A Shade of Dragon 2(32)

“He’s frozen to the bone! A bearskin! A bearskin for the prince!”

But to me, it all passed in a blur.

I had not seen my brother, Altair, moving in the throngs of prisoners.

Which increased the likelihood that he was dead, did it not? Had I not seen Einhen and my father because they still lived?

I had rescued my father, but left behind my beloved.

And the mirror was gone now.

And the skeleton key had not unlocked the door to the castle when I had turned it. It had not unlocked my father’s manacles, either.

What did that mean?

And Nell, standing there, staring down at me, saying nothing, doing nothing, not even moving a muscle… just staring. Lethe’s arm around her. Wearing the vestments of a bride-to-be. Three floors between our eyes. She had been in the wing of the royal family all along. Nothing like a prisoner.

What did it mean?

I had to know. I had to know…

Around me fire people cropped up, murmuring amongst themselves, and then bled away again. I was led to the quarters of the medical workers: apothecaries, surgeons, and mystics alike. I didn’t hear a word of it. The arrow was ripped clean. I grunted. A poultice was applied. A bearskin mantle was draped across my naked body. A cup of broth was shoved into my hands.

I didn’t even know where I was anymore.

After a while, I found myself removed to the men’s sleeping quarters and placed on a cot. I was told by an unknown face that my mother would see me soon. The face receded. I couldn’t even have told you with any degree of certainty what the face had looked like. They were all so blurry, and melted from one to the next, more like a painting than a picture.

A nurse maid came, and her face was Nell’s… Michelle’s… and Mother’s.

“You’ve got to rest, darling. Let your poultice do its work.”

“Mother,” I pleaded, my eyes rolling weakly in my head, my pillow soaked with sweat. “What would you do if you saw the woman you loved, standing at a great distance, another man at her side? And she stared back at you… unfathomable?”

Her cool hand whisked the hair from my forehead. But a fire dragon never had cool hands…

“You’re not making any sense,” she told me. “You’re mad with fever.”

“Have you never loved in uncertainty?” I demanded of the ceiling, my voice ragged, my hands grasping for my mother, although she was no longer there. She bled and faded away, and as my eyes adjusted, I realized that the torches had been snuffed out. It was no longer daylight—the torches were only snuffed to simulate night. I must have fallen asleep, and she had left me in peace. She would be in the women’s sleeping quarters now. The question still echoed in my head without answer: Have you ever loved in uncertainty? What would I do? What could I do?

What was this damnable, wrenching feeling in my chest… and could I snuff it out like the torches?

Shaking, I propelled myself upward, and the room did a little spin before settling around me again. I could only pray that the poison of the ice arrow would be out of my system soon, but until then, this half-reality was my world. Feeling drunk, I shoved myself to a standing position and wound my way around the shadowy cots of the men’s sleeping quarters, through the labyrinthian caverns of the shelter, and into the main hall. I almost stumbled over my leather satchel, propped against a wall.

With a surge of relief, I dug my hands into its depths and rifled through its contents in search of the papyrus of the love letter, discarded as meaningless in war… but there were many varieties of war. And in some wars, a love letter was exactly the weapon you needed.

Procuring the love letter and a writing utensil, still half-mad with fever and poison, I scrawled in almost illegible script:

“Are you falling in love with him?”





Nell





After the breakout, the mood in the castle shifted to one of vigilance and vengeance. The ice people had insecurities, as their superiority was so new and so flimsy. Seeing almost two hundred prisoners escape into the streets was an affront to their dominance. They had not captured the instigator—whom they believed to have been Theon—but my celebration was a secret one. On the surface of things, I lamented Lethe’s laments. I rallied at his cries.

It was the only way I could foresee an exit from this palace.

Perhaps the dungeon had made its impression on me. Perhaps the dungeon had done its job indeed, and now, no matter how high I carried my head, I remembered with every step that I had been starved, and peed on myself, and slept in freezing temperatures due to sheer exhaustion.

I tried not to think about how I had seen Theon.

I tried not to think about the look on his face. The anguish…