The Dragon Of Her Dreams: A Paranormal Love & Pregnancy Romance

by Lilly Pink

  In the olden days, they would have been spies reporting on battlefield conditions, or securing routes for troops or merchant caravans. Sometimes they might have even done a bit of thievery and sabotage. But now, the scouts were mostly hunters, providing the meat for the palace residents, as well as killing particularly dangerous beasts that strayed too close.

  They still relied on stealth, and Shahin too praised Zoe’s ability to conceal herself and move silently. “You would have made a good assassin, back in the days when we required such things. It is almost a shame to see such skills go to waste, although I suppose not needing to hire trained murderers can only be a blessing.” The moment when she first brought down a deer on her own and was able to present it to the cook felt almost as good as her college graduation.

  Shahin also introduced her to the raptors and hounds that he kept for hunting. “Not nearly as many as my father and his father before him,” he said sadly. “With so few of us, we no longer go on great hunts for pleasure. Nor do we need message raven or war dogs. Some of these I only keep to preserve their lineage.”

  The birds were beautiful, fierce and much more intelligent than she would have previously believed, but it was the dogs she really fell in love with. One breed in particular, the Vryka, was her favorite. They looked almost exactly like wolves, but were much more intelligent.

  “They are guard dogs,” Shahin explained. “Though they can be trained to nearly any task. They bond to one person, almost like a duckling imprints upon its mother, but through magic.” He frowned thoughtfully. “You know, this female, Gurga, is due to have a litter in a few weeks. Perhaps it would be beneficial to bond one of the pups yourself. You could not ask for a better protector.”

  Meanwhile, she had made huge strides in the magic department, after Darya had decided to try a little experiment. “You are an artist, yes? A painter? I have been trying to teach you as we used to do with children, starting with the basic elements and then specializing. But perhaps for an adult, it might be better to try it the other way around. We already know where your talents lie. Perhaps we can build on that.”

  So they started with illusion magic, which was basically painting on reality with her mind. “You would not do this with a child. They do not have enough focus to build a cohesive image in their mind. Besides, children have such wild imaginations. Things can get dangerous if they turn out to be especially powerful.”

  But for Zoe, it was only a few days before she could create convincing simulacrums of herself, of Kian, and of various other objects and animals. If she really concentrated, she could make them walk, talk, and even have accurate scents.

  “Someday, you may be able to make these images solid,” Darya said. “It is considered a completely different school of magic, but some kinds of conjuration are really just powering an illusion with much more force and will. More than most people possess, but I have a feeling that you can convince even reality to see things your way.”

  However, the real purpose of the new lesson format had been to allow Zoe to feel how magic worked, to enable it, to sense its presence and be able to manipulate it. Once she had figured out how to do complex illusions, simple elemental magic like lighting a candle was much easier.

  “Unsurprisingly, for an illusionist, you seem to be more in tune with water and air. These are not so flashy, especially in terms of battle magic, but they can be just as effective,” Darya explained, as she pulled the water from the air and threw a spear of ice through a target fifty feet away. By the time a month had passed since her disastrous staff battle, Zoe could make herself invisible, create armor made of ice with a breath, deflect blows with gusts of wind, encase enemies in globes of water, and various other useful things. She demonstrated her new skills by fighting a mock duel with Kian, which ended in him sopping wet.

  “Astounding progress, “ he said, smiling brightly, as Zoe summoned a spout of water on a bush that Kian had accidentally set fire to.

  “Yeah, you’d better not mess with me,” she replied teasingly. “Give me trouble, and I’ll freeze your hair off.”

  “You would not like me half as well if I was bald,” he laughed as he wrapped his arm around her shoulders. “In any case, since you are obviously adept at protecting yourself, I thought you might perhaps want to accompany me on a little excursion tomorrow? I’ve uncovered rumors of a library on an island to the north of here. I’m hoping to find records from the time when we first started to notice a decline in birth rates.”

  “Are you looking for clues to the original cause?” Of course, the basic cause was that none of the Kumari were mated, but no one knew why that would be. It would difficult to fix a problem until they knew the source.

  “Yes. But records that old have proved elusive. It is odd. We have plenty of ancient books and scrolls, some from hundreds of thousands of years ago. But for the generations just prior to this one, when my parents were young, there is almost nothing. I have begun to suspect that they were hidden on purpose, but what they were meant to conceal, I could not say. You will come with me tomorrow?”

  “You couldn’t pay me to stay away,” she assured him with a smile.

  ***

  They left early the next morning, much to Zoe’s dismay. She was a late riser by preference, but the Kumari mostly adhered to a songbird schedule that left her somewhat grumpy. Still, she was excited to be leaving the palace, especially to be going alone with Kian. They were planning to fly, and so had packed their supplies into the satchels that were a feature of their dragon armor.

