I was clinging to Lethe’s neck when I caught sight of Theon heading up the stairwell. As Lethe charged out the open window, followed immediately by the bird-woman and Vulott, I craned my neck to maintain eye contact with Theon, hoping that I could silently send him a message. That everything was going to be okay. As long as I was his queen, nothing could come between us. And he would have his empire back if it was the last thing that I did.
Lethe pulled Michelle and me onward into the dazzling snow clouds of Everwinter, and Theon grew smaller and smaller in the broken window of the castle. It was the only building within the city walls which did not appear to be a blackened shell now. Smoke rose, thick and steady, from the ruined country.
“Did you hear that?” Michelle yelled into my ear. In spite of our differences, her arms were nonetheless locked around my waist.
“No!” I yelled back. “I didn’t hear anything!”
But it was a lie. I had heard. I’d heard a voice on the wind calling out my name.
Theon
The saddest element of our battle tactic was how readily the soldiers of Everwinter relinquished “their” property after it had become damaged. The castle particularly could be salvaged, as it was the greatest structure of The Hearthlands, and the most fortified and the last to be reached, but when we arrived at its gate and began sending our arrows through its windows, the ice dragons inside poured out as if a plague had entered the very air, poisoning all it touched. I almost wanted to yell at them, insulted by their behavior, even if it served me.
The city at our backs would take weeks to rebuild, months, maybe years, depending on the manpower we could invest.
As I had directed my men forward, part of my mind had continued to work—could never stop working—as a king, envisioning his future on the land. But the worst of it was already over. The majority of the common folk had fled, followed by the guards and the maids. All that remained within the walls, if they did in fact remain, was the royal family.
Before we entered the castle, I briefed my men on the situation. “My wife is in there,” I explained. “My wife is in there, and good fire people may remain in those dungeons, so listen—take care with what is destroyed. In so many ways, take care. There is not much left behind now. If we can manage to intimidate or discourage through shock and awe alone, let us. The island has shed enough of its own blood for our sake.”
As I moved through the ring of remaining fire dragons, I found older women amongst us—older women who had not been with us when we had departed from the ogres’ beach. I found malnourished men with stern faces and joyless eyes… and I recognized these people by the raw strips of flesh on their wrists and ankles, by the shabbiness of their garments beneath the off-key luxuriousness of their coats. They had come from within the castle walls, not without. They were prisoners. Had Nell taken the risk of setting them all free?
“Good woman,” I said, touching one of the escaped prisoners on the shoulder. “You did not come from our camp offshore.”
“No, sir,” she answered, bowing deeply. “My name is Ulla, and I hail from the mighty Iphras. I have been captured twice now in this godsforsaken war. The first time I was taken to the dungeon and freed by your own hand, my king, but stung by an ice arrow and recaptured in the resulting turmoil in which so many escaped. In the second time, I was freed by another of the Aena name.”
“Penelope?” I asked hopefully, casting my eyes toward the castle, haloed in snowfall.
“Nay,” the woman answered. “I know no Penelope. Altair Aena, the younger prince of Erisard.”
I stared at her without comprehending. I forgot the snow falling softly around us, forgot the smoldering desolation at our backs and the castle awaiting beyond. Everything fell away at the promise, within my fingertips’ reach, of family restored. It had been months since I’d seen Altair. I’d thought him dead. He had been missing since this battle began, almost two months ago, and I’d seen so many die, I’d thought that surely… surely…
I swallowed, blinking away tears. “Where?” I asked her thickly. “Where have you seen Altair?”
“The last I saw of him, he was expelling me from the castle walls, sending me to be of any service to the cause,” she explained. “He found these shoes for me.” She kicked up her fur-lined, suede boots, which I recognized as originally belonging to my grandmother’s collection. “And last I saw him, he was throwing a coat onto a young man and driving him out the door. He was in the dungeons with us. But a woman claiming to be queen set him free.”