“Yes,” I half-lied, clearing my throat. Astronomy was certainly interesting. That much was true.
“Then I have a surprise for you. You’ll love it!” Mouth splitting into a grin, Lethe pulled me down the hallway and into one of the rooms ahead of us.
At first the room seemed empty, except for a small, circular disc on a narrow pedestal, which gleamed with a dull gold. I believed it to be a table, but as we approached, I saw that the “table” was a system of flat, interlocking circles, laid over a complex star map. The stars shimmered as though imbued with some fantastical power.
“What is this?” I whispered, stretching a hand to trace one of the golden discs. But Lethe’s hand shot out and snatched mine from the air.
“No! Don’t touch it!” he snapped. He hadn’t taken such a tone with me since—well—since the last time I’d rejected him. He hesitated, but then pushed forward, releasing my hand. “It’s… It’s called an astrolabe. This one is planispheric.”
“Oh, yeah,” I whispered, still staring at him in a kind of amazed way. “I’ve heard about those. We—on Earth—used them during the Renaissance… to chart, to navigate, and all that. But I don’t think they looked like this one. Ours didn’t… glow.”
“Yours were not true astrolabes.” A smile kinked at the corner of Lethe’s lip. “They are not devices solely for tracking, my dear human. They are devices for control.”
The way he said it was disquieting.
“Control?” I asked. “Control… of the stars?”
“The gods themselves, some say,” he whispered.
“And this belonged to… the Aena dynasty?” I wondered, even tempted to touch its locked discs, its twinkling reflection of the cosmos.
“It did… when we stormed the castle. We will never know if The Hearthlands were in perpetual summer and the astrolabe denoted it, or if the fire dragons assembled the astrolabe to condition the environment perfectly for their own needs. I suspect it was the latter.” He grimaced. “But we have given them a taste of their own medicine now.”
My eyebrows twisted. “What’s that supposed to mean?” I didn’t like the calculating tone to his voice.
“It means that the ice dragons have—finally—taken control into their own hands.” His fingers traced the spheres of the astrolabe with an almost lustful quality. As he did so, frost bloomed on the rings. His eyes tipped to me then, as if remembering that I was once, shall we say, a fire dragon sympathizer. “We’re not doing anything they haven’t already done before.”
“You don’t know that,” I whispered.
“We deserve to live comfortably.”
“It’s killing them.”
In a flash of movement, Lethe’s hands shot to my arms and gripped tightly, giving me a shake. “Why must they live at our expense?”
I glared at him, shrinking from his touch, and his eyes roved my face, finally seeing me through this egotistical haze in which he’d been blinded.
“You don’t understand what it’s like to want and want,” he hissed. “And to finally be able to take. And to have.”
His lips crashed down onto mine and I tried to reel from him, but he held me secured. His hands freely crept over my body, as if we were already wed, but when they snaked down to my buttocks and pinned our hips together, my torso had the leverage to squirm from his embrace. I staggered several feet from him and almost tripped over my dress.
Lethe stared at me, his eyes both cold and hot, his chest rising and falling raggedly.
“Come with me,” he commanded, striding past me as if nothing had just happened. “There is something I must give you.”
I cocked my head, confused by this sudden change, and glanced once more at the mystical astrolabe before leaving the room. I wondered if he was right; had the fire dragons used the astrolabe to make the island habitable for them, but miserable to the ice dragons, as the ice dragons were now doing? It was hard to say… but I doubted it.
I followed his swift steps as he moved through the corridors of the western tower, until we had again reached the wing of the royal family, and traveled to the room I had been confined to for the past… How long had it been? How many days? They all bled together now: the sleepless nights, the odd meals brought by servants, the clothes that weren’t mine, the rooms I didn’t know. At least the tour had served to orient me somewhat. I’d certainly made note of the various depositories in the western tower, such as the closet of furs and the small arsenal of weaponry.