“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.
Theon
While 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.