Lucille did her best to retain some control over our flight as our body painfully shrank and twisted. Before our wings shrank to nothing, she managed to angle our decent away from a plummet straight down, toward the walls of the palace. As the massive window into the banquet hall rushed toward us, I noticed it had been boarded over since our departure.
Lucille closed our eyes.
We slammed into the boards midway into our transformation. That was probably for the best. The bone-breaking pain of impact was pretty much lost within the pain that already racked our body during the transition from dragon to princess. We still had mass and momentum on our side, so the boards gave way.
For a moment we tumbled in midair through the banquet hall. The sensation was almost as surreal as feeling our long neck withdraw into our torso, or our talons slide back into our shrinking fingers and toes.
Our back struck the flagstones and we bounced and rolled. I don’t know how much of the boneless flopping of our limbs was from impact damage, or from the long bones breaking and reknitting as our body shrank from giant lizard to shorter-than-average princess.
We came to rest on our side against the far wall of the banquet hall.
I groaned.
I-It wore off. I heard the dragon’s voice in my head, low and shaky.
“No,” I muttered, amazed that my jaw still worked. During our descent it felt as if it had been broken—shattered, really—a dozen times from the impact with wood and stone. I reached up slowly and touched our face, half expecting to feel a squishy slab of bloody meat. Instead I felt the familiar contour of Lucille’s face, skin and bones unbroken. “It didn’t ‘wear off.’”
But . . .
“The moon set.” I pushed myself to a sitting position against the cold stone wall and blinked our eyes open.
The moon, what does that . . . She trailed off, because she wasn’t stupid and had all the same information I did. Oh. This complicates things.
I got to my feet a little unsteadily. Part of that was due to the lingering strangeness I felt in limbs that my brain felt should be little more than ragged stumps after the punishment they’d just taken. The remainder of my clumsiness was due to the fact that I could not take my eyes off of the devastation.
An effort had been made to return the great hall to some semblance of order. Our arrival had undone most of that. The great window was again open to the night. What planks hadn’t exploded inward to shower debris on the hall were dangling, barely attached to the edges of the window. A trail of blood and splintered wood led from a point about ten feet in from the window all the way to where I stood. I hadn’t felt it at the time, but four long banquet tables had been broken or knocked aside by our entrance.
Next to me I heard a familiar, tentative voice ask, “Your Highness?”
I turned to face the voice, realizing that I was clothed only in a sticky sheen of blood and adhering wood splinters. That didn’t stop me from running forward and hugging as much of Brock as I could get my arms around. “You’re alive!” I shouted.
He grunted and said, “Brock still hurts.”
I backed off and looked up at him.
He was obviously badly injured, his left arm wrapped to the shoulder, and half his head and chest swathed in bandages, but color had returned to the visible parts of his skin.
Then I realized that, aside from the bandages and a sheet hastily tied around his middle, he wasn’t clothed any better than I was.
This is awkward.
“Shouldn’t you be in bed?” I asked him.
“Brock heard attack, and screams, and . . .” The sword he had held clumsily in his right hand clattered to the flagstone floor, and the exposed skin of his massive chest, neck, and face deepened its shade from healthy, to ruddy, to a half shade short of spontaneous combustion.
Then, showing more speed and dexterity than he had ever shown in combat, he tore off the sheet wrapped around his middle and wrapped it around my shoulders. Then it was my turn to flush.
Oh my, the dragon whispered in my skull before I had the presence of mind to turn away from the suddenly naked barbarian.
“What happened?” Brock asked.
“Unanticipated emergency landing.”
“Brock doesn’t understand.”
“Brock is probably happier that way.”
“Are you hurt?”
“No, I’m fine.” Despite all the blood, and the way my recent memory ached with broken bones, it was the truth. I had—we had—come through the whole episode apparently unscathed. I glanced over my shoulder at Brock, keeping my gaze focused above his chest. “But you’re still hurt. You should go back to bed and heal.”
“Brock is healed,” he protested. But now that the excitement had ended, I saw him sag, leaning against the wall. Other guardsmen ran up behind him now, and despite shaking his head in protest he didn’t object when I told a couple of the newcomers to escort him back to his sickbed.
One bright spot, at least.
I still want to take apart that dragon.
Sebastian.
And not just for the elf-king.
I watched the reaction of the remaining two guards. They looked at the wreckage in the hall, and back at me covered in Brock’s sheet.
“Gentlemen,” I addressed them. “I am going to return to my chambers now and clean up. Can you have the able-bodied members of my personal guard assemble in the courtyard in an hour, along with our two guests?”
I didn’t wait for their response before walking back to my rooms.
You were right.
About what?
About Elhared. We’re going to need all the help we can get.
CHAPTER 25
My royal chambers were just as we had left them.
