Mom scoffed, and Dad nodded at her in agreement.
“When you see The Hearthlands, you’ll understand,” I promised them.
“You’re still on about that imaginary island?” Dad asked.
“You’re not staying?” Mom asked.
“Of course I’m not staying,” I replied, as gently as I could. “Mom… I will visit as often as I can. Okay? I’m a married woman. I’m a queen. We’re in the process of rebuilding. The kingdom is in a critical stage right now.”
“But you’re—What about the spring semester at Shenandoah?” she demanded, blanching.
I smiled. “I won’t be going back to The Shenandoah Institute,” I told her. “My life has gone in another direction.”
“This is crazy, Nell,” she breathed, staring at me as if I was telling her that I wanted to join the circus.
“Do I seem like I’ve gone mad?” I asked. “Is there no such thing as marriage, no such thing as royalty, as responsibility to a land?” I hadn’t even gotten to the “dragon” part yet. I figured they would need a very slow acclimatization to this new reality.
Mom stared at me stonily for several beats. “No. You don’t seem any different than you always have.”
I exhaled, my shoulders loosening. “Exactly. Hey, babe?” I asked Theon, turning toward him. He raised his eyebrows. “Could you take that love letter out of your satchel, so I can show it to them?”
“Oh, yes.” He glanced around and then smiled sheepishly. “I left it on the front porch,” he explained. “I’m not sure it can fit easily through the front door.”
Mom and Dad shared a look which said: The man owns a satchel that won’t fit through a front door.
But I would be patient with them. I would help them find their way to understanding Theon, and the fire dragons, and The Hearthlands. My duties as queen were many. They didn’t just end when I stepped off of the soil.
Theon returned from outside, the yellowed scroll of papyrus in his hand. “Satchel definitely won’t fit. But here’s the love letter.”
“Love letter?” Mom raised a brow at us. “What is this?”
I would save the oracle for another time. That might be a bit much for them.
“I sent you a message with it before,” I said. “Don’t you remember?“
They both looked at me, agape. From their expressions, a part of me doubted whether they had ever received the note I’d sent while back in The Hearthlands, but another part of me guessed that more likely, the two had refused to believe their eyes. Brushed it off as a hallucination caused by grief. Buried it away in their subconscious.
“You could call it magic, I suppose,” I said. “Let me show you. The paper sends a message to anyone you love, wherever they are. Do you have a pen?” Naturally, Mom furnished me with a pen, and I scrawled out, Mom, Dad. I love you. I’ll be home soon.
The words materialized behind our heads, on the wall of the living room.
“Oh my,” Mom breathed.
“Hey! My wall!” Dad barked.
The words disintegrated after several seconds, and they both turned their eyes toward me, confused.
“I’m not exactly certain what we’ve witnessed here today,” Mom murmured.
“This is how I will stay in touch with you across the distance between our worlds,” I said, pressing the pen back into Mom’s hand and dividing the love letter into two pieces. “And this is how you can get in touch with me. The words will appear wherever I am, and I will come to you.”
“You say the distance is great,” Mom reiterated.
“The distance is great,” I agreed, “but it’s also small. It’s hard to grasp, and we don’t have to cover it all right away. We have the rest of our lives to figure out all the little pieces.”
I looked at Theon, and then back at them. They seemed so young to me suddenly. But they would grow again. As they came to accept this shift to their paradigm, they would seem less and less scared, less and less confused. They would come to accept what their eyes would show them. They would come to accept Theon, and me, and our new life together… in time.
“We can’t stay,” I told Mom and Dad again.
“You can’t just go!” Mom cried. “You just got here!”
“We’ll visit soon,” I promised. “We have a wedding to attend in the morning.” I stepped forward and embraced Dad, then Mom. Their faces were still distraught.
“I just don’t get it,” Mom exclaimed.
“You will,” I promised her. “I had a hard time with it, at first, too. But—let’s just say—for all the jabs I made at Zada? How I called those YouTube videos fakes?”
Mom pursed her lips and nodded.
“It was all true,” I told her simply. “The videos are real. And Zada… she was right. Harpies. And oracles. And witches. And dragons.” I smiled and leaned forward, kissing Mom’s cheek. “They’re all real. We’ll be back soon. I promise.”
They were hesitant, but they bade us farewell. Theon extended his hand to my father, and I watched closely. Dad’s eyes shifted to Mom, and then to me, and, with a kind of grimace, he took Theon’s hand and gave it a brusque shake.
“Take care of her,” my mother commanded him.
“I will,” Theon promised, bowing slightly. “I do love her. I love her with all my heart.”
“And you,” I said to Dad. “Take care of her.” He and I both knew that I meant Mom. Theon wasn’t the only one here charged with the delicate task of maintaining a woman’s heart.
Dad stuck out his hand, and I caught the ghost of a tear in his eyes. A bittersweet tug swelled in my heart. “I will,” he promised me. We shook hands, and he pulled me into his arms once more, for a final hug. “It’s just hard to let go,” he croaked.
