“Theon,” I breathed. “I thought I’d never see you again.” I completely forgot about the hedge of old “friends” surrounding us, listening to our every word. I squeezed my eyes shut and let the sound of his heartbeat overwhelm my senses. I inhaled his scent in an almost dizzy relief—the copper, the salt, the leather and soil.
It was Theon who peeled me from his chest to peer into my eyes. “When you left, I will be honest, I considered leaving.” His voice became lower. “I thought that there must be nothing here for me. Perhaps it would do well to simply return to my homeland; perhaps to explore another world altogether. And yet… something made me stay. I didn’t believe in your rejection. I believed in you.”
I stared up at him breathlessly, and his fingers raked gently through my hair, trailing down to cup my chin and pull my face upward, as if on the verge of a kiss.
“I’m sorry,” a throaty voice interrupted from behind us. “Did you just say, ‘explore another world’?”
This broke the spell. For a moment the bonfire had fallen quiet and he and I had been alone on this beach. Being together felt like being encapsulated by some kind of glass, but the glass crumbled soundlessly around us, and up cropped a handful of my least close friends.
“That is what I said,” Theon confessed, peering over my head at Michelle. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand it, my lady.”
“Oh, so I’m, like, stupid, or something?”
I glanced over my shoulder, only vaguely concerned. Michelle was pouting and seemed to be pinching Andrew’s side. Her glare was turned on him rather than Theon.
“Hey, weird dude bro,” Andrew said, though he sounded like he did not want to enter this fray whatsoever. “Michelle is super-smart, so, like, don’t think that she’s not. For your own sake. ’Cause you’d be wrong.”
“Thanks, Andrew,” Michelle snapped, eyes flashing. “That was beautiful.” She leaned a little closer and whispered, “Can you not step up your vocabulary game?”
“Theon is the kindest man I’ve ever known,” I explained smoothly over the whispers. “I’m sure he meant no harm when he said that you wouldn’t understand.”
Theon squeezed my arm. “Must we stay?” he wondered in a low voice meant only for me.
Again, Michelle’s eyes flamed. There was nothing she hated more than being upstaged, unless it was being dismissed. “Please, stay. Let me get you a drink, Theon. Perhaps you can explain to me this exploration of worlds. I might not understand, but I’m sure you didn’t mean to suggest that I was incapable of learning.”
Theon looked to me, and I stared back, uncertain of what to say. If I said, “No, let’s go,” I would go down in Beggar’s Hole history as the rudest guest to ever abandon her own going-away party with some strange hunk. If I said, “We can stay,” it wouldn’t be long before Michelle got exactly what she wanted: to humiliate me for outdoing her at her own party, in full view of her fifty closest friends. If she couldn’t have my Theon, she’d ostracize him. Either way, she always needed to win.
“I will take a drink,” Theon allowed. “The matters of exploration, however, are incredibly private. I cannot share them.”
“A big secret, is it?” Michelle winked and broke away from the bonfire, heading toward the fold-out beverage table. A scattering of intrigued onlookers tagged along, murmuring about how they needed more beer, too. “I guess I can’t fault you for that. We all have our secrets. Hey, are you on Facebook?”
“I’m afraid I’m not aware of this book of which you speak,” Theon answered.
I winced.
“Really.” Michelle’s lip quirked. “That’s interesting, considering you’re a businessman, aren’t you? Isn’t that right?”
We reached the beverage table and Michelle filled his red Solo cup herself. I’d rarely if ever seen her acting the role of hostess rather than princess.
“My ‘business’ is something that an American would describe as politics,” Theon answered easily. I released the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. That was a good answer.
“Hmm.” Michelle arched an eyebrow and turned to him with the foaming cup of beer. “How interesting. What are you, then? A governor’s aide? Member of Parliament? Try me, I got a B-plus in Civics,” she said, passing the plastic drink to him.
“A prince,” he answered, taking the cup and immediately crushing it in his grip. The plastic split and beer spewed all over the sand between the two.
