by K. Weikel
I rush outside and she looks up at me with glassy eyes. From her mouth, a handful of bluebonnets hang. She takes them from her mouth with one of her talons.
I look at her, puzzled. She’d been inside the maze in the back of the castle.
For your new wife, she says, handing me the flowers.
There’s a hint of sadness in her voice.
“You remember the words I couldn’t get out of my head?” I ask her.
She nods.
I stroke her snout absentmindedly, a wave of longing to tell her washing over me. Her scales are hot from the warmth of the August sun.
I remember now. It went like this, I tell her, feeling like she needs to know.
The scaled girl, filled with hatred,
Blocks the sadness and tears.
Her love is right in front of her,
And he’ll say this without sneers.
“That’s all,” I say.
She seems frozen in place.
“I don’t know what it means,” I say, trying to get her to say something. “I have no idea why I know it, but I felt like you needed to know.”
I drop my hand and start to back away, the bluebonnets in both of my hands.
And then she says,
Though he says it all together,
In her presence, he can’t tell
She’s listening, and the bonds of the curse
Is what the love breaks, through this spell.
I stare at her for a moment, not knowing what to say. Why did she tell me that? Did she feel like she needed to?
“I should go,” she says quickly and takes off.
I stand there, hesitant to go back into the castle.
When I finally decide it’s time to head back in, I find Sanora and hand her the flowers. She drops them to the floor with a shriek and backs up, shaking her hand and pulling off her glove.
“I’m allergic to those!” She screams.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
She waves it away and shakes her head. “It’s fine. I have another bouquet.”
She shoos me out suddenly, and more rudely than I would have liked. I make my way to the ballroom and stand by the doors.
It’s time.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
I stand at the end of the aisle, waiting for Sanora to start walking down it and for the musicians to start playing.
My mind is somewhere else when she finally does start to stride down the center of the room, everyone standing. When she reaches me, she whispers something in my ear.
“You look like you’re lost,” she forces a smile. “Get out of that labyrinth now, or you’ll never make it through, and you’ll never be king.”
I look at her.
My dreams.
My mind is like a labyrinth. It’s filled with confusing thoughts and twists and turns and I don’t know what I want. I have to get through the massive maze by trying to understand what it is that I want. My thoughts are always surrounded by Starfire, and I was always pulled—am always pulled towards her. And then the dreams, they started when I first met her, and just half an hour ago, she showed up with a mouthful of bluebonnets from that maze.
She’s not a dragon.
I’m not her dragonrider.
…What if you weren’t my dragonrider at all? What if I could read your mind without you even being near me…?
Our words ring in my head.
…That’s impossible…
She was right. Maybe she’s something more than a dragonrider. Maybe we’re connected in an entirely different way—
…And I’ve started to—
“And do you, Prince Robin Troy Quebec, take Sanora Ray Humphrey Grey to be your loftily wedded wife?”
I look up at the preacher, my brain still in the maze, still in the labyrinth.
“Well, do you?” Sanora.
I know what I want now.
“No.”
A wave of gasps and flustered words rush through the people.
“I’m sorry, Princess Sanora. But I’m not in love with you,” I say, and run out the doors of the ballroom, loosening the tie I wear around my neck.
I slam into Abblestrough and he chuckles.
“Where are you going?” He asks, holding me by my shoulders.
“To find Starfire,” I breathe as I try to get around him.
“She’s in the back. You have to go through the labyrinth to reach her.”
He’s still holding me, and I realize how strong he actually is.
“She’s not my dragon, is she?” I ask, waiting for him to release his grip on me.
“Not anymore,” he smiles mysteriously. “You’re welcome.”
He lets go.
“She’s in the center of it all!” he calls as I get farther away from him.
I run to the labyrinth.
Entering it, the feelings of being lost and worried take me over. Green surrounds me and blurs as I rush past it, trying to get through it. It takes up our entire property in the back of the house, and there’s no way around it.
I have to find the center of the Labyrinth. It’s not about getting through it. It’s about finding what I want.
And I reach her.
I find her.
Chapter 12
He appears from behind the wall of green.
I thought you wanted to get out of the labyrinth, I say playfully, trying to hide the hurt inside of me, not get deeper into it.
He nods and smiles.
