A Shade of Dragon 3 (3 page)

“
S
o
.” 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.

“Ah, yes. So, you’re the girl Lethe Eraeus first announced an engagement to.” Altair chuckled. “I noticed that you were moved in and out of the dungeon with much more… regularity than any other prisoner. And now he’s been wed to that other human. He must have a thing for humans.”

“I think that he does,” I confessed. “Perhaps he imagines, like Michelle does, that he can run away from his problems by trying to start a new life.”
And, just like her, he’ll run headlong into the same exact situations with different people. You can’t solve an internal problem by external means.

“So, you know the ice queen well,” Altair said.

“We’ve known each other for a long time,” I said, eyelashes lowering with exhaustion. “I was stolen away by the ice prince when I came through the portal at the rock island. She came after me. It’s a long story. Don’t be confused; she’s no friend of mine.”

“She’s no friend of yours,” Altar repeated, “yet she came after you into this, our dimension?”

“She came as the traveling companion of my husband,” I clarified. “She tried to steal him away the entire time.”

Altair chuckled humorlessly. “What a piece of work. You are the wife of a dragon, then?”

“I am,” I said. “I’m the wife of a fire dragon.”

“And I suppose you must be separated from him, mustn’t you?”

“We have been separated from one another repeatedly—but we always seem to find our way back to each other.” My throat closed up, but I cleared it and took a deep breath to relax myself. “Last I knew, he was alive, but… that was a week ago.”

“Aye.” Altair sighed. “I know your pain, my lady. Whenever a country goes through something like this… it is its people who pay. Loss of family. Loss of friends. In the end, it’s hard to remember why the land was ever so important, though it was our home. Though it is our home, I mean.” For a moment, we lapsed into silence. “I, too, have a lover from whom I am separated,” Altair continued. “The position with us is as precarious as the position in which you found yourself with the ice prince. Politically, socially, it is impossible. And yet… we find ourselves here.” He heaved a great sigh. “You never quite know what the heart has in store.”

“Is she another prisoner?” I asked.

“She is, in a way,” Altair said. “She’s a prisoner in the same way that we are all prisoners. She is a prisoner of fate. Her name is Merulina. If you’re still here in the morning, you may have the chance to meet her.”

“In the morning?” This raised several questions. Why was Merulina able to travel freely—and, more importantly, why would Altair think that I would be gone?

“I will be surprised if you are still here,” Altair said. “Not with the history you have with Lethe. The last I heard you’d fled into the night. Now you’re back—and in the dungeon again. He’ll be here. He’ll come. He won’t be able to stop himself… if he’s anything like the rumors say.”

“What do the rumors say?” I asked.

“That he is strangely soft, like some of them can be … and that Vulott is constantly doling out abuse in order to make him the kind of ice dragon of which their crown could be proud. I have little doubt that your lady Michelle is twice the ice dragon he is, human or not. He’ll be here, in secret though it may be. He’ll deliver you to more humane conditions.”

Altair could probably see my face much more clearly than I could see his. The torchlight played over my features—I could feel its distant warmth—while he was recessed into a dark cell. He could certainly see the grim set of my mouth and eyes.

“I don’t know about that,” I said. “I think my luck with the ice people, even Lethe, has run out. Especially because when I left, I took the astrolabe and went to the shelter. I mean, I really abandoned him, and this castle, and this life. There are few rejections more resolute than the willingness to die.”

“I’d heard about the shelter being discovered and demolished… but I had not heard that the astrolabe was taken!” Altair’s voice contained a tinge of hope.

“It was taken, but it was returned. Michelle—the ice queen—she returned it to them. I’m sure that has much to do with her acceptance into their fold.”

“They do tend to stress ruthlessness over loyalty,” Altair grumbled. “Should work out well for you. They do not seem to mind betrayal. If anything, they admire it.”

I expelled a mirthless laugh. “I don’t know,” I said.

Just then, another shadow moved over the curved stones of the stairwell, signaling another visitor—taller than Michelle. I stiffened against the wall and Altair and I lapsed into silence.

Lethe emerged from around the corner, his eyes bleak beneath the heavy crystal crown atop his head. They raged like the weather outside, cold and shattered and wild as they touched upon me. At first, as he strode toward me, I thought that he was going to strike me. Even when his hands came up toward my throat, I thought he would strangle me there and then, while I was helpless and chained to the wall.

But the cold hands only slithered around my neck and down my back, embracing me into an ice-cold hug that left me shivering.

“
Y
ou’re alive
,” he breathed against my ear. I shuddered as his arms slid away from me. He lingered uncomfortably close. “I don’t care that you ran away, I don’t care that you took the astrolabe… I’m just glad you’re still alive.”

I smiled weakly up at Lethe, his features handsome in the torchlight. “I had to go,” I blurted. Dishonesty had never been my strong suit, even when it was necessary. “I knew what you were planning for the fire people. I couldn’t let that happen.”

