I winced and glanced at Lethe, torn between hoping he would stand up for himself—and me—and hoping that he would not, for fear of even worse retribution from this hellish queen.
But one look at Lethe, and I knew where this was going. He sighed and his eyebrows lowered like a dog caught in the act of destroying the house. He didn’t even look at me. “Yes, my love,” he agreed. “I think that would be a wonderful place for her.”
Theon
The journey to the castle, even by sky, was still of considerable length. I wasn’t sure how much time had passed when Parnassia finally arrived at the gates. I stayed hunkered down within a fur, praying that her bag would not be searched. “Halt,” a gruff voice called out, then paused. “Harpy?”
“What do you think?” Parnassia snapped. “I’m either a harpy, or a small, feathered dragon. Or a large, feathered human with wings and claws. Do you know nothing of your own cosmology, you fools? No wonder you are guardsmen.”
Parnassia, I chastised her silently. We’re trying to get into the castle, not murdered at its gate.
“And what business do you have in the castle?” the muffled voice demanded.
“Why don’t you ask your master, Lethe Eraeus? He will remember. We have made a deal. I have come to discuss its terms. I was very useful to him during a time when his power was not so great, and still quite precarious. He would not forget an instrument so useful as Parnassia Thundercliff.”
The guards murmured together, considering. “You may pass,” the gruff voice announced. “We will show you to the throne room, where King Lethe will receive you in a few moments.”
“Marvelous,” Parnassia said, and we began to move again.
A few minutes later, we settled, the guard commanded that we stay in the room and await further instruction from the king, and then all went quiet. A distant door closed, and Parnassia dumped me off her back.
“My gods, you are heavy,” she snarled, stretching her neck and shaking her head. “What are you made of, bricks?”
“Something like that,” I muttered, stepping out of the bag and slinging it over my shoulder. I slipped to the side of the room, where plants, tapestries, and suits of armor were lined up. “I’ll find you soon if I’m successful… or if I’m not,” I amended. “And if I don’t find you, well, then I was very, very unsuccessful.”
“Where are you going?” she asked, cocking her head to the side.
“Off to find the astrolabe which once made The Hearthlands so great. And then? If I live? To search the city for my wife.”
I hunkered down at the exit of the throne room and ducked out into the hallway, glancing right and left. The corridor was empty, and I took the moment to pause and scrawl a message onto the yellowed papyrus of the oracle’s love letter.
Nell—wife, I wrote, I have infiltrated the Hearthlands castle with help from an unexpected ally. I am very near to you now, and I will find you, if you do not find me first. I hesitated, but as the words were fading from the parchment, I added one final postscript. Please forgive me for what I have done. It was only because I could not bear to lose you, even if it made me a coward in doing so. I could not bear to lose you then, and I cannot bear to lose you now. Forgive me, my love.
Nell
I was scrubbing the basin of a dark, slimy substance at which I refused to look too closely, thinking about Theon, thinking about the war, thinking about how to get out of this washroom, away from the steaming, spraying faucet and this rank filth. I had known that coming here would thrust me back into the fray, but I hadn’t quite known that the fray would include… this. Knowing Michelle, I should have anticipated that absolute power would be ugliest on her. On the other hand—I was not completely powerless. If I could just get word to the fire dragons that the stars remained on their side, or if I could make off into the night with the astrolabe again… but that wouldn’t work. Not twice. Security was bound to be tripled now.
In the misty washroom mirror, words traced themselves onto the glass as if by some invisible fingertip.
Nell—wife.
My heart quickened. Oh my God! Was Theon near? Or was he seeking to contact me, not knowing that I was already here? In an instant, in a flash, my anger at being deserted on the beach at Beggar’s Hole drained away, and a desperate, clawing need twisted in my gut and up into my lungs. I wished, how I wished, I could respond.
