A Shade of Dragon 2(40)

“You wanted all those things.” Lethe’s eyes flashed to his father uneasily. “And I will give them to you. You will have your prince become a king. The Ice Emperor. And you will have his empress, Penelope. And she will have my son. We will begin our monarchy—”

At this, his father’s hand flashed out and gripped Lethe’s tunic, hauling him closer and pulling him slightly off of the ground. Lethe’s eyes bulged in a panic.

“What did you say?”

“C-continue the monarchy,” Lethe corrected himself. Never before had I worried for Lethe so much. I peered through that keyhole, sucked on my lower lip, and worried that I might have to see him cry, or bleed, or even urinate in sheer terror before this was all said and done. His father was a looming mammoth with the temper of an even more dangerous animal: man. “I meant that we would continue the monarchy.”

His father smiled softly, though the smile was not a real one. He released Lethe and patted him on the shoulder. “You have given me everything I’ve ever wanted. Everything—except that the fire dragons remain a presence on this island, and even within the city walls themselves. It has been little more than a month, my boy, since our dynasty has reclaimed its rightful heritage, and I am concerned by the subversive element a fire dragon population may introduce. Wouldn’t it be better, son—don’t you think it would be better—if we exterminated the lot of them?”

“Exterminated?” Lethe’s voice was hushed with horror. Even though he himself wore cultural blinders when it came to the history between the fire and ice dragons, he had never murdered a single person, as he’d told me earlier. “I thought we were going to relegate them to the peninsula. I thought you said that would only be fair.”

“It would have only been fair long ago, perhaps, when dear father Bram overtook the castle. But we have seen how strong, and how vicious, they can be. Our kingdom is still tentative. You wouldn’t like to have your empress, Penelope, heavy with child when the throne is overturned in their favor yet again, would you? After all, how long does it take the fire dragons to reassemble? To plot? Who knows where they are now. Wherever they are, you can be certain they have not given up. You can be certain they are plotting even now for a future in which they have retaken the castle—and your queen.”

At this, Lethe swallowed, and so did I. Heavy with child?

“We may be able to enslave or imprison some of them—perhaps the children, because they, at least, can still be taught the ways of ice. But the others—the rest of them, the men, and particularly the fighters—must be neutralized. Permanently.”

I fell away from the doorknob, my legs folding in horror and shock. Lethe had said that his father wanted the genocide, but that taking an empress and relieving his father of the throne would delay this fever-dream, which was wrong. Nothing would derail his father’s certainty that the fire dragons needed to be slaughtered, and their remainder brainwashed and used for… labor?

“What was that?” his father demanded.

Fumbling to my feet, I skipped away and had only just ducked around one corner when their door opened behind me.

“I don’t see anyone.” Lethe’s voice filtered from the hall.

There was a pause, and then his father replied, “You’re a fool, boy. You’ve always been a fool.”





Nell





I returned to my chambers, unable to think of anything but the impending doom of Theon, and not just Theon, but all his people. They would enslave even the children. So I paced in front of the fireplace, which servants periodically came to stoke and refill with fresh kindling. Night had fallen by the time my mind came unstuck from this terrified loop.

I had to do something.

My whole life I’d been surrounded by disagreeable situations and felt powerless to stop them. I’d just been a college freshman who lived at home with her mother. But now… I was on the verge of being a goddamn empress. I was in the palace. I was relatively trusted. No one was watching me, and I was alone. I could do something… I could do… something.

As I broke from the protective halo of warmth created by the hearth, I swept the ermine mantle around my shoulders and clasped the heart-shaped ruby. I marched out into the hallway, invigorated by the realization that I had finally become a powerful agent of change.

No one was in the royal wing.

I strode toward the western tower, avoiding any eye contact with the occasional servant and keeping my head high and my step confident, as if I knew exactly where I was going. And I did.

The astrolabe.

The key to the ice dragon domination of The Hearthlands.