What about your wedding? I ask, setting my head on my talons.
“I changed my mind,” he shrugs and takes a step towards me as he slides his hands in his pockets.
Why?
“Because I didn’t love her.”
A chill works its way down my spine, but I shake it off.
“Why not? I bet she was pretty,” I say out loud. “What’s not to love about that?”
He chuckles.
“I tend to try to look deeper than that,” he says. “Beauty isn’t everything.”
“But it’s a lot of it,” I say. “Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White…”
He shrugs.
“Life isn’t a fairy tale, Starfire.”
“You’re telling me this, Mister Prince?” I laugh sadly. “You don’t know what I grew up with. I had it worse off than anyone.”
“Maybe you did,” he says quietly, and I jump as I realize he’s so close to me now. “But at least you weren’t pampered and blind to how the world can be and how it really is.”
I shrug.
“So why didn’t you love her?” I ask, trying to change the subject. “Was it her breath?”
He laughs and stops walking, looking me in the eye.
“No, I just didn’t know her. Not like I know you.”
My heart starts to beat like a drum in my chest and I pick my head up, looking down at him.
What? I say, my vocal chords not working.
“I’m just not in love with her.”
But you could be. You could fall in love with her.
He shakes his head, a dimple on his cheek as he gives a half-smile.
“You’re not getting what I’m saying again.”
Well, what is it you’re saying?
He chuckles.
“You’re not my dragon, Starfire. You’re…” he laughs nervously. “I can’t believe I’m saying this to a dragon… this feels so wrong.”
I grumble. “Thanks.”
I start to turn away, but he stops me with what he says.
“You’re my true love.”
My heart skips a beat and I freeze.
What?
“I know you heard me, Starfire. Dragons have excellent hearing.”
I turn around towards him slowly.
Robin… I’m a dragon…
“No, you’re not,” he says, lifting his hand up to touch my face.
I am, Robin…
&n
bsp; “You were cursed,” he says as he runs his hand over my snout, much like one would pet a horse. “And you can break that curse. Curses can always be broken. Abblestrough always tells me that. You just have to be willing to break them.”
He pulls my forehead to his and closes his eyes.
I really do love you Starfire. Not because you’re a dragon, not because I pity you, but because I do. I love you. The way you are, the way you’re there… You’re amazing just the way you are.
A tear makes its way down my cheek from my eyes, and I can feel it plopping onto each scale as it descends. It drips off and I see it start to glow as it hits the ground.
The grass starts to glow different colors, green, blue, pink, yellow…
And then fire spurts up from it.
Robin is thrown back by the force and falls onto the ground.
The multi-colored fire surrounds me, licking my scales and blocking my vision. It swirls around me and I feel my talons being lifted off the ground.
My body starts to shift and the scales start to morph into skin. My height drops and I feel my teeth dull and round out as my snout shrinks into my face. My talons turn into fingers and toes with nails, and I feel hair sprout from my scalp as my ears move down the sides of my head.
The transformation starts to slow down, and I look up from my hands. Moonshine stares back at me through the flames and smiles.
I knew you could do it, she says, and tears start to stream down my face at the feelings that move through my body. I always believed in you.
The image of her disappears and I fall to the ground.
Robin stares in awe at me as I stand up, a white dress flowing in the wind and my black hair whipping behind me and hitting the lower section of my back. I touch my wet face, more happiness than I’ve felt in years flooding through me at once.
Robin rushes up to me, touching my face with a smile on his. I laugh in sheer joy and he wraps me in his arms, bringing me close to him as he laughs with me. He pulls me away and kisses me, something that I’d never experienced until now.
Tingles take over my body and my heart flutters as he pulls away.
“Wow,” he smiles, and pulls me into a hug again. “You’re so beautiful.”
I smile and wipe my cheeks.
“I forgot to tell you I had telepathy,” I laugh, looking into his eyes. “And I can return thoughts.”
“Perfect,” he says, running his hand through my hair. “No wonder Abblestrough had no trouble doing this.”
“Doing what?” I ask, confused.
He chuckles. “I think he brought us together. I think he knew that we were supposed to be with each other, and I think he knew how to help get rid of the curse. And possibly manipulate it.”
“Really?” I ask, not able to keep from smiling.
