Nell shrugged, having already made her peace with their history, but Michelle gaped at her in shock. I supposed she’d never imagined that the day would come, that someone would look at her and just reject it all. Not for any special reason. Just because her wares were not appealing. “But—but—” she spluttered.
“Good luck with your beach house, Michelle Ballinger, of the Boston Ballingers.” A courteous adieu had been long engrained in my muscle memory. In spite of everything we’d been through, in spite of the betrayals, in spite of the fact that she was as callous and cutthroat as any ice dragoness, I couldn’t stop myself from wishing her good luck. “May your future here in the land of Maine, among mortal men and the company they keep, the business they entail, aid you in your quest to find happiness.”
Michelle’s eyes bulged, and she must’ve been panicking, because she turned next to Lethe. I had never before pitied an ice dragon as I pitied one now. “Lethe, m-my king,” she pronounced, striding past Nell and I, going to brace Lethe’s cheeks in her palms and force him to peer into her eyes. Like some kind of demon witch intent upon casting a spell, I thought. “You can’t leave me here. I’m your wife! Your queen! You can’t abandon me… not any more than you can abandon all of it. Everwinter. Your people. Your vision for the future.”
But Lethe pulled his eyes easily away from hers. “I would not have; you’re right,” he murmured. “But allow me to stop forcing you.” He took a step back and regarded her with more warmth than Nell or I had, strangely. “I know that you fear your life will have lost its magic without the world of the dragons,” he went on. “But there is magic all around you. Even here.” He bowed low. “I wish you all the best in finding it.”
“Come,” I said, mostly to Altair, and slightly to Lethe—who was, oddly, beginning to win my respect. “Michelle. Enjoy your life here, in Beggar’s Hole, among its human peoples. Not the portal of The Hearthlands, or any other escape to any other world, but an appreciation of the average things in your own homeland, for your own destiny—that will be the key. I am sure Penelope and I both hope that you find it.”
With that, I shifted back into my dragon form, and Altair and Lethe followed suit. It was much easier to ignore the sting of Maine’s fading winter with the thick scales of a dragon’s hide. I nudged Nell onto my back, and she shifted into position with surprising fluidity and grace. What a relief to know that, although the physical might have come naturally to Michelle… Nell was the one who was willing to work at something to make it better, whether that thing was as fantastical as the riding of a dragon’s back or as mundane as a day-in and day-out marriage.
My wings came down, up and down, up and down, pulling us together into the sky. Michelle grew smaller and sadder on the beach below. It was amazing how, when one was first introduced to Michelle, she seemed more grand than the average woman. She had all the aura and presence of a true queen, of an almost magical being. And yet, when stripped of the glamour to her spells, she was even less than the average woman. More like a sick child, hungry and cold. She grew small, and the twisting vortex of Beggar’s Lake filtered by beneath us.
I swallowed, thinking of what I knew regarding the realm of the ghouls.
I was certain we would never have to worry about the machinations of Vulott again, and I had anticipated that Lethe would follow him into the vortex. But he had not, perhaps confirming Nell’s approval of his character, or at the very least, his wits.
But he hadn’t known that the vortex of Beggar’s Lake led to the portal of the ghouls. If he had known, he would certainly have stopped his own father, wouldn’t he? If he had known that the vortex led into the portal of the ghouls, and he had allowed Vulott to go without warning, that spoke to his feelings regarding the war his father had started and passed to him like a torch. But ice dragons were also notoriously uneducated—perhaps, in part, due to being relegated to Obran’s peninsula, the coolest zone of the island—both on foreign lands and their own. I was willing to bet that he hadn’t known… which meant that he simply hadn’t been willing to even move to pursue the critical device.
And what of the remainder of the ice dragons?
Would we find them clustered in wait for an edict from their throneless king, as the fire people had awaited my father, and then as they had clung to me?
I doubted it. Without a determined figurehead, their dreams would shrink to encompass only the simple luxuries of their own lives: the accumulation of wealth, and the production of children.