It came up with ease, though it had been caked in ice every other time. Stepping onto the spongy, slushy soil of the ash grove, I gaped at the strangely blue sky. The cloud coverage had cracked, and sunlight broke through, shimmering down onto the snow… and… melting it.
What had been snow up to my knees now showed patches of earth.
It couldn’t be.
How had the ice storms relented? And when?
A surge of relief battered my weary heart.
We would be able to fight again.
The kingdom—if the sun would only continue to shine—was as good as ours. And the throne. And even Nell…
There, on a hilltop several yards from the shelter, I saw a splash of ermine strewn, capped by a spill of mahogany hair as dark as the richest beer.
It couldn’t be.
Could the sun really be shining on Penelope O’Hara, or was I still asleep?
Nell
For a moment, I couldn’t help but believe that I had died and gone to heaven. Maybe I’d never made it out of that cave, which seemed so long ago now. Perhaps the past few weeks had really been purgatory, and I’d finally been allowed into heaven. And perhaps Theon was my guardian angel. Now we would spend eternity together. Lethe had been a test—even a momentary fumble through an upper circle of hell. Michelle had never really been with Theon at all. It’d just been another exercise in spiritual growth, to overcome my jealousy and pettiness, to overcome my worldly attachment to competition and victory. If this had truly all been some test, it would explain the arctic wasteland surrounding us, the inability to even go outside, the dungeon, the restraint, and the staff of servants who were really demons in disguise, sent to simultaneously torment and supervise me. Ice dragons. What if that had all been a metaphor? And now…
The fog had cleared, and the sun had broken through.
And Theon’s dreamy eyes, the color of honey, were gazing down at me with warmth and acceptance again. I had forgotten, almost, what life had been like with him. How it had felt to be secure, and tranquil, and understood, and appreciated. And now I was home. No matter where I was—strewn across some hillside, apparently, with mud streaks on an ermine mantle—I was home whenever I was with Theon.
“Did you know that you will have saved my entire kingdom twice now?” Theon asked me, his rich baritone as smooth and comforting as hot tea with honey.
“Theon,” I whispered up at him, bedraggled in my sodden ermine mantle and strangely… warm.
But the last thing I remembered was collapsing into deep snow, my pulse receding from my extremities, and the snowfall slowing to a stop. But had it? Or had I only gone numb?
“Did you know that you will have saved my entire life twice now?”
A smile cracked one corner of Theon’s full lips. “More than twice,” he reminded me. “You’re forgetting about the harpies.”
I struggled up into a sitting position to embrace him, but found that my torso was unyielding and hindered. Peeling back the ermine, I remembered the mystical astrolabe. It tumbled from out of the mantle, and Theon and I both gaped at it as it rolled several feet and collapsed onto one side.
“You got the astrolabe,” he whispered. “In the western tower.”
For a moment, I thought of letting my response go, but we couldn’t just ignore this invisible wedge between us: Lethe. “I gained his trust,” I explained, still in the muddied mantle, as if Theon could possibly ignore from where I had come. For God’s sake, look how I was dressed: like an ice queen. Like an ice queen who had been through war, and was finally melting away. “He led me through the castle and showed me its treasures.”
At this, Theon turned from where he had been staring in awe at the returned heirloom. “Because he believed that you loved him,” he said. The glow in his eyes had faded, and I realized that I had been selfish in my time away. Amid all the anxiety about Theon as a fire dragon, and the imminent war, in addition to my personal depression, I hadn’t truly thought about Theon as a man. What it must have looked like to him. How it must have eaten him from the inside. And I had been fuming over merely seeing him with Michelle.
“Yes, he believed that I loved him,” I confessed, stepping closer to Theon, daring to touch his arm. I was almost afraid that it would burn me. “I did what I had to do to get out of there… and get back to you, Theon. I never really loved him. I promise.”
As I said the words, Theon’s eyes shifted down to my ermine mantle and the heart-shaped ruby clasp. My cheeks flooded with self-conscious blush.
“Um, this was a gift,” I explained, “and I—I didn’t ask for it, I just needed—”