“Jeez!” Michelle hissed, springing back. “Princes don’t ever use plastic, I guess.” She dusted at her beer-speckled clothes. “So, what kind of prince doesn’t have any idea what the largest social media on the Internet is? What country is yours? Nepal? Yemen? Sudan?”
I’d never seen Theon truly angered until this point. His eyebrows settled low and he glared at my former best friend. “I will not have The Hearthlands disparaged.”
“The Hearthlands?” Andrew spoke up, just before taking another swig from his millionth Solo cup. “I mean, bro, I got a D in Civics that got bumped up to a C because it was football season, but even I know that there’s no country called Hearthland… right?” He glanced at the fringe of eavesdroppers. “Is that in Canada?”
Michelle rolled her eyes. “Canada is a country, you moron,” she snapped at him before turning back to Theon. “So, where is Hearthland, Mister Theon? Educate me. What continent does that belong to?”
“No continent,” Theon answered. He glanced at me again. He knew it, and I knew it; we should be getting out of here. This place was filled with nothing but haters, and it was going to get worse before it got better. Especially considering that they were drunk, there was fire here, they were a little irritated by this newcomer and he kept insulting the intelligence of an American queen bee. She was, after all, Michelle Ballinger, of the Boston Ballingers. No one talked to her like this.
“Uh, well, you see, Theon, on this particular planet—or ‘world,’ maybe you call it—there are seven continents, and every country is in one of them or another. So I don’t know what you’re talking about, unless these Hearthlands are on Mars.”
“I told you that you wouldn’t understand.”
“And I told you to try me.” Michelle stepped over the puddle of beer and thrust her face toward his. She was loaded. “Where are you from? Neptune?”
“That’s enough,” burst out of my throat. My body unfroze and I intercepted her, gripping her elbow and forcing her to take two steps out of his physical space. “What are you, a cop?”
“It was just a simple question. This guy is on my property, Penelope, and he’s being awfully suspicious. What if he’s a terrorist or something?”
“You know he’s not a terrorist. You’re just drunk, and embarrassed, and looking for a fight.”
“Embarrassed?”
“When he tells you that you wouldn’t understand, he means it,” I went on icily. “There are stranger things in this world than you have ever seen, Michelle. Gucci purse discounts and Jimmy Choo sales are not the extent of the mysteries of the universe.”
“Oh, so now I’m, like, stupid and cheap?” Michelle asked. “Just because I like nice things? Screw you, Nell. You can’t just walk in here with your psycho boyfriend who is, by the way, a total con artist, and insult me like that. I threw this party for you, you know!”
“But you didn’t, did you?” I took Theon’s hand and pulled him from this fray. “You threw it for yourself. Happy New Year, Michelle,” I said, turning my back on her and on the entire world of Beggar’s Hole. “Hope you find whatever it is you need to be happy.” And, strangely, I had the confidence and the security to mean it.
Chapter 30: Nell
I marched over the sand, invigorated by the first time I could ever remember having stood up to Michelle. Theon said nothing. We had almost reached my dad’s car by the time he tugged at my hand and spun me to face him. “What was that, Nell?” he asked. “You can’t pretend that was nothing.”
“What do you mean?” Apparently
, I could.
“The last time I saw you, you accused me of being a ‘con artist’. You said that the same pendant of which you made use tonight was only a trinket to woo naïve Earth women, and that I would only be interested in making premarital love to you; and yet now… tonight… you told your friend—and the whole of this town, it seems—that there are stranger things in this world than she has ever seen.” He shook his head. “I came because you activated the pendant, which is only meant for emergencies. I thought you needed me.” He frowned. “Even though it seems that you do not.”
“I do,” I assured him, sliding my hands into his and gripping tightly. “I do need you, Theon. I just didn’t know it until you were gone.”
He extracted his hand from my own and cupped my cheek gently. “I was never gone,” he whispered, descending to bestow me with a kiss. His mouth moved deeply against mine, and the black asphalt of Michelle’s driveway fell from beneath my feet. A torrent of fire scooped us into the air, and we were carried to another world without time or place. I was only vaguely aware of his fingers running through my hair, of his body moving against mine, and of the motion of my feet and hands.