Once the door shut behind us, I let the sheet drop to the floor and retreated to the alcove with the water basin and began washing the blood and splinters off of us.
Were-dragon? Lucille thought as I washed off.
And apparently with the change we switch who’s in charge.
At least we can communicate now.
I’m sorry. I should have seen that coming.
I was there, too. I should have, too.
I rinsed the cloth in the basin of now rust-colored water. I guess this hasn’t been the greatest anniversary. I lifted my leg and began wiping it off. I had a brief flash of memory from shortly after I had first awakened in Lucille’s body. That first night, after the immediate needs of survival had been met I had been so tentative dealing with the realities of cleaning myself.
Why was I thinking of that now?
It’s not your fault.
My hand slowed on my thigh, and I realized that I was thinking about the past, because I was feeling that past right now. I felt, again, as if I was an embarrassed voyeur, looking at and touching things I had no right to.
I closed my eyes.
Lucille, it is my fault.
No.
Yes. Maybe not before I found Sebastian in Elhared’s body. But after that—
You didn’t know.
I should have. Even if I didn’t, it was a mistake to abandon him.
Stop blaming yourself.
I know what I did. What I should have done.
Then you get to share.
What?
Who stole the dragon’s body in the first place?
You didn’t steal—
No? After you found Sebastian in Elhared’s body? I have the same hindsight as you—and unlike you I had completely selfish motives not to see what we should have done.
That’s not your fault.
As much mine as yours.
She had me there. I sighed and opened my eyes to resume cleaning off my leg. I looked at the curve of my own thigh and felt my face burn.
What’s the matter, Fr
ank?
What was the matter? I’d lived in this body for a year. That was long enough to get used to its existence. Even if it bore the shapes and curves that one-time thief Frank Blackthorne would have found very distracting back in his male heyday, repeated exposure had leached all the titillation from inhabiting it. I had thought those impulses had faded.
Apparently not, nor had the uneasy discomfort that they caused me.
F-Frank?
I realized that she felt what I did now. She could feel the flush of my skin, and the way parts of us became uncomfortably warm. And that realization made everything much warmer. I shuddered and closed my eyes again. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—
Does this always happen when you wash my—
No!
Frank?
Just—I—
What?
Because you’re here, watching.
. . . oh.
I stood there, my breathing shallow, unable to think of anything but the touch of the wet cloth on my naked thigh and Lucille, right now, feeling every touch and tremor in my body.
Are you embarrassed?
Yes . . . no. I don’t know.
Why are your eyes closed?
It’s just too weird right now.
I heard the dragon chuckle in my head.
It’s not funny!
Why worry about weird now? Open your eyes.
I blinked and stared at my hand and my thigh. The flush on my cheeks burned.
I’ve seen that leg a lot more than you ever have. Why are you so nervous?
I . . . I couldn’t give her an answer.
Come on, Frank. Something different had leaked into her voice. Her dragon’s voice had always been low and husky, but something smoothed it out now, turning it to dark velvet. You have no reason to be nervous with me.
I k-know.
But you still are.
I sighed and nodded. I put the cloth back into the basin and stared at the water.
I’m a lowborn thief. I’ve managed to screw up every responsibility I’ve ever been given. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve hurt you. Our “marriage” is a political fiction that exists only to keep you in the royal family and provide Lendowyn a tourist attraction. There is no possible way you should want me the way I want you.
You forgot that you’re an idiot.
What?
Look up.
I did as she asked, and faced the mirror above the basin. The naked princess Lucille stared back at me. I noticed the red eyes.
Had I been crying?
Is that why, when we were both human, you did nothing about it?
How could I? I’d betrayed you, and started a war—
And if you hadn’t?
What? I was thinking that a lot.
If there hadn’t been a coup, a war, or all those other excuses? If we had just both been human, for that moment?
Wha—
Her sigh interrupted my thought.
Step back.
I did and more of Lucille’s nakedness appeared in the mirror. I bit my lower lip, and something in me had distanced from us enough to find the lost, pensive expression very attractive.
That was confusing.
I’m going to tell you a fantasy I have.
Uh . . .
And you’re going to help me.
• • •
Lucille’s fantasy involved me being a dragon, and that’s all I’m going to say about that.
• • •
While my own armor rested on the floor of an elven arena, the princess of Lendowyn happened to have a half-dozen members of the only warrior order of the Goddess Lysea as her handmaidens. Grace was about my size. I had her fetched to my rooms.
She still hobbled on a crutch as she came in. She looked me up and down. I was free of blood and dressed in a clean chemise. “Your Highness?”
“Frank,” I said.
She nodded. “I’ve heard that we have the Dragon Prince back?”
“More Dragon Princess now, I think?”
Grace arched an eyebrow.
“Complicated,” I said.