Lethe’s eyes hardened. “What my father was planning,” he corrected me. “What my father was planning.”

“Lethe. Let’s not pretend that your father’s intentions are not yours as well.”

“Nell.” He grazed my cheekbone with icy fingertips. “Do you know me at all? My father… He’s a madman. I know that. My mother certainly knew that. Even he knows that, though he certainly had to consult a litany of doctors before he would accept it,” Lethe spat. “It was a madness which carried him through the brutality and unpredictability of an insurgency well enough—the kind of political maneuvering where insanity is perhaps a benefit. But it cannot hold throughout peacetime, when concerns become more practical, when solutions must have long-term viability. And even he knows that. The only people who do not know, and who must never know, are the citizens of his kingdom.”

“Don’t you mean your kingdom?”

Lethe grimaced. “That is what I meant, yes.”

And are the ice dragon people not a mad race?
I wondered silently.

“And you will not allow him to rule you from behind the throne?” I whispered.

“No. I will not.”

My heart lightened for the first time since Parnassia had agreed to bring me back. “You can let me go,” I said.

Lethe returned my gaze, his own dark with heartbreak. “You must know that I cannot do that,” he said.

“Then your promises are lies,” I hissed.

He winced. “I cannot appear so weak in the first moon of my leadership,” he said. “You must give me time. Do you think that I want you here? I don’t!”

“Then set me free. It is so simple! You have the power to undo all of this!” I shook my chains.

Lethe’s hands traveled to my wrists, stilling them, tracing the abrasion of the shackles as he once had before. “It is not so simple. You don’t understand what it’s like to be under the watchful eye of an entire court. If they perceive me as weak, I will be the one undone, Penelope, not your shackles. If anything… you will be killed, should they suspect that you are motivating my edicts. And I will be dethroned—or beheaded—by some hopeful official.”

“I could be killed against your wishes? Under the command of some… ‘official’?”

Lethe nodded grimly. “Oh, yes. It would be staged as an accident; perhaps they would even frame a fire dragon in the dungeon cells beyond. But I have no doubt that it would be perpetrated by a vengeful member of the court, one with their heart set on my throne, one who has seen that you remain my weakness. They want me to be strong, but only by their standards. And no ice king is ever encouraged to fall in love.”

My eyes softened as I watched him. After everything I had done, the levels of betrayal, he still loved me. And he was a good man. He didn’t deserve to be wed to someone like Michelle, someone whose sole motivations were boredom and greed. It wasn’t his fault that he couldn’t perceive just how manipulative she was. In all likelihood, Vulott liked her more than Lethe did.

“You should not love me, Lethe,” I whispered. I worried that if I did not express my boundaries to him soon enough, he would kiss me—and I could not justify such play-acting again, even in the name of freedom. Not now that I was a wife. “I’m married.”

At this, Lethe’s fingertips left my wrists and he took a step away. His jaw had become stiff and his eyes raged. “You married him?” he hissed. “You forged off into the night with stolen equipment—”

“Well, stolen by the ice dragons,” I interjected.

“—and up and married him? Just like that? After everything?”

I pursed my lips and refused to avert my eyes. “I know that in your culture, emotional experiences are… purposefully limited. But that is not true of my people—of humans. We welcome emotional interaction with one another. My husband and I… we have known each other longer than you and me. We have had more experiences, and deeper experiences, and… to you, yes, you and I shared a bond that could not be broken. And we
do
share a bond—I care about you very much—but, Lethe, you have to understand—that whole time I was here—”

“The whole time you were here, you loved him still,” Lethe seethed. “I get it. When you were kissing me. And when you were taking advantage of my indulgence. You loved him still.”

“You must have known that!” I cried, forgetting that the entire prison—including Altair—could hear us. “You saw the messages he was sending me. You can’t allow someone to be tortured as I was and then expect their interactions with you to be genuine. You must understand that from that point on, part of my action was motivated by fear.”

Lethe winced and refused to meet my eyes. “You feared me?”

“Of course I feared you! I feared you because you had me sent to this dungeon in the first place! I feared you because you alone had the power to kill off an entire people, and my husband!”

“Would you stop calling him that?” Lethe hissed.

“I’ll stop calling him my husband if you let me out of this damn dungeon,” I seethed in return.

“I cannot, and you know that,” Lethe said, beginning to recede. “It would endanger us both if I released you from those chains so soon. Perhaps someday you’ll appreciate what I have done for you—what I would have done for you—and what I will do for you still, Penelope.”

Lethe turned and exited the dungeon, casting me one anguished glance as he did so.

In spite of how miserable I was, and how I wished that Lethe could be stronger, for me if not for himself, I couldn’t help but grimace and think that he still didn’t deserve the downtrodden role of Michelle’s fool husband.