I have infiltrated the Hearthlands castle…
My hands experienced a spasm of shock and joy, causing me to drop the now clean basin which shattered on the tile floor at my feet. I gasped and looked down, too elated to even curse myself for the clumsiness. My eyes shot back to the mirror.
… with help from an unexpected ally, was in the process of evaporating from the mirror. My brow knit as I wondered who had dared bring the rival prince—the future king of the former dynasty—into this palace, knowing the risks.
I am very near to you now, and I will find you, if you do not find me first.
I grinned. I doubted that he had any idea just how true those words were. They evaporated with the mist of the steaming faucet, and I thought that the message was complete, when one final addendum came, halting and yet forceful.
Please forgive me for what I have done. It was only because I could not bear to lose you, even if it made me a coward in doing so. I could not bear to lose you then, and I cannot bear to lose you now…
My heart swelled with love and understanding. It was almost physically uncomfortable, how much I loved him, as if I was ballooning into something which no longer fit the shell of my body. As if I, too, was shifting into a new, beautiful, amazing creature. The wife of Theon Aena.
Forgive me, my love.
I racked my brain for where Theon would possibly go, if he had arrived in the castle. I doubted there was any way that he knew I was here. He would never confide in my masters and tormentors, the Eraeus clan, which meant that he’d be uninformed. No one else knew I was here, save the gentleman in the dungeon, the one with the fireball tattoo on the back of his hand. Altair.
If Theon was here, having no idea that I was also here, where would he go first?
Obviously, the first place I, too, had thought to go as an ally of the fire people: to the astrolabe. Their most certain defense. And if I was caught along the way, I could just say that… say that… I had dropped the basin. And I needed help cleaning it up. It wasn’t like I had been given a broom and a dust pan, after all. Not to clean bed pans.
I rushed through the corridors of the palace, toward the western tower where the astrolabe was kept, a watchful eye on every tapestry, every alcove, every mounted shield, when…
“Nell?”
I would recognize that voice anywhere.
It came from behind an arrangement of ferns, clustered in a corner around a marble pillar. I whirled and there he was. Theon. It felt like a dream. He had been crouched down, but when he saw me, he straightened his knees and rose over six feet into the air. His amber eyes glowed warmly from the shadows, touching on me like sentient flame, and a breathless half-smile graced his lips. I went flying into his arms with no regard for the possibility of a witness, no regard for the endangerment to both our lives—my heart exploded, tears stung my eyes, and I buried my face into his neck, relishing the familiar blast of heat which always buffeted off of his body and onto mine when we embraced.
“Theon,” I choked. My fingers tangled in his locks and I felt his lips move over my hair, against my neck, across my face, onto my lips. The heat was incredible as it moved over and swallowed me like a sandstorm, like a tornado.
“What are you doing here?” When he finally pulled away from me, I saw how wide his eyes were, how shocked. “We can’t—not here,” he added, and I knew it was true. He pulled me into one of the shadowy alcoves, behind a drapery of burgundy and gold. “Nell, I’m so sorry for what I did,” he said. “I was just so scared to lose you. After my father… I couldn’t stand to lose someone else.”
“Shh,” I pleaded,
and brought his lips to mine, knowing that it was all we needed to bring order back into the universe. The world might as well have imploded right there, both Earth and The Hearthlands, for all that it mattered. A million guards could have surrounded us and I wouldn’t have known it; time stopped. Fire raged through each of my nerve endings as his fingers clutched at the small of my back, bringing the fabric of my servant’s skirt off the ground, bound in his hand. I was going to die. If making love to him didn’t kill me, the desperation to do so would. “Theon,” I breathed, “I’m sorry too. I said so many things I did not mean. But all I wanted was you. All I wanted was to be here with you, no matter what might happen.”
“I know,” he said into my ear. “I know.”
The echo of a door clapping shut further down the hall brought us both to a tense silence. Theon clutched me, shielding my body with his own, and neither of us dared look out into the hall. Even that minute movement, the shifting of the whites of our eyes, might attract the attention of a guard. Instead we stood stiff, all the confidence of our passion drained in an instant, clutching each other not like a queen and a king but like slaves on the verge of a fearful lashing.
