, he’s practically human. And his father wasn’t even that racist about it. He said that any ice dragoness would have done the same thing.”
“Betray her people.”
“They were not my people, Nell!” Her fingers tightened around the crown. “I was never anything but an unwelcome tag-along! I was going to be sent back to Maine first thing. Back to everyone hoping that I would settle down with one of those preppy cokeheads getting their stupid business degrees. Can you imagine?” Thankfully, I really couldn’t. My parents had respected my individuality too much to push me toward the randoms from their social circle, like I was a breeding mare who had come of age and was ready to be trotted out for interested buyers. “Back to everyone expecting me to start pumping out children before I even knew what I wanted to do with my life. It’s prehistoric. It’s barbaric!”
“It’s exactly what you’re doing here. Look at yourself.” My eyes trailed over her with undisguised disgust. “What is the ice queen except just another Mrs. Ballinger, with an even bigger staff and even more property?”
Michelle shook her head and scoffed. “You’re just jealous.” She placed the crown back onto her head, slightly askew. She was shaken. What a rare sight to behold. “You would have happily been Lethe’s hand warmer, once upon a time.” She strode closer, pinching a strand of my hair, and then wrapping it around her index finger. “He told me.” She sighed, as if she was sad for me. “How you acted like his friend. Pretended to love him. And then just disappeared into a snowstorm one night. He needed a shoulder to cry on.”
“A
nd you were more than happy to provide it.”
“Oh, Nell.” Michelle shook her head and leaned into my ear, lowering her voice for only the two of us. “You gave up your shot at the crown for a man who was putting his tongue in my mouth every night we spent together.” Michelle leaned away and grinned at me, letting the hair unravel. “I’ll see if I can get a guard to move you into a cell, ’kay?”
With that, she turned and swept out of the room. I stared after her. It was sad how little she had, and how falsely she presented herself. Kind of… pathetic.
Nell
“So.” The voice of my fellow prisoner startled me back into the moment. “Friends with the ice queen, were we?”
“Once upon a time,” I replied, tearing my eyes from her retreating shadow.
“And you’re a human, too,” the man went on. “We don’t see many of your kind on this island. To be honest, you’re the first one I’ve ever met. Pleasure’s all mine, by the way. I’m Altair. Fire dragon, naturally.”
Altair… For some reason, the name sounded oddly familiar. I was sure that I’d heard it somewhere before. But so much had happened to me in the last few days, I couldn’t place it.
“And you couldn’t look at me and tell that I was human?”
Altair smiled. “Can you look at me and tell that I transform into a dragon?”
I raised one brow. “Guess not… except for your slightly pointed ears. I’m Nell. Penelope,” I said.
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