“How long have you been here?” Theon demanded, his voice sharpening.
“I don’t know,” I said defensively, as his fingers dug into my arms. “I passed out sometime last night, maybe this morning. The snow…” As I thought back, I remembered that the snow had been deep, and it had still been falling as I’d collapsed. But the sky had been white, not black, so perhaps the sun had risen somewhere behind the clouds. “The snow hadn’t melted yet.”
Theon winced. “Damn it. And you wore this mantle the entire way here.”
“Well… of course.” I frowned in confusion. “I would’ve frozen if I hadn’t. Theon—”
Without any explanation, his hand shot out to wrap around the ruby clasp, and he tore it from the ermine mantle so viciously that the fur itself ripped and fell from my body. My hands went instinctively to my throat; even though I wasn’t cold anymore, I was shocked at the violence of his gesture. Could he really be so jealous? Of a man I had just told him I didn’t love? A man I had obviously betrayed, and from whom I had fled overnight?
“Theon!”
But Theon didn’t respond. Instead, he squeezed his fist until I heard a crunch, and when his fingers opened, the ruby heart filtered down to the earth in tiny shards. I gaped.
“Are you really that angry with me?” I whispered.
Theon stared down at the shattered ruby for a moment, and then glanced back to me and grimaced. “We must hurry,” he said. He turned his back on me and paced to the astrolabe, snatching it up and tucking it down at his side. Then, whirling, he stalked to me again, and I shrank back with uncertainty, as if he might snatch me up and tuck me down at his side too. “Come with me,” he said. Taking my hand a little rougher than he needed, he wasted no time in pulling me across the hillside, his strides so wide that I almost tripped. I’d never seen him with such a lack of gentleness, particularly when dealing with me. We abandoned the ermine mantle in the mud and advanced on the cluster of skeletal white ash trees: the last things I remembered seeing before I’d lost consciousness the night before. Or that morning?
Reaching down into the sodden, muddy earth—only traces of the snow now remained—he wrenched open a hidden door I hadn’t even noticed. Beneath its wooden slats tapered an earthen tunnel, traveling deep into the earth, chiseled into a stairwell with tightly packed dirt walls. Theon said nothing to me as he led me deeper and deeper down the winding passageway. He’d never been so cold. Could he really have been that angry about my perceived infidelity with Lethe?
I supposed, in a way, I had come to care for Lethe…
“Theon.” I relented in my steps and forced him to a halt as well. “You have to tell me what is wrong.”
Finally, Theon turned.
“While you were speaking, I noticed how the ruby at your neck would pulse with your words.” His jaw was set, and his eyes flashed. “I realized too late that the pulse was a transmission of sorts. Lethe… Penelope… Lethe did not give you the ermine mantle because he trusted you, or because he had fallen in love with you, or even because he cared if you were cold. He gave you the ermine mantle to track you.” He swallowed, his golden eyes never leaving mine now. “Do you see what I am telling you?”
“He knows where I am,” I whispered, beginning to share in his dawning horror.
“It’s not just that,” Theon returned, taking my hand in his—more gently now—and pulling me down the final few remaining steps, until the walls of the stairwell fell away and revealed a sweeping, expansive cavern which housed hundreds of people. “He knows where all the fire dragons are. And he’s probably on his way now.”
Theon
Just as the words had exited my mouth—“He’s probably on his way now”—a blast echoed overhead, and our eyes trained on one another’s in complete understanding… and horror.
They were already here.
He might have been tracking her all night. I had no way of knowing exactly how far the device could go, and if it had monitored her vital signals. If it had, that could explain why he had not come sooner—she’d been alive, but merely idle. Perhaps he had been infuriated, and hoped for her death as a fitting punishment by the elements. But it had not come… and when my voice had sounded on the line, he must have immediately dispatched his men, realizing what his paranoia and jealousy had discovered: the downfall of the remnant.
And we had been on the cusp of victory, but now—now we were trapped, and our numbers had come to be severely limited, so that the fight would be a fair one.