I
t was still night
, and it was late at that, but I couldn’t sleep. My mind struggled with all that had been stolen from me. It seethed to the forefront of my thoughts like a soup on the verge of overflowing from the pot. I needed to get into the sky. I needed to think. I missed The Hearthlands… Everwinter… though I could not be certain that my body would weather the frigid temperature. Though our ability to expel fire remained unhindered—save during the storms of ice and wind—many of my kind would suffer from stiff or even frozen wings in such white skies, and would plummet into the snow below. The skies were also so temperamental now. At times, the weather was crisp but clear… however, a fire dragon would be foolish to depend on that for longer than an hour or two before storms would arise.

And, from the ogres’ beach, it was impossible to tell what clouds hung over The Hearthlands. Everwinter.

I sat up from where I slept on the sand, beneath a sloppily constructed lean-to of palm fronds and driftwood. The temperature here was comfortable to us. Perhaps a touch too moist, but regardless, it was warm. We had no need of blankets or furs any longer.

I glanced over the moonlit beach, where Mother lay resting nearby. Charis and Einhen slept as well. In grand total, we were less than four hundred remaining. Our people, once thousands strong, had been killed in battle, in imprisonment, or had fled to other countries and even dimensions. Less than four hundred remained to fight for our rightful territory. We thronged this lengthy strip of beach, but against the ice dragons, what would our ratio be? There were more of us in the human realm, but in the tundra of The Hearthlands’, where we became slow to move and even slower to heal - where the ice dragons were strongest, fastest, and most ruthless - what chance did we have with even one hundred more fire dragons?

I grimaced, thinking about it. The city seemed more and more a distant dream, an unlikely future. And yet… gods… I’d rather see it destroyed by our own hands than the years of mistreatment the ice dragons would certainly allow.

I took a deep breath, shrugging my shoulders to loosen the taut muscles. I wished Nell was here—but it was better this way. She was safe in Maine. Her parents would take care of her when I could not.

I needed to get out of here. This place, with its camp of homeless fire dragons and its sandy dunes and tropical foliage, was not my home… and if I stared at it long enough, I became sick. I needed to fly. I needed to think. Or to escape from my thoughts, perhaps.

Undressing with a perfunctory lack of self-awareness, I removed my pants and shirt, folding them on the sand until I stood, completely nude and caressed by island breezes. I walked until the wet sand dented beneath my feet, walked until there was no slumbering fire dragon in my range. And I closed my eyes.

Shiny ebony scales coursed over my back and down my arms and legs; gold-streaked spines erupted from my shoulder blades. My proportions ballooned, until I spilled over the shore, until the waves were around my talons and my razor-sharp tail whipped up a salty spray. Then, unleashing a cathartic swath of flame which had been bursting for release, I beat my wings at the calm ocean air and lifted into the night sky.

Swooping and diving, I careened away from the camp.

Already my head began to clear, and I felt better. Lighter. Freer.

I
had just risen
from the surface of the ocean, where I had been skimming the waters with my jaw, when I saw another large winged animal in the sky high above me. It came from the direction of the distant Hearthlands, now a white crust on the horizon, fringed in dirty gray cloud.

Knowing that this was another dragon—either fire, or ice—I made haste toward its smaller silhouette, and quickly gained on the… the… harpy?

But harpies didn’t come here. At least, they didn’t come here of their own volition. They preferred to be high above sea level, even if they did enjoy arctic temperatures. The nest on that cliff at Beggar’s Hole had not been a surprise to me. There were probably more of them further north, a prospect which would bring the countrymen of any such inhabited land to a shudder. A harpy didn’t simply roam outside of its desired territory… unless it was under orders.

Harpies were created to be the earthly emissaries of the dark gods, not born like I had been born, nor would they die as I would die, age as I would age, or produce young as I would produce young. Having been molded by higher powers—what the people of Earth would call “Hades” or “Satan” or “Loki”—they were naturally inclined to taking orders, and needed little persuasion to torment a target. They were made to be that way, and it was uncertain if they had been fated to be filled with vitriol, or if such a fate had filled them with vitriol. Either way, they were a nasty business to encounter, and had almost killed me once before. The night of my first kiss with Penelope…

I leapt down from Nell’s roof, onto her widow’s walk, and she whirled, eyes wide with shock. I imagined that I looked quite a fright: my hair more wild than usual, amber eyes bright and intense. Almost getting killed by a pack of harpies would do that to you; no matter how strong you were, four of the winged demon women were still worthy adversaries, particularly in an ambush. I had a scrape down the left side of my cheek, left by one of their electrical talons, and my lip was swollen and busted, having smashed into a rock on the cliffside. I still wasn’t sure if I’d merely come too near to the nest and disturbed them, exciting their ire… or if they had been acting under orders.

