“Mother!” I went first to her, because she had received the force of the ice. Nell had only been the victim of intimidation. But Mother… Her scales had already begun to thin in some places, and it had been so long since she’d seen battle… “Mother, are you all right?”
She was crumpled onto one knee, having also transformed into her human visage again, and patches of her exposed face were blackened with frostbite. It would require surgery. I felt a sick, smoldering vengeance to think that the damage to Lethe had been worse.
Behind her was Nell.
“I’ll be fine,” she promised me. “Where is your father?”
I whirled with the anguish of a powerless man.
“No!” But even in the chaos, I knew that he was gone.
Nell
“What can I do? What should I do?” I shouted toward Theon. I could tell that he was distraught, and I hated to intervene, but the shelter had gone mad. It was like an atom which was entirely composed of nucleus, protons and neutrons dancing and battling and screaming at one another. How could I, who had only woken up less than an hour ago, who had been brought here by Theon, who knew nothing of these people or of these circuitous caverns, have any hope of self-direction?
It was clear that Theon did not hear me. His back remained turned, and he continued to stare at a fixed point. I had not seen him advance on us when Lethe had come to collect or kill me—I honestly couldn’t have said whether he would’ve taken me back to the castle to remain his bride, or slain me where I stood—and so I had not seen whatever caused him such distress now.
“Theon!” I called again, forcing my way through the chaos to touch his arm. He whipped to face me with eyes I had never before seen. They leapt like fire within a crystal. “What can I do?”
He stared at me a moment longer, completely uncomprehending. “Find Michelle. She was meant to take the astrolabe and hide it from the ice dragons. She went deeper into the depositories. Stay with her until I can find you again. I must find my father.” He hardly looked at me at all, even though his eyes were on me. It was as if he had been told that I was standing there, and yet I was invisible to him. “I have to find my father,” he repeated, as if to himself.
I stood there, gaping after him in shock. It was the first time in our entire relationship that I’d felt as if he’d forgotten me entirely. Did he not realize that I had no idea where I was, or who all these people were?
The depositories?
“I will show you, dear,” Theon’s wounded mother offered, hobbling to my side. A leathery orange wing was partially unfurled from her shoulder blade, protruding through the torn fabric of her gown, and I saw several black speckles on the skin—just like on her face. Frostbite. “I will show you the depositories, and you will help me to walk.” She laughed without mirth and didn’t wait for my agreement before she clung to my shoulder for support. I didn’t hesitate to embrace her, and she gestured toward one of the many corridors through which we could travel. It wasn’t until we’d begun moving that she spat out the word, “Those,” and then took a deep breath before continuing, “are where we keep tactical gear, weaponry, and stores of food. Just in case this happened again.”
As we passed each depository, she kept trying to tell me what was held within each block of cells, until I finally had to silence her. “Please, Mrs. Aena,” I said to her, overwhelmed. Blood smeared the walls. We could hardly walk in the desperate throngs surging both backward and forward. On occasion, we stepped together over the carcass of a fallen dragon. And yet, amid all this carnage, she felt trapped in the role of hostess. “You don’t have to do this.”
Mrs. Aena smiled. “Yes, I do,” she whispered. I could hardly hear her, but her mouth formed the words. “If I don’t, I’ll have to actually look at the world around us.”
I tried to offer a smile, but it faltered as a scream pierced the air. “Mrs. Aena, do you know which depository Theon sent Michelle to?”
“The girl always seemed fond of the furs,” Mrs. Aena murmured. “Very fond.”
Sounds like Michelle, all right.
“Where is the fur depository?”
“Not far—” Suddenly, Mrs. Aena gripped my arm with such severity that I believed her fingers seared into the skin itself. “There,” she breathed. “Just ahead of us. Those ice dragons block the path.”
The beasts were massive, with scales of luminous silver, blue, and white, and they advanced into the fur depository with a swagger. If Michelle had gone there to hide among the mantles and stoles, she wouldn’t be the only one—fire dragons had transformed to battle in return, and the depository was packed with the creatures, hurling balls of lava and tornadoes of icicles back and forth.