“Michelle…? Do you think that I might be excused to my sleeping quarters?”
She smiled and raised one brow.
“But I will need accompaniment for the physician’s inspection this afternoon,” she said. “I cannot spare you, Penelope. What if I drop something? Would I then pick it up myself? No, no, no. That does not befit an ice queen. It is important that my hands remain as soft as a baby’s butt.”
“Why do you have a doctor’s appointment?”
“Oh, I’m sure you know, somehow. You are Mrs. Aena now, aren’t you? Then you’re aware of the pressure upon the women of the dragon culture, particularly royalty?”
My throat constricted.
“The pressure to bear a child?” she went on. “I only recently got married, and I’m still constantly at the physician’s office, being tested for fertility and pregnancy.”
Her eyes glimmered. What she was telling me, in her own twisted way, was that she and Lethe were sleeping together. Very regularly.
Poor Lethe.
On the way to the physician’s quarters in the western tower, we passed many areas with which I had already been made familiar back when I was in Michelle’s enviable position. But then, if the role was so interchangeable, was it really enviable? At least I knew that Theon would never discard and replace me so easily…
A faint gold glow beckoned, twinkling from one open doorway into the hallway. My expression soured as I remembered what was housed in that room: the mystical astrolabe. It made me bitter to recall how close my efforts had brought the fire dragons to victory, to reclaiming their homeland… and how Michelle, the traitor, had undone it all in one fell swoop. I didn’t think I’d ever understand her reasoning: to avoid returning home, to her life, to the consequences of her little everyday decisions? Wouldn’t she just replicate them here? Or was her motivation empowerment within this society of thieves and murderers? Who would want to hold domain over such creatures?
Michelle glanced at me, perhaps sensing that the sight of the astrolabe would upset me, as she had known me well on Earth. The room was filled with servants, busily tinkering in the gears and spines of the astrolabe. When I had tumbled, on the verge of freezing to death, the astrolabe in my ermine coat, it had crunched beneath my weight and been broken ever since. From that very moment, the sun had cracked through the cloud coverage again and the snow had begun to melt. My nerves had begun to thaw.
But, as made obvious by the weather outside, the ice dragons had been busily “fixing” it ever since reclaiming it.
Even now a team of five machinists huddled over the flat yellow disc, tinkering with its ticking pieces. They paid us absolutely no mind as we approached, entrenched in their handiwork.
“What of the rete, Portella?” one of the machinists demanded of another.
Portella, a harried, aging ice dragon with a speckling of blue scales along his cheek, glared up from his efforts, hooks held in both hands. His brow was speckled in beads of sweat.
“It still will not budge,” he muttered.
A gray-haired female rolled her eyes at him and grimaced. “We haven’t much time, you know.”
“We have time enough,” Portella insisted. “It will just take me a while, but do not fear. The fire dragons will not regain the upper hand in this weather, even if the gods are on their side.”
It took all my control to not lurch forward in amazement. Had the astrolabe jammed in a position to favor the fire people?
Michelle, on the other hand, did not possess the grace of indifference. She crossed her arms over her chest, giving the machinist team a glare wintry enough to bring a swell of pride to Lethe’s breast, I was sure. “The rete froze in the exact position to benefit them in war? How is that even possible? It was broken. It should be random, meaningless gibberish.”
“And it would have been,” Portella answered grimly, “if the ice dragons had been the only people to ever adjust its settings. But we were not. The fire dragons possessed this astrolabe for untold centuries, and in their time they not only forced our island to endure a perpetual summer, but also forced the stars to obey the path of their choosing.”
I frowned with Portella and Michelle, wishing to deny it, though I had no place in doing so. I was the lowest servant imaginable—a human, a prisoner, a captive, and a traitor to the ice people. If Michelle didn’t have a personal attachment to me, I would likely be dead, so I held my tongue.
Michelle, on the other hand, threw back her head and laughed. “You’re joking with me! The holier-than-thou fire people did the exact same thing to you that you did to them when you took over the palace?”