When he slowly pulled away, his warm lips departing from my own tingling ones, the stars overhead hesitated to fall into place. Eventually, the world around us reassembled, and I found that we had migrated several feet. We were now directly in front of my father’s Mercedes. Theon must have carried me.
The sight of the car reminded me of real life. I’d promised my dad that I would return shortly from the party and spend my last night in town with him.
My last night in town…
Because, in the morning, I had a flight back to DC. To Mom. To the Shenandoah Institute. And, in another two days’ time, school would begin again. The mill of exams, homework, the waiting game for internship applications to be returned in the mail. What had once seemed so exciting was now hopelessly dull.
“Theon,” I breathed, gazing up at him. “I have to leave tomorrow. I’m going back to my mother. The District of Columbia. Remember?”
He nodded gravely. “I do recall.”
I forced myself to say the next words, jammed in my throat. “What’s going to happen to us if I leave here?”
“Nothing. If need be, I will follow you there, too. I came to this country, Penelope, in search of one woman… And I believe that I’ve found her.”
“Theon.” I couldn’t stop saying his name, as if conjuring him again and again, binding him to my side, ascertaining that he would never leave. “I think…” I paused, swallowing hard. “I think I’m falling in love with you.”
At this, he lowered himself again, and the real world only remained with us because I could feel the steel of the Mercedes passenger door pressing against my back, pinning me harder and harder to Theon’s insistent body. I moaned and the kiss transmuted like lead to gold, becoming wild, desperate, thirsty. His lips traced my throat with force, and we entered a rhythm, bound together as tightly as we were, as if to mimic one heart pumping.
When the powerful spell finally released us and our bodies were able to separate, even the wintry air not penetrating our bubble of heat, I stared up at him dazedly, feeling like I was on drugs.
“You must be the one,” he told me. “I know it to be true. But…”
I felt a ripping sensation down the center of my chest and my mouth fell open, as if he had knocked the air from my lungs. “But?” Even though I’d walked out on him only a few days ago, I couldn’t think about losing him again. Those two days had been hard enough. “But what?”
Theon sighed. “But there is more,” he explained. “There is more, and you reacted so poorly to the mere beginning of the story… I hesitate to finish telling it. I do not want to lose you again.”
“You won’t,” I said, daring to reach up and brush my hand along his sculpted cheek. He was forever touching me, but I hesitated to touch him, as his body cut such an intimidating shape. I couldn’t resist this time. “You can tell me whatever you need to say.”
Theon shook his head and gazed at me with great seriousness. “We must leave this place,” he said. “We cannot speak of these things here, in the company of such small minds.”
“Okay.” I frowned up at him and gestured to the Mercedes against which I leaned. “We can take my dad’s car somewhere private and talk there. Okay? I’ll drive.”
Theon leaned down again and brushed his lips lightly to mine. Even the slightest taste of him sent me onto my toes again, butterflies rioting in my belly.
“Let us return to the beach where your father stays,” Theon suggested. “That will be a good place for what I must show you.”
He walked me to the other side of the vehicle and opened its door for me, even though it was technically my car and I was the one driving. I sat down in the driver’s seat, thanking him, and he crossed to the other side of the vehicle and entered the passenger side door.
We fastened our seatbelts and pulled onto the road again, but I couldn’t even pretend to be focused on the signs and the turns. I had to slam on my brakes just to stop myself from charging through a red light at an intersection. I just couldn’t stop thinking about it.
How much deeper could the rabbit hole go?
Chapter 31: Nell
When we reached the turn toward the string of beach houses, I hesitated and chose not to park the Mercedes in my dad’s garage. He would know I was home then, and I couldn’t risk him finding us. I knew that whatever was to come next was vastly important to Theon, and important to my relationship with him, if I was going to have one. With this in mind, I turned the wheel and propelled us into the driveway of the vacant beach house, parking where loose gravel transformed into sand. It was a bleak and freezing New Year’s Eve, and no lights spilled down onto the beach from the houses overhead. All was quiet, and silent, and lonesome.
Theon and I climbed from the vehicle without a word. “It’s fitting that you would park here,” Theon commented.
