Free A Shade of Dragon 3 by Bella Forrest

until they passed again.
    Theon’s lips grazed my forehead, and then he pulled away enough to peer down at me. I looked up at him, and he said, “Did you…” His thick brows knit over his eyes, and he hesitated for a moment, and then forged ahead. “Did you make some sort of barter with the harpy, Parnassia?”
    My mouth fell open in a mixture of emotions: heartbreak, remorse, surprise, despair, and even, in part, a little piece of me searched for a decent lie to tell him. I couldn’t bear to tell him the truth. I hadn’t just made any old deal with Parnassia. And if he had met Parnassia—if he somehow knew that I had made a deal with her—
    “Theon,” I said. It was all I could say. I think my eyes said the rest.
    He pursed his lips and broke eye contact.
    “Look at me,” I whispered.
    “I can’t,” he replied, and a schism tore down the center of my heart.
    “You don’t understand…” But then tears crusted over my eyes, because the truth was even worse than what he might have assumed. “What did she tell you?”
    “She didn’t tell me anything.” But the disappointment, the dark caramel of his eyes, said otherwise. He knew something. “But she implied that you… that you might have… bartered our children with her.”
    “Listen to me,” I said, placing my thumb against his lower lip as if that tiny gesture could hold this moment still, could crystallize us before I had the chance to ruin everything. And just when we were finally back together, standing at the precipice of all we’d ever wanted. “It’s not the whole story, Theon. I didn’t talk to Parnassia first. First, I talked to Pythia.”
    “Pythia?” Theon hissed. “Why—what—”
    “You left me in Beggar’s Hole after you promised that you wouldn’t,” I reminded him in a low, steely voice. “I had to talk to someone who would understand. Do you know what it’s like for me in my world right now? No one believed me. Michelle was still missing. Everyone thought that I was crazy. And being abandoned by my husband so that he could return to war without me didn’t exactly make me sane.”
    Theon took a deep breath and closed his eyes, bowing his head. “Okay. Why are you telling me this? What did Pythia say?”
    “The reason we are not meant to be,” I whispered bleakly. “She told me.”
    “Don’t listen to that—she’s mad, you know—”
    “She told me that I couldn’t have children,” I blurted. I had to let it out in a rush. It was the only way to bear it. “And I had it confirmed myself, by someone who I doubt is mad.” I forced myself to raise my eyes to his, and to keep my jaw firm, to keep my lips from trembling. “A physician.”
    Theon stared at me for a moment, unmoving, frozen.
    And then, in an instant, he was animate again. Too animate.
    “I was going to the astrolabe,” he informed me, eyes alight with false hope. It broke my heart to see. “It sets the stars. It can remedy the war. It can remedy you, too.” He touched my lower abdomen, as if he could heal my womb by touch.
    “But… Theon,” I said, “I am not a fire dragon. I am not a part of this world, except that you have brought me here. I don’t believe that the gods of your stars hold sway over my body. They did not forge me. I’m—”
    The heavy echo of a door closing brought us to silence again, and again Theon clutched me to his chest and the two of us went utterly still. Clank, clank, clank, clank. The two guards shuffled along the corridor—our silhouettes must have been hidden by the light pattern on the tapestry… and an inattentive eye. They had walked these corridors too many times with no disturbance, no trespassers. Their eyes had glazed.
    Clank, clank, clank.
    The sound of their footsteps faded into the distance, and our bodies relaxed into each other. I exhaled and lifted my eyes back to him, unable to move on from this conversation before I said my piece, for whatever it meant.
    “Theon…” I whispered, gripping