“I know,” I said, patting his shoulder. “But you’re not. You’re not letting go of anything except your idea of what life—or ‘destiny’—or even me—have to be.” I pulled away and found that the tears in his eyes shimmered all the thicker. “You’re just growing,” I promised him softly.
He pulled me close again and gave me a hard kiss on the forehead. I stared at Dad and smiled, finding it strange that my own eyes stung, until Theon’s hand slid into my own. I looked back to Theon and smiled again, though the smile was little more than a mask. This was harder than I had thought—but it had to be done. And it would be okay. It would be okay.
Dad touched my face, and Mom reached out and squeezed my shoulder. I wanted to remind them that they had each other, but decided against it… just in case destiny had another change of heart. Theon pulled me from the porch, down the wooden stairs, and I knew that they were watching as we disappeared.
From Theon’s back, as we forged our way toward the portal at the rock island, I glanced over my shoulder once more, hair whipping in the wind, as if to say goodbye once and for all to the strip of land where I had grown from that child to this woman. I could no longer see the wooden porch of the beach house, but a feeling stirred in my gut that Mom and Dad still stood there, staring out across the sea, watching the unbelievable silhouette of a black dragon as it became smaller and smaller, the woman who looked an awful lot like their daughter riding on its back.
Epilogue: Nell
The wedding was a small but lavish ceremony, held in the throne room of the palace late the following morning, with only a handful of attendants. At breakfast—an indulgent spread of warm peach bread and cream cheese with champagne; dragon cuisine was one to which I wouldn’t require much time to adjust—I dined with the court, including the former queen, Mrs. Aena, and Lethe. Theon had been drafted into helping Altair prepare. Merulina had likewise taken a retinue of her closest friends to the atrium bath house for skin treatments.
I tried to convince Lethe to attend—he had expressed to me his sorrow that he doubted he would ever find someone as Theon had found me, or as Altair had found Merulina, and I’d impressed upon him that a wedding, even a small one, was a great place to meet other hopefuls and romantics. “I’d rat
her not,” he said, shifting his eyes from me to gaze wistfully out across The Hearthlands… which still resembled a more peaceful, however chill, Everwinter. “But thank you, though.” He smiled unconvincingly. “I’d better enjoy this winter while the island has it, and take myself out for a walk.”
I watched Lethe go with a sad kind of smile, but brightened immediately when Theon, of all people, took his seat. “Hey, babe,” I greeted him. “I thought you were off with Altair, helping him sober up and recite his vows and all that.”
“First of all, you would be surprised how well dragons can hold their liquor,” Theon replied. “And, secondly, I am actually still ‘with’ him, technically, but I was in the hall, looking for more undamaged vases, and Merulina caught me and asked me to send you to her. She’s in the royal family wing. One of the ladies in her court actually is rather hungover. Merulina would like help getting dressed, and, well, she said that she thought you’d be the most… appropriate.” His eyes darted to his mother. “She still feels a little uncomfortable among fire dragons, it would seem, given the history there.”
“Of course,” I replied, “I’ll go.”
Theon showed me to her room and we shared a quick kiss—though no kiss was too quick; we were still newlyweds—before he departed.
I knocked lightly once, and entered the chamber to discover a distraught yet gorgeous bride, her fiery tresses splashed down her shoulders in soft curls, garbed in a dazzling white gown, with twin tears tracking down her alabaster cheeks. “Hello, Penelope,” she said, pitchy and hoarse. “I can’t get his mother’s pendant to snap.” More tears darted down her cheeks, though she refused to sob as a human bride might have. “I was worried it was a bad sign.”
“Oh, pfft,” I said, striding forward with confidence and taking my position behind her, grasping the silver band of the emerald pendant in my fingers. It was easy to know what to say in the face of a crying bride. You say anything. You say whatever you have to, to make her stop crying. “Everyone needs to stop worrying so much about signs around here.” At least I really did mean that. I loved Theon with all my heart, and I felt that our souls were indeed a twin flame… but he would never find me consulting the stars half as often as he did. I preferred to study and labor to ensure an outcome, rather than cast bones or peer into a ball of crystal. “It’s just hard to secure a necklace you can’t see.”
“The necklace of my mother-in-law,” Merulina reminded me sharply, “who hates me.”
“She does not hate you. You love her son. You took care of him when she couldn’t. How much could she possibly hate you? She just doesn’t know you. That’s all.”
“She knows all she needs to know. She knows I’m an ice dragoness.”
