Michelle looked from the mid-air diving and lunging of the fire and ice dragons, to the astrolabe, and back again. It had been her bargaining chip once before. It had saved her life once before. Knowing Michelle, she was banking that this precious item could do the same thing twice… and she lunged for the winged woman, which even I had to admit took courage.
The harpy’s arms, shriveled either from lack of use or poor engineering, were all too easy for Michelle to wrench the astrolabe out of. The harpy cawed and lashed out with a leathery talon, striking her beautiful face. Michelle floundered and collapsed into the sand. I could not let Michelle have that astrolabe; she’d attempted to murder me maybe half an hour ago. She’d sought to make me her lifelong slave. These things had exhausted the last of my excuses in her name.
I lunged onto the shore and grasped the interlocking discs from her arms; still, in spite of that nasty wound, her arms were wound tightly around the astrolabe. We rolled over the damp beach, kicking, thrashing. I got desperate and hooked my fingernails into claws, swiping down Michelle’s wound. She wailed and reeled away; I collapsed onto my back with the astrolabe on my chest.
I looked for Theon, but he was now distracted by a battle with Lethe, their reflections of black and blue twisting on the surface of the lake. Dear God… what would I do if either one was stricken and collapsed into the water? Was pulled into that vortex in Beggar’s Lake? I couldn’t take it; I wished they wouldn’t fight.
Michelle held her face and moaned, rolling away.
My eyes lifted to the sky overhead, where the silver and orange dragon twisted in the sky. The silver dragon—Vulott—locked eyes with me over the orange wing of his opponent, and then… his mouth opened and emitted a twisted lance of pure white ice. I screamed; it was moving too fast; there was no time!
A disc of white ice zoomed from over the lake, intersecting with the lance, and both shattered and fell in a rain of razor-sharp shards onto the beach. I rolled on top of the astrolabe, burying my face into the sand. I drew my legs up beneath it, cradling the astrolabe against my torso, then forced myself to look into the sky. I knew more was coming. Just because Lethe had intervened with his father, protecting me… didn’t mean the assault had ended.
There, in the sky, zooming toward me. The silver beast. The insane ex-king. Vulott.
The red harpy shrilled and flapped, disappearing.
I shrieked and rolled away, covering my head, waiting for the sting of icy claws into my back.
Theon
I’d hesitated at Thundercliff, lingering there. Nell was safe. I’d seen Lethe swoop and scoop her with the precision of his long tail. I knew he would take care of her—I thought that he would, anyway. And I needed to wait for Altair. I couldn’t take on both Vulott and Lethe. If they saw me prior to that event, they might relocate, realizing that the harpies had betrayed their trust. But as soon as Altair appeared in the sky, I moved to greet him in mid-air. “The harpies have taken the Eraeus men to the ghoul portal! They have the astrolabe—and they have Penelope!”
“Let’s go!”
Altair and I moved through the sky, fortunate for the coverage of the night. The portal of the realm of the ghouls—vicious, macabre, and twisted creatures—was located at the bottom of the swirling lake, in the heart of the forest.
We found them within a few minutes, scanning the thick forest for the beach where the harpies had agreed they would lead the ice dragons. We found them… and they found us. The bigger one, Vulott, shifted and took to the sky all in one horrific ball of flesh and scales, melting as a man, emerging as a dragon. Lethe hesitated, but took to the sky after his father. Lethe—in spite of Penelope’s fondness for the man—would find no similar quarter in my heart. As Vulott locked onto my brother, my eyes narrowed, and Lethe locked onto them.
I wanted to fight him… but then I remembered how he’d swooped down and his tail had whipped out and collected Nell from the sky when I’d been too far behind to do the same. I wanted to fight him, but I didn’t want to fight him. As he came to meet me in the sky—a blast of corrosive frost, met with a ball of fire from my own throat—it seemed a shadow play. A thrust for the entertainment of who? His father?
The shriek of the harpy sounded behind my back, but I couldn’t twist to observe.
Another streak of ice zoomed past me, and disappeared into the lake’s water beyond.
My eyes shot to the lake below. I could see the dark hole, roughly the size of a bicycle wheel, twisting on the surface of the water, as black as any of the cosmic portals, trembling, moaning open. I knew the ghouls waited on the other side.