“Why did you think that this would be a better place than Michelle’s driveway?” I had to admit that this made me nervous. We needed to go to a special place for this next part. I’d already seen harpies, and a magical mirror. What more could there possibly be to reveal? “Where do you want to go, anyway?”
We crested the beach, which sprawled before us in monochromatic swaths: the gray sand, the black water, the dark gray sky. It had looked like this on the night we’d met. My first night in Beggar’s Hole. It had snowed. On our right was the craggy mountainside from which he’d rescued me, and on our left was the remainder of the strip, including my father’s new place.
Theon was quiet.
“I want to go into the cave,” he told me.
I balked at this idea. The cave? The same place where I had almost died that night? I glanced out toward the sea to gauge whether the tide was high or low, but who was I kidding? I was no oceanographer, and it was dark.
Theon grabbed my hand in his own, startling me, and pulled me down toward the shore with him. “Don’t be afraid,” he said. “I would never let harm come to you. I didn’t on that night, and I won’t now.”
He moved down along the beach, toward the cave, and I let him take me, however reluctant I was feeling. We reached the damp sands, and I realized that the rocks on which I had sat that fateful night were exposed, as they had been when I’d first taken my seat, and the snow had begun to fall. The tide must have been out. The rocks jutted up from the wet sand, and we needed to swing our legs over them, crawling across others, entering the narrow slit of the cave’s entrance. In spite of how dark and cold it was, it seemed laughable to me now that I wasn’t being choked by wave after wave of frigid saltwater. When the cave was dry, it was filled with stalagmites, yes, but easily navigable.
Theon gripped my hips and easily hoisted me up onto the stone shelving which led deeper still into the cave, the same shelf which had created the basin where I had almost drowned. He walked deeper still into the cavern, ho
lding me beneath one protective arm as we walked, until he paused and released me. I heard a rough exhale and fire suddenly filled a pit of dry kindling. My eyes bulged. In an instant, a light source had been brewed from nothing, and cast its oily yellow color across the walls. I recognized this place. The bed of feather and stone. The fire. The arched ceilings. He had brought me to the same place I had regained consciousness on the night we met.
“Theon.” Even a mere whisper in this cave echoed with clarity. “Why are we here again?”
I needed him to show me. I was afraid it would be too much; I needed to see it and know that it wasn’t.
Theon ignored my question, which wasn’t like him at all. Instead, he turned his back on me, shrugged away his woolen jacket, and let it fall into a puddle at his feet. Next, he skimmed his loose cotton shirt over his head, revealing his chiseled and muscular back. I won’t lie. My mouth went a little dry, and even after everything I’d seen and been told to expect, I was shocked to see caps of glossy black scale on both of his shoulder blades. I remembered vividly how he had resisted my exploring hands on a previous night as they had crept beneath his shirt toward his shoulders. He hadn’t trusted me yet, not like he trusted me now. Not like we trusted each other now.
He didn’t stop at his shirt, however. He unfastened and removed his pants next, until every article of clothing he had previously worn had been shed to the floor. My mind wandered to other things, and I forgot exactly what he was here to show me…
Until spines erupted from his shoulder blades simultaneously, and I bit my lower lip to keep from crying out. I wasn’t afraid of him—it just looked like it must have hurt. But he made no sound whatsoever as claws exploded from his fingertips and toes, and his body hunched and melted and ballooned all at once. His hands and feet became broad, clawed talons, shiny and obsidian. Ebony scales coursed over his skin, laced in gold, and leathery, jointed wings unfolded from his back. They, too, were black with golden undersides. A sharp, pointed tail sprouted from the base of his spine and unraveled across the length of the cavern. I sprang away from it with a yelp as it slashed into the air and dropped onto the ground at my feet, ultimately harmless. At least, it was harmless to me. I was certain that this gigantic monster, for lack of a better word, could do serious damage to a foe, if he set his mind to it. Of course, this wasn’t some monster, and I knew that. Even as I stared at him in dawning comprehension and waning horror, it struck me: this was Theon. I couldn’t fear him. I couldn’t judge him. This was the man I’d fallen for.
A Shade of Dragon Page 12