I cared about Michelle.
When we had first met, she’d been a curiosity, a contradictory friend and enemy of Penelope’s, but now I had seen into her soul. I had trusted in her help, fought alongside her, and even willingly kissed her—almost twice.
And meanwhile, the last time I’d seen Penelope, she’d been staring down at me, no expression on her face, with another man’s arm around her shoulders.
And the time I’d seen her before that?
His tongue had been thrust into her mouth, and she seemed to have been relishing it.
How could I have become one of those men who obsessed over the wrong woman while the right one had flung herself into their lap, and they just shoved her off and continued on their hunt for that adulterous one, the one who had abandoned them?
I wondered where she was.
Nell.
Was she waking up enshrouded in quilts somewhere in the Aena castle—now the Eraeus castle, I supposed—and would her toes curl as she yawned and stretched in front of the roaring fire? Was Lethe lying beside her? Would she crawl out of bed and dress in the garments of the bride-to-be, perhaps with the aid of ice dragon servants, while Lethe continued to sleep on the feather-down mattress, blissfully unaware of his good fortune to have captured her from me?
If only I still had that damn mirror. In my anger, I’d lost all foresight and abandoned it in the clothing shop.
Not that it would have done me much good, anyway. Nell wasn’t in need anymore. She’d never be in need again now.
And yet…
When we had used the mirror to communicate that one time, and she had pantomimed to me her location in the castle—why? If she was happy, why had she said anything at all to me? If she was happy, why had Lethe shaken her and thrown her to the ground when he’d discovered her communication through the crystal pendant? Why had he smashed her first pendant into pieces?
She hadn’t called out or even gestured to me when we had broken from the dungeon, but what could she have possibly said? There had been ice arrows soaring through the air all around us. Lethe had been holding onto her, scanning the crowd for me. He would have certainly killed me if she’d brought my presence to his attention. She must have known that he knew I was in the village somewhere… because he had, after all, seen me in her pendant only moments before raiding Gordon’s Instruments.
Knowing Nell…
She would have protected me, even if it meant agreeing to marry an ice prince.
And she would have looked for her opportunity to escape, and taken it.
And forged out into that wasteland overhead.
And her fragile human body would never endure it. Her nobility and her honor, despite all the opportunism therein, would lead to her demise.
Pursing my lips, I thrust some boots onto my feet, shouldered my leather satchel, and marched through the caverns toward the steps leading to the outside world.
“Where are you going?” Mother called to me as I shot past the kitchens, ignoring the hot breakfast being poured into bowls.
“Outside,” I called back. “I’ll be back later. I’m looking for someone.”
“Who?” she yelled over the din.
“Nell!”
As I exited the kitchen, a familiar female voice muttered, “Pathetic.”
I paused and glanced over my shoulder. “What?”
Michelle reclined on the cavern wall, waiting in the line outside of the kitchen for her breakfast. Her eyes were tired and her hair in disarray, but she was gorgeous as usual. She, like several other people in the caverns, had shrugged off the furs we had worn for warmth, and she was now dressed in the same party attire she’d been wearing on the night that she came here—with the exception of some fur-lined boots she’d pilfered from the depository.
“I said pathetic. Last night, when I went to see you, you were practically crying for her in your sleep. And now you’re just going to wander around in that freezing cold looking for her, like she’s some lost dog? Theon. She’s not lost!” Michelle shook out her curls and stared up at the ceiling, her eyes caught in mid-roll. “I had no idea Penelope O’Hara could make such a fool out of a damn prince.”
My eyes narrowed. “You wouldn’t understand intuition. You’ve never connected to anyone the way I have connected with her.”
Michelle opened her mouth to retort, but I was already walking away.
“You mean the way she connected with that other prince!” she yelled at my receding back.
But I couldn’t be bothered. The certainty that Penelope would never have willingly stayed in the castle—as Lethe’s bride, no less—was too palpable, too strong.
I moved through the winding stairwell, Michelle fading from my mind with every step, and forced open the horizontal wooden door which led up from the shelter.