“Abblestrough is a genius,” he smiles. “Never underestimate what he can do.”
I nod and wrap my arms around him again, not wanting to let go.
“I love you, Starfire,” he says into my hair.
“I love you too, Robin,” I mumble into his shirt.
“So,” he sighs, pulling me away from him. “What if I asked you to marry me?”
I laughed.
I’d say yes.
The labyrinth of our love starts the moment we walk into the castle. His parents are outraged, but they get over themselves eventually, and a week later on my birthday, we’re married.
We repair the old abandoned castle and live there with the many dragons we rescued from the Dragon-Rodeo. We don’t lock them up, and we don’t torture them. They fly freely, and Robin finds his real dragon named Raven. She’s black as night and her eyes remind me of Moonshine’s—bright blue.
Sanora married another prince in another place, or so Robin’s sister says. She’s calmed down a lot after I got to her and told her what she was doing wrong and how she was really acting.
And then one day, my stepsisters show up at the foot of our thrones, on their hands and knees. With their faces pressed to the floor, they tell me that their mother, our mother, died of a heart attack. They said they don’t have anywhere to live.
I walk down the steps and kneel beside them. They look up timidly and I tell them they can live here. They hug me, tears filling their eyes and they apologize for their and our mother’s attitude towards me all those years ago.
They end up being the two people I grow closest to. They aren’t as bad as I used to think they were, and they end up being my best friends, besides Robin of course.
Robin’s parents warm up to the idea of me eventually, and soon they’re talking to me and inviting me to events as if they’ve known me my entire life. Robin even tells me that sometimes he thinks they like me more than him.
Abblestrough stays in the castle with Robin’s parents, constantly staying busy with the amount of people the Queen sends down to him to make sure they’re safe. We always visit him, and he tells us how he did such a good job bringing us together, and how he elaborately planned the whole thing.
He had seen me in the courtyard of the Dragonstables and immediately knew that I wasn’t a dragon. With some magic, he learned who I was and what happened and somehow figured out that Robin and I would be perfect together. That’s when he came up with the spells that sound like poems and had us recite it to each other when I had been a dragon, and he found a way to mimic the link between a dragon and its rider.
Somehow, it worked and I changed back just with a single tear and love in my heart. He told me that I’d been heartless for so long, that I’d been so indifferent to how I felt about things or about how other people felt about things, and to break the curse would mean facing those feelings. I had bottled them up and blocked them out, and I didn’t want to remember them. I didn’t want to feel them.
But who knew that feeling them would break the curse?
And just how Cinderella got her wish, how Ariel married the prince and got her legs, how Jasmine had her adventure, how Bell married the Beast, I married a prince, got my wish, grew my legs, and had an adventure.
Who knew that such a dreaded mistake, a mistake that stayed with me for years and years and fed my curse and my stone heart, who knew that something beautiful and amazing could bloom from it? Who knew that everything could get better? And who knew that there was really a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow?
Abblestrough’s Spell
A bond is tied,
A knot is broken,
A dragon-girl is taken,
In a princes’ heart that’s broken.
The more time
That is put together
The more it will hurt
When they are not together
The scaled girl, filled with hatred,
Blocks the sadness and tears.
Her love is right in front of her,
And he’ll tell her this without sneers.
Though he says it all together,
In her presence, he can’t tell
She’s listening, and the bonds of the curse
Is what the love breaks through this spell.
A Note from the Author
I think this was the first romance book I’d ever written. I wrote it back when I lived in Corpus Christi, which means I was about in sixth grade.
I’ve always loved dragons and mythical creatures, and I loved fairy tales. I grew up on the Little Mermaid and the other princess movies, so that probably explains the fascination with things that aren’t real.
This was a short book, I know, but I really hope you enjoyed it. I love this story, but I’m probably biased about it because I wrote it.
I hope you check out my other books and that you buy them!
Thanks again.
K. Weikel
Other books by K. Weikel
The Vampire’s Carnival
Figures (A Script)
Caged (A Script)
Match (A Script)
Catrina Billowson
The Haunted Mansion #2: The Haunted Band Room
The Haunted Mansion #3: Revenge
Coming Soon:
Dollhouse
Unnamed
Face It
Trapped
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