“Where is Lucille?” she asked. “There was a commotion—”
“She’s here,” I said.
“Where?”
“Complicated, remember?”
Frank, just tell her.
I sighed. “And she thinks I’m being too coy with you.”
“I don’t understand.”
I nodded. “Let’s go to the armory and I can confuse you more along the way.”
• • •
“Were-dragon?” Grace said incredulously as she wrapped her leather breastplate across my chest. I had to suck in my breath and hold it, since while Grace and I were well-matched in height and length of limb, I had inherited a body that, in at least two particulars, was far more developed than Grace’s.
“Yes,” I gasped.
“Then why not just wait until nightfall to confront the dragon?” Grace stepped back and admired her handiwork constraining me. “So you’d be more evenly matched.”
“No time,” I said. “The sand has almost run out of Timoras’s pendant.”
“But if you rely on that wizard . . .”
“It’s a risk,” I agreed.
“Risk?” Grace snapped. “I’ve heard the story enough. It’s his fault all this happened in the first place.”
“I know. But he’s what we have.”
• • •
What are you thinking about? Lucille asked as Grace accompanied us down to the courtyard.
What aren’t I thinking? Our time’s almost run out and we still have to reach this dragon without our fastest method of transportation. I’m worried about what happened with Sir Forsythe. I’m worried about what will happen with Elhared. I grunted as we descended the steps. And I think our boobs are being crushed.
I think we’ll make it.
Based on what?
We’ve made it this far. I have faith in you. In us.
We descended a few more flights. And I came to a decision.
Lucille?
What?
I regret things. I second-guess myself. It’s what I do. I know you think some of that is self-pitying nonsense—
Some?
But there is one stupid decision that I will regret to my grave. It was my choice, it was wrong, and I am sorry.
What choice? I think I heard a note of worry in her dragon’s voice.
When we were both human, alone facing each other in the woods . . . I didn’t kiss you.
Frank? Her voice sounded very small and far away.
I should have kissed you, embraced you, and told you how much you meant to me.
After a long moment, she answered. Agreed. That was a stupid decision.
I’m sorry.
You say that a lot.
I know.
Well, do something about it.
I almost tripped on the stairs down to the courtyard.
Do something about it?
It wasn’t as if I could kiss and embrace myself right now. Besides, we’d already passed that level of intimacy before we’d called Grace to our room. I wouldn’t say our marriage had been officially consummated, and in this body I was still technically a virgin, but I’d say we’d come as close as was practicable.
Only took us a year.
We walked across the courtyard, to the cluster of people waiting for us. The red dawn light reflected off my handmaids’ armor. Krys had collected mounts for all of us, replacing the horses she’d traded back in Fell Green. She gazed into the elf-king’s pendant as we approached, then looked up in surprise, “Princess . . . Lucille?”
“Frank,” I said.
Elhared snorted.
/> Laya asked, “Where is Lucille?”
It was too much to go into again. “She’ll be along later. How much time do we have?”
Krys shook her head. “It’s almost gone.”
I spun back to Elhared. “You can show us to Sebastian’s home turf?”
“I can lead you to the area. If you have Dracheslayer, its glow will lead you the rest of the way.”
I looked across at Laya, who held the magic dragon-slaying sword in its scabbard up so I could take it. I began reaching for it when a voice in my head said, Were-dragon, remember?
Even as Lucille reminded me of that, I realized that I felt an unearthly heat radiating from the direction of the sword. A heat no one else here seemed able to sense.
Yeah, anti-dragon enchantments wielded by a were-dragon? That idea couldn’t be any worse if the blade was pure silver and packed in wolfsbane . . . or was there something called dragonsbane? That was a question for Brock.
“Ah,” I said, “give that to Krys. You’re better with the ranged weapons anyway.”
“Your Highness.” She complied with an arched eyebrow.
“What about him?” Krys nodded toward Robin the half-elf.
I sighed and shook my head. “After the last time I left some royal bastard behind me in my travels, things did not turn out so well. He’s coming with us.”
CHAPTER 26
“Has there been any word from Sir Forsythe?” I asked Laya, as we made our way deeper into the mountains.
We rode next to each other, behind Krys and Elhared who were leading the way. She shook her head. “He disappeared after the dragon, and that was the last anyone’s heard of him.”
Do you think he’s . . .
What else would stop him?
There were plenty of stories about lone knights going off to slay dragons. But the reality generally did not bode well for the knight. My experience with dragon-slaying had only gone as well as it had because it had all been a scam in the first place.
The thought left a sick feeling in my stomach.
Sir Forsythe and I had not gotten off on the right foot to begin with, and I’d become convinced the man was a complete nut. But over time, I’d grown to understand him, and appreciate exactly why he was insane. There was a deep pain in the man, and a loyalty to rival Brock.
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