“How sweet and considerate you are.” Michelle slid her hands over his arm, perhaps incited to show affection by some stab of jealousy. “What a wonderful king I have.”
As I strode from the door, heading to the servant wing, Lethe’s voice drifted up behind me, directed at Michelle. “I’m not just your king,” he reminded her. “I’m your husband.”
Theon
I was creeping closer to the western tower when the sound of wings beating brought me to a standstill. My eyes scanned the hallway. My blood ran cold. Had someone shifted into dragon form in the palace itself?
“Theon!” a harsh female voice called to me. I glared at the approaching figure of the harpy. The meeting must have gone very poorly. “Come with me,” she commanded, “and let us talk of further arrangements regarding these dragons. Place your satchel around my neck.”
“I can’t just leave,” I hissed. “I’m finally here. My wife is here. And the astrolabe is here. It’s the last hope of my people.”
“You can come back soon enough. Trust that the astrolabe is not the only hope of your people. You also have an alliance with a nest of harpies located at the pinnacle of Thundercliff.”
I shook my head, uncertain. “How can the harpies—”
“Come with me, I said,” Parnassia repeated. “We will discuss this at length in a safer location.”
I was hesitant, particularly about leaving Nell… but she was safe here for now. She was safe in the role of a servant girl, however humiliating it might have been, and as much as I hated to say it, I believed that Lethe would secretly go to great lengths to ensure her continued safety. If anyone was placing her in danger right then, it was me, simply by being here, and I did believe that the harpy would form an alliance with the fire dragons if I went with her. Her hot emotions had flared, and it might have brought about a sudden change of heart.
And the astrolabe, besides, was certainly guarded. I might be able to procure it, but not without significant losses. It was possible that I myself would die, and Nell would pay the price along with me.
So I climbed into the satchel, and the harpy’s wings beat, carrying us through the palace halls, out its gates, and back into the frigid nighttime air, back to the shores of one of our beaches.
It was only when the temperature changed from icy to balmy that I knew Parnassia had borne me across the waves and to the ogres’ beach, where my people made camp. When she landed, it was amid cries of surprise and alarm from the fire dragons, whose suspicions were rightly roused by the sight of such a beast in their camp. The appearance of a harpy was never an omen of good tidings.
“What brings you here, snatcher?” my own mother’s muffled voice demanded.
The leather satchel lost its tension and collapsed into the sand with me, splitting open. I came rolling out, and found that a wall of fire dragons stared down at me, awaiting an explanation.
“Theon,” my mother exclaimed. “There you are! We were worried.” Her eyes were warm with relief. She’d already lost one boy, and her husband. Neither she nor Nell could stand to lose me now.
“Your son, the dethroned prince and future king of your land,” Parnassia explained, “intercepted me this evening as I had lost my way in search of the portal between the island and Earth. He learned of a deal I had struck with his wife, but our commerce did not end there. In exchange for a valued item from his satchel, I snuck him onto the property of the palace—”
A murmur of confusion rose from the crowd.
“What barter have you made with those devils?” my mother demanded, eyes flashing between myself and the harpy.
“It is no concern of yours what past the harpies and the ice dragons may have once shared,” Parnassia sneered. She must have felt awfully secure to speak in that way to a fire dragon, particularly to the queen. “The concern of yours is that the deal between us has soured. The new queen, a human, oversteps her bounds. And the king, a man of no guts or spine, will not rein her in, nor will he deliver on his own claims. This has made me… vengeful. And it will bring my sisters to the same desire of vengeance. We will retaliate for this deceit… and you will want our aid in this battle.”
Mother smirked. “What aid can a harpy be to a fire dragon? You are only a quarter of our size in battle.”
“But in the snow? In the storm? Are we so much weaker?” It was a solid point. While we became stiff and slow in the cold, harpies, like ice dragons, flourished. “They do not trust you. They would kill a fire dragon in an instant. But we harpies have forged an alliance with them. They do not realize their misstep by allowing the new queen to speak so boldly of her demands.”