The clanking of footsteps came nearer.
Nearer.
Neither of us moved. I held my breath, and Theon’s chest was still, though his heart throbbed beneath my hands like the bass in a techno song.
The clanking reached a crescendo, and I dared to allow my eyes to move to the side, just barely, to witness two shadows milling past. Watchmen on their rounds. They did not approach with any urgency, and in fact their body language spoke of boredom as they milled past us, clanking.
We both sagged into each other and exhaled as they receded further down the hall, away from us. It would likely be several minutes until they passed again.
Theon’s lips grazed my forehead, and then he pulled away enough to peer down at me. I looked up at him, and he said, “Did you…” His thick brows knit over his eyes, and he hesitated for a moment, and then forged ahead. “Did you make some sort of barter with the harpy, Parnassia?”
My mouth fell open in a mixture of emotions: heartbreak, remorse, surprise, despair, and even, in part, a little piece of me searched for a decent lie to tell him. I couldn’t bear to tell him the truth. I hadn’t just made any old deal with Parnassia. And if he had met Parnassia—if he somehow knew that I had made a deal with her—
“Theon,” I said. It was all I could say. I think my eyes said the rest.
He pursed his lips and broke eye contact.
“Look at me,” I whispered.
“I can’t,” he replied, and a schism tore down the center of my heart.
“You don’t understand…” But then tears crusted over my eyes, because the truth was even worse than what he might have assumed. “What did she tell you?”
“She didn’t tell me anything.” But the disappointment, the dark caramel of his eyes, said otherwise. He knew something. “But she implied that you… that you might have… bartered our children with her.”
“Listen to me,” I said, placing my thumb against his lower lip as if that tiny gesture could hold this moment still, could crystallize us before I had the chance to ruin everything. And just when we were finally back together, standing at the precipice of all we’d ever wanted. “It’s not the whole story, Theon. I didn’t talk to Parnassia first. First, I talked to Pythia.”
“Pythia?” Theon hissed. “Why—what—”
“You left me in Beggar’s Hole after you promised that you wouldn’t,” I reminded him in a low, steely voice. “I had to talk to someone who would understand. Do you know what it’s like for me in my world right now? No one believed me. Michelle was still missing. Everyone thought that I was crazy. And being abandoned by my husband so that he could return to war without me didn’t exactly make me sane.”
Theon took a deep breath and closed his eyes, bowing his head. “Okay. Why are you telling me this? What did Pythia say?”
“The reason we are not meant to be,” I whispered bleakly. “She told me.”
“Don’t listen to that—she’s mad, you know—”
“She told me that I couldn’t have children,” I blurted. I had to let it out in a rush. It was the only way to bear it. “And I had it confirmed myself, by someone who I doubt is mad.” I forced myself to raise my eyes to his, and to keep my jaw firm, to keep my lips from trembling. “A physician.”
Theon stared at me for a moment, unmoving, frozen.
And then, in an instant, he was animate again. Too animate.
“I was going to the astrolabe,” he informed me, eyes alight with false hope. It broke my heart to see. “It sets the stars. It can remedy the war. It can remedy you, too.” He touched my lower abdomen, as if he could heal my womb by touch.
“But… Theon,” I said, “I am not a fire dragon. I am not a part of this world, except that you have brought me here. I don’t believe that the gods of your stars hold sway over my body. They did not forge me. I’m—”
The heavy echo of a door closing brought us to silence again, and again Theon clutched me to his chest and the two of us went utterly still. Clank, clank, clank, clank. The two guards shuffled along the corridor—our silhouettes must have been hidden by the light pattern on the tapestry… and an inattentive eye. They had walked these corridors too many times with no disturbance, no trespassers. Their eyes had glazed.
Clank, clank, clank.