I rolled my eyes and grasped Merulina’s shoulders, twisting her in my direction. I couldn’t take any more of this victimhood. “I’m a human and she bowed to me as the new queen. She just needs some time. After a while, she’ll realize the same thing that I did: people are all the same—ice dragons, and fire dragons, and humans. We’re all the same in a lot of ways, and we’re all different, too, in little ways that really count. In the end, what matters is what you do, not what you are and not what you’re told. She’ll see that. She’ll love you.” I took a tender swipe at the teardrops on Merulina’s cheeks. It was insane how beautiful she still was, even as she cried. “And when you give her a grandchild? She’ll… she’ll love that dragon—of fire and ice—so much that any little piece of her left over that thinks you’re different? That little piece of her will die.”
“Or maybe she’ll think that this is all just some ploy to take back the throne for the ice dragons, with an heir of a prince,” Merulina countered.
I didn’t inform her that I was barren. It didn’t seem like the right time; today was about her. But I already knew in my heart that the child who would ascend the throne of The Hearthlands would belong to Altair and Merulina. It would be a dragon of fire and ice.
“Would that be so bad?” I whispered. “A king or queen to unite the people at long last? To end a meaningless feud—based on nothing but assumptions, prejudices—that has lasted centuries, against all reason, all worth?”
Merulina nodded and half-smiled. “I guess you’re right,” she said, her eyes slanted down. “It would be nice to see ice people in the castle, other than myself, alongside the fire people.”
“And we will,” I assured her. “Things are changing in this country. And this is the dawn of a new age. You and I can both be a part of that, if we stay strong and believe in ourselves. We can bear witness to the strongest dragons this island has ever seen.”
Merulina grinned, eyes still shimmering.
* * *
When the traditional wedding bells of the dragons clanged loudly together later that morning, and Merulina walked down the aisle, I wore my crown and Theon wore his for the first time. We stood tall together, presiding over their union in some strange ritual wherein we essentially approved of the coupling. It all seemed rather medieval to me, but Theon would’ve been aghast at the notion of an update. Merulina met Altair at the thrones, and they turned to face one another, glowing with excitement and anticipation. Theon’s fingers tightened around my side and I glanced at him with a smile. He smiled back, and together we turned to witness his brother and new sister-in-law pledge their loyalty, and their gratitude, and thank the gods for their luck in finding one another through so many circuitous paths.
Listening to them speak, seeing the way they looked at each other, I couldn’t bear them any ill will, even if an entire baseball team worth of children was born from the two. I could only be proud of them, and hopeful for them. With Theon’s constant heat radiating into me, with his fingers against my back, and with the certainty that he felt the same way—we would belong to each other until the day we died, no matter what the world around us thought of it—I could only be relieved to have everything I’d ever wanted, and to be sharing that elation now with Merulina and Altair. There was no competition, only family. No fate, only the future.
At the reception, we toasted to prosperity, and Theon’s golden eyes met mine with a knowing twinkle before he rose his glass to his lips. We drank deeply and I knew that it would be true.
Long live the Aena dynasty. Long live The Hearthlands. Long live fire, and ice, and all the other elements which preside within a human heart.
* * *
What’s next?
Dearest Shaddict,
I hope you enjoyed Theon and Nell’s story! It’s been such a pleasure to work on.
Although we have reached the end of Theon and Nell’s trilogy, you may just see them again in a future A Shade of Vampire book… ;)
My next release is:
Book 23: A Flight of Souls - releasing February 21st, 2016.
It’s set in stone that this will be the penultimate book in Ben and River’s story, with Book 24 being the grand finale!
Tap here to pre-order A Flight of Souls now, and reserve your ticket back to The Shade!
Here’s a preview of the awesome cover (you may need to turn to the next page for it to be visible):
Thank you once again for reading and I’ll meet you again very soon, back in the world of The Shade… :)
Love,
Bella x
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Read More by Bella Forrest!
A SHADE OF VAMPIRE SERIES
Derek & So
fia’s story:
A Shade of Vampire (Book 1)
A Shade of Blood (Book 2)
A Castle of Sand (Book 3)
A Shadow of Light (Book 4)
A Blaze of Sun (Book 5)
A Gate of Night (Book 6)
A Break of Day (Book 7)
Rose & Caleb’s story:
A Shade of Novak (Book 8)
A Bond of Blood (Book 9)
A Spell of Time (Book 10)
A Chase of Prey (Book 11)
A Shade of Doubt (Book 12)
A Turn of Tides (Book 13)
A Dawn of Strength (Book 14)
A Fall of Secrets (Book 15)
An End of Night (Book 16)
Ben & River’s story:
A Wind of Change (Book 17)
A Trail of Echoes (Book 18)
A Soldier of Shadows (Book 19)
A Hero of Realms (Book 20)
A Vial of Life (Book 21)
A Fork of Paths (Book 22)
A Flight of Souls (Book 23)
A SHADE OF DRAGON TRILOGY
A Shade of Dragon 1
A Shade of Dragon 2
A Shade of Dragon 3
A SHADE OF KIEV TRILOGY
A Shade of Kiev 1
A Shade of Kiev 2
A Shade of Kiev 3
BEAUTIFUL MONSTER DUOLOGY
A Shade of Dragon 3 Page 17