“Hey,” Nell breathed, striding to me as naturally as a magnet moves for its counterpart. She reached out to touch my wound, but then hesitated. “Hey, are you okay? What happened?”

“It’s nothing.” I dismissed the marks with a shake of my head, hoping she would leave it alone. We hadn’t yet broached the topic of mystical creatures, and how they would, on occasion, leak into her world. How she was looking at one right now. “You look like a queen.” I reached out to touch her cheek, wiping away an icy tear. “I hope that wasn’t for me.”

“I—I just—I don’t know, Theon,” she said. “I guess it was, maybe, in a way. I mean—men stay for a little bit, and then they go. They want to touch your hair, even save your life… but then they don’t talk about anything, they have secrets, nothing they say makes sense, and I have no idea who you are, to be totally honest, you could be anybody, and you just disappear, so if you disappeared tomorrow—”

“I won’t,” I promised her, taking both her arms in my hands. Her pulse quickened beneath my fingertips.

“What happened to you tonight?” she whispered, distracted by my slight wounds. She had no idea how much worse it could have been. A lesser man—a human man—would be certainly dead tonight.

But I only shook my head.

“More secrets,” she announced.

One of my hands moved to cup her cheek and I leaned closer. “I’ll show you everything,” I said in a hush. “Just give me a little time.”

“I don’t want this to be like everything else,” she whispered up to me, her eyes glinting with despair.

But I smiled. “Be careful what you wish for,” I whispered back, snaking my hand into her whipping hair and pulling her into my arms.

Suffice it to say, harpies were not creatures anyone, even myself, should approach—except, of course, in situations of desperation.

My eyes narrowed, and my wings pounded the night air harder as I chased the silhouette over the ocean between the ogres’ island and what remained of The Hearthlands.

It was dark, but in the moonlight… was she brown? Were her feathers mottled auburn and chestnut? Had I not met her before on the beach of Beggar’s Hole, Maine? On the night that Penelope O’Hara’s father had ejected me from her home, saying that my heritage was a line of “tired tripe”?

“Harpy!” I shouted, launching a fireball in her direction. Just to get her attention. “Stop!”

The mottled bird-woman cawed in alarm and twisted in the air to avoid the spurt of white flame. The shock caused her to tumble, and it was all I needed to gain on her.

I wanted to attack, but this wasn’t the same harpy who had been so snide during our interaction on the cliff. There was no way she’d be capable of flight again so soon, was there? Perhaps this was the other—the only one of the three who had descended willingly into the nest and gone to her side.

“Theon,” she greeted me, confirming my suspicions. Her large black eyes seemed to laugh at me. “I must say, I love what you’ve done with the place.” She laughed, and the sound was like breaking glass. I cringed. “It was always too warm for my sisters and me to visit before, except for business.”

“As if your kind knows of anything other than business,” I snapped. “Or sisterhood, for that matter.”

At this, she screeched and dove toward me. I swatted her with my tail.

“Who sent you here?” I demanded, prepared to really lash into her. “Was it the ice dragons?”

“No one sent me here.”

“Tell me the truth,” I commanded, cold as any ice dragon. “You must have been sent for someone. Is that not the only purpose a harpy serves? To wreak havoc on a life? What is your business, bird-woman?”

The harpy laughed, and my eyes narrowed.

“Oh, men,” she cooed. “I have no envy for your gender. So blind, you are. A harpy can have many purposes, sweet Theon.” I was disturbed at the familiarity with which she spoke to me. It was the way a superior would speak to an inferior. “We can take captives, certainly.” She swooped and dove in the air, enjoying herself. I wanted to shoot her down. I was in no mood to be played with, least of all by a likely consort of the ice dragons. If I had known the condition of my home country when I’d had my first interactions with her flock, I would have known immediately who had invested in their temporary loyalty. “But we can also ferry passengers between gates.” She sang a strangely lovely melody as she fluttered. “We can even raise young.”

“You cannot raise young. No harpy bears offspring. It’s hard enough to get you to die.”

“True enough that our captives fail to provide sufficient seed,” the harpy agreed. I shuddered to think of the poor men ensnared by such aims. “But we may raise young nevertheless. A harpy is nothing if not industrious. Open-minded to a fair trade, we are, we are. We can ferry passengers between gates. We can raise young. You see, a harpy can do many things.”

“You excel at talking in circles,” I told her. “Harpy, it is late. Tell me who brought you here or I—”

I froze, her words all running together to form an answer.

She had come from Beggar’s Hole, Maine.

We can ferry passengers between gates.

Oh, no.

Gods, no.

Who in Maine would have gone to this harpy and made a pact? To be ferried between the portals?

Only Nell.

We can even raise young.

Open-minded to a fair trade.

The heat built up in my throat and expelled itself from my mouth. I unleashed a torrent of fire in the harpy’s direction, sending her on an erratic flight path over the ocean, toward the ogres’ beach.