A Shade of Dragon 3(22)

Theon took a deep breath and closed his eyes, bowing his head. “Okay. Why are you telling me this? What did Pythia say?”

“The reason we are not meant to be,” I whispered bleakly. “She told me.”

“Don’t listen to that—she’s mad, you know—”

“She told me that I couldn’t have children,” I blurted. I had to let it out in a rush. It was the only way to bear it. “And I had it confirmed myself, by someone who I doubt is mad.” I forced myself to raise my eyes to his, and to keep my jaw firm, to keep my lips from trembling. “A physician.”

Theon stared at me for a moment, unmoving, frozen.

And then, in an instant, he was animate again. Too animate.

“I was going to the astrolabe,” he informed me, eyes alight with false hope. It broke my heart to see. “It sets the stars. It can remedy the war. It can remedy you, too.” He touched my lower abdomen, as if he could heal my womb by touch.

“But… Theon,” I said, “I am not a fire dragon. I am not a part of this world, except that you have brought me here. I don’t believe that the gods of your stars hold sway over my body. They did not forge me. I’m—”

The heavy echo of a door closing brought us to silence again, and again Theon clutched me to his chest and the two of us went utterly still. Clank, clank, clank, clank. The two guards shuffled along the corridor—our silhouettes must have been hidden by the light pattern on the tapestry… and an inattentive eye. They had walked these corridors too many times with no disturbance, no trespassers. Their eyes had glazed.

Clank, clank, clank.

The sound of their footsteps faded into the distance, and our bodies relaxed into each other. I exhaled and lifted my eyes back to him, unable to move on from this conversation before I said my piece, for whatever it meant.

“Theon…” I whispered, gripping his shirt in my fingers. I couldn’t imagine losing him. I loved him from the texture of his fingertips and the smell of his neck to the softness of his voice and the way I could never really fault him for any decision he made, even his mistakes. Dammit. I loved him. I was his wife… “Maybe there’s some other answer?” I bit my lip and blinked up at him. “I mean, I know that everyone says we’re supposed to have children. But everyone says a lot of things. Everyone says that you should be with a dragoness, and not with a human. Everyone says that I belong in my own world, and not here. But that is just what other people think. They can’t…” I remembered then, in a startling flash, my conversation with Lethe. It applied here as easily as there.

“Stop waiting for other people to ask you what you want. You don’t live in a world where that will happen. You live in a world where people will tell you what you want, and if you don’t fight, you’ll end up living their life—the life they’ve assigned you—not your own.… Because no one is ever going to ask you. You have to tell them.”

“They can’t decide our path,” I finished. “They can plan it, but our path is up to us… and the gods,” I added for Theon’s sake. “We take what we’ve been given, and we forge what our hearts need in order to survive.”

“But—” Theon was clearly frustrated by this mentality of self-determination over predestination. It had never been taught to him; that much was obvious. “But what if we can change it?”

“Theon…” He kept hurting me without realizing it. I couldn’t even be angry at him. Just hurt. I cleared my throat. “What if we can’t? What if we can’t change it?” We stared back and forth, neither saying a thing, for a span of several seconds. Too long. “Would you leave me?”

“No!” he insisted, raising his voice. His eyes widened as if I had stabbed him. “Nell… never. You’re my wife.” His jaw set and his eyes flattened with resolve as he spoke. His hands slid over my arms and clutched them. “I love you. That’s not going to change, ever. No matter what.”

“Then maybe we should stop trying to live around the future. Stop listening to oracles and astrolabes, and just… live. Just make our own destiny. Our own fate. Today. And every day. By living the lives we want.”

Theon’s eyes searched mine. “Would you think,” he whispered, “that it was crazy, if I said that I’d never thought of that before?”

The door at the end of the hall opened again, but this time no clanking came. It was not the guards who approached, and I stiffened. Ironically, the guards were the safest individuals to pass this alcove. They were so used to the trek, they’d become unobservant. The same might not be true for any visitor, or member of the court or royal family.