But all he did was look at me closely, absorbing every curve of my face, suddenly breathless and hesitant, suspended amid the violence.
I thought he was about to say something, but we only hung there in silence together, and it was someone else’s throat clearing which startled us from each other’s eyes.
“Prince Lethe,” a masked guard announced from within the still-open doorway. “We have found smoke issuing from a merchant chimney in the town square. We await your decree; our forces surround the domicile.”
My throat constricted with terror for Theon.
“Break down its door,” Lethe commanded coldly. “And remove this—prisoner of war—to the dungeon, where she belongs: amongst her compatriots.”
With that, he released my hair and I slumped, oddly surprised and even betrayed by this turn of events… though I supposed I should not have felt either.
Lethe strode from the room without turning back.
The guard advanced with sword drawn and seized me roughly, dragging me from the room and out into the hall.
Theon
With Michelle straddling me, writhing and purring with all the confidence of a housecat, I had gone still in a kind of dumb shock. In truth, fire dragon females—though I had met none my own age—did not behave with the same degree of looseness as did human women. Or should I say girls?
Regardless of her perfect features—the arched cheekbones, the pouty lips, the cat-like eyes—I felt nothing. As Michelle leaned against me, I was still holding the damn lute, dangling at my side.
I didn’t know why I didn’t expect the kiss. Part of me was so removed from this moment, it was almost akin to dissociation. I experienced her kiss—the rush of moist heat as her mouth descended onto mine, the mewl which emanated from within her throat—almost second-hand. I disentangled myself from her grip with a pained sympathy.
“Michelle,” I said.
She must have recognized the tone. A man who is going to sweep you into his arms and tenderly make love to you in some abandoned shop will not look at you with such compassion as he retreats from your heavy-handed play at his heart—or some other such part.
“I—”
I hadn’t even begun the delicate task of rejecting such an egotistical woman when the crystal mirror, propped alongside my leather satchel along the wall, throbbed with light, and I shot to my feet, dumping Michelle onto her hindquarters.
“Hey!” she whined.
I’d already forgotten her completely, covering the distance between myself and the mirror in only four strides. The mirror was alight—which meant that someone had activated a shard of its crystal with their blood, breath, tears, or sweat.
I saw Penelope in the fogged depths of the mirror… but she did not appear to be alone. Her blouse had been pulled slightly open, and her back was pressed against a stone wall. My heart leapt into my mouth; was she being tortured? Molested? If her virtue had been robbed by one of those icy animals, so help me, I would see that the entire universe paid a debt to the both of us. I would tear the stars from the sky. I would forge battle with the powers that be themselves—
But one more moment, a closer glance, and I saw that everything was not as it seemed. Penelope had no expression of pain or horror or despair on her face; if anything, in the split second before the crystal shard was smothered between their two bodies, the expression on her face was one of sheer rapture.
It couldn’t have been so.
The floor dropped out from beneath me, and I just stood, breathless, certain that I was seeing things wrong.
Michelle approached behind me.
I ignored her.
She cleared her throat.
I ignored that, too.
Every now and then, Penelope and the wearer of the pendant would separate for mere seconds, and I would catch a flash: her jaw, thrust upward; fingers in her messed hair; the shadow of cleavage exposed, or a hickey not quite hidden by the shadowed contours of her throat.…
“Kind of ironic, isn’t it?” Michelle murmured off to my right.
“Not now,” I warned her.
The mirror had gone completely black. I wondered what they were doing… Was it smothered between their writhing bodies? Had the pendant been torn off and forgotten in a puddle of clothes?
“I mean, here you are, having just rejected the hottest piece of—”
“I said shut up!” Behind us, the fire in the fireplace gusted as if in a sudden wind. I was losing my grip on the element, letting the emotions override me, fumbling away the self-restraint every dragon was taught early in life.
The mirror lit again, and I saw Nell leaning down, peering into it intently.
My stomach rolled with sickness at the sight of her. The hair, everywhere, as if someone’s hands had been deep inside of it. The blush on her fair cheeks. The way her dress remained undone, and the slip beneath was so sheer, so generous to the viewing public. Who had she been with? And why? For the sake of all that was pure inside her, why?