The sound of their footsteps faded into the distance, and our bodies relaxed into each other. I exhaled and lifted my eyes back to him, unable to move on from this conversation before I said my piece, for whatever it meant.
“Theon…” I whispered, gripping his shirt in my fingers. I couldn’t imagine losing him. I loved him from the texture of his fingertips and the smell of his neck to the softness of his voice and the way I could never really fault him for any decision he made, even his mistakes. Dammit. I loved him. I was his wife… “Maybe there’s some other answer?” I bit my lip and blinked up at him. “I mean, I know that everyone says we’re supposed to have children. But everyone says a lot of things. Everyone says that you should be with a dragoness, and not with a human. Everyone says that I belong in my own world, and not here. But that is just what other people think. They can’t…” I remembered then, in a startling flash, my conversation with Lethe. It applied here as easily as there.
“Stop waiting for other people to ask you what you want. You don’t live in a world where that will happen. You live in a world where people will tell you what you want, and if you don’t fight, you’ll end up living their life—the life they’ve assigned you—not your own.… Because no one is ever going to ask you. You have to tell them.”
“They can’t decide our path,” I finished. “They can plan it, but our path is up to us… and the gods,” I added for Theon’s sake. “We take what we’ve been given, and we forge what our hearts need in order to survive.”
“But—” Theon was clearly frustrated by this mentality of self-determination over predestination. It had never been taught to him; that much was obvious. “But what if we can change it?”
“Theon…” He kept hurting me without realizing it. I couldn’t even be angry at him. Just hurt. I cleared my throat. “What if we can’t? What if we can’t change it?” We stared back and forth, neither saying a thing, for a span of several seconds. Too long. “Would you leave me?”
“No!” he insisted, raising his voice. His eyes widened as if I had stabbed him. “Nell… never. You’re my wife.” His jaw set and his eyes flattened with resolve as he spoke. His hands slid over my arms and clutched them. “I love you. That’s not going to change, ever. No matter what.”
“Then maybe we should stop trying to live around the future. Stop listening to oracles and astrolabes, and just… live. Just make our own destiny. Our own fate. Today. And every day. By living the lives we want.”
Theon’s eyes searched mine. “Would you think,” he whispered, “that i
t was crazy, if I said that I’d never thought of that before?”
The door at the end of the hall opened again, but this time no clanking came. It was not the guards who approached, and I stiffened. Ironically, the guards were the safest individuals to pass this alcove. They were so used to the trek, they’d become unobservant. The same might not be true for any visitor, or member of the court or royal family.
“A harpy,” a female voice said. “So, first dragons, now harpies? Harpies, in Beggar’s Hole, Maine.” I recognized that voice as readily as I recognized Theon: I’d been hearing Michelle’s dubious murmurs and pouts from childhood through adolescence into adulthood. Knowing we had precious little time to separate—knowing what joy she would take in separating us herself, tormenting us both together and apart, and that Theon would certainly be murdered, even if not by Michelle’s command—I threw myself from the alcove and came bustling from the fern-lined pillar, as if I’d been looking for Michelle all along. She was still at a distance, thankfully, approaching the alcove… and if she could maintain her focus on me, she wouldn’t notice Theon’s silhouette behind the drapery.
“Yes,” Lethe was answering, his eyes closed as though he had a throbbing headache. My heart went out to him; she could be charming at first, but the charm would wear off over time. You could only fake it for so long, and Michelle had never been that convincing of an actress. “Yes, there are dragons, and there are harpies. The harpies don’t live—”
“Nell?” Michelle shrilled, her eyes fixing onto me. Perfect. “What the hell are you doing? You’re supposed to be—”
“I know, yes, I know,” I said, hurrying to catch the couple and maintain their eyes. For different reasons entirely, neither of them had any difficulty watching me. “I dropped one of the pans—after I finished cleaning it—and there’s a huge mess in the washroom. I came to let you know, so I can get some help cleaning it up, because—”
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