  Kian had explained that, once upon a time, each Kumari had several sets of armor, including full metal plate meant for war. But there hadn’t been real conflict for hundreds of years, and since each set had to be custom made for the dragon, it was a waste of resources. Now most of them only had one. Except Kian, much to his annoyance. “When am I ever going to wear ceremonial plate mail? As a dragon? It is completely ridiculous,” he grumbled, before allowing Zhubin to help him put on his own leather flying gear.

  This was light armor that was meant to protect a dragon’s most vulnerable parts while aloft. For Kian, it was basically a thick leather vest that covered his belly from chest to thigh, and a separate piece of overlapping leather plates for his neck and throat. Zoe’s armor had also been completed, and the design was basically the same, though since she had much less neck to worry about in her dragon form, her armor was all in one piece.

  Both sets were dyed dark green on top and white on the bottom. “It is to make us harder to see,” Kian said when she inquired about it. “For people trying to sight us from below, the white blends into the sky, breaking up our outline, and from the point of view of a dragon above, we are the same color as the ground.”

  Ameretat helped Zoe get into her armor. The dragon form was disadvantaged by lacking opposable thumbs, which was one reason why the Kumari now only used their dragon forms for travel. Plus, dragons ate a lot. In the past, she had been told, it was a mark of status to be able to remain a dragon at all times. It signaled that you had servants to do all your work and that you were in no danger of going hungry. They could not afford that luxury now.

  Finally, they were ready to depart. Once again, Kian lead the way, diving from their bedroom balcony with no hesitation. Zoe had been practicing as much as she could since their first journey together, but she still wasn’t quite that confident. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes before pushing off from the ledge. This time, at least, she didn’t scream.

  “That was almost graceful,” Kian teased. She snapped at his tail as he passed. “No, truly, your flying has improved dramatically,” he amended. “I, of course, believe that you are the loveliest of dragons even when you are crashing into things, but soon it will be impossible to tell that you were born without your wings.”

  They flew until midday, reaching the northern coastline of the Kumarinatu mainland as the sun reached its peak. Kian chose to land in the shallow waves near the beach, and Zoe followed. Her landi
ng was not quite as delicate, causing a huge wave to splash Kian right in the face. “You did that on purpose,” he sputtered, splashing her back with a sweep of his wings.

  “It was not,” she retorted, whipping her tail through the water to send a wave right back. “That was.” Then the battle was on. They finally emerged from the ocean a half hour later, soaking wet and somewhat fatigued, but feeling happy and relaxed. Kian had not wanted to take the time and risk of hunting, so they had simply eaten a big breakfast as humans before they left, and they would eat more when they arrived at the library. For the moment, they curled up in the sand together to rest, the warmth of the sun and the sound of the waves lulling them quickly to sleep.

  They continued their journey in the late afternoon, giving Zoe a taste of how unpleasant it was to take off directly from the ground. Otherwise it was an easy, straight flight across a calm sea, and the water was the clearest, brightest blue she had ever seen.

  They reached the library just as the sun was setting. Spires of alabaster stone rose out of the ocean, glowing like pillars of fire in the red light of dusk. Kian landed first, perching hesitantly on a balcony to see if it held before guiding her in. It was her most successful landing to date, but she still scraped her nose painfully on the ground.

  “Are you all right?” Kian asked, jogging over to her once they had both turned back to their human forms.

  Zoe sat up, wincing. “It stings, but I think the blow to my pride is much worse,” she said ruefully.

  He chuckled, offering his hand to pull her up beside him. “I assure you that many a young Kumari had blackened their own eyes during their first few landing attempts. Your nose isn’t even bleeding, so I think you can consider it a victory. Now, let us go inside and see what we can see. If we can find a small room close to the entrance that is easily defensible, we can have a meal and settle in for the night.”

  Zoe took his hand eagerly, stifling a yawn. She was more than ready for food and bed. Luckily, they found just what they were looking for a few feet inside the front door. An empty chamber only a little bigger than a closet with no windows, and though it had two entrances, one was completely blocked with rubble. “Just what I was hoping for. This was likely some sort of waiting room, or possibly a place for storing outerwear and flying gear. It will suit us perfectly.”

  Kian warded the door and conjured a small fire while Zoe got out their bedrolls and foodstuffs and then filled a pot with water drawn right out of the air. Into the pot went dried meat and beans, and a packet of spices. While the chili-like stew cooked, they snacked on a loaf of hard bread, spreading it with soft cheese that had been wrapped in large, waxy leaves. To Zoe, they had smelled a bit like basil, but they left behind a sort of citrus taste. Kian also brought out a wineskin filled with something fragrant, clear, and sweet.

  “Hopefully, we will not have to remain more than a few days,” he remarked as Zoe settled herself in his lap. “Or else it will be down to porridge, biscuits, and whatever we can persuade the sea to provide.”

  “You would think that you could just magic us up some food,” Zoe replied with a yawn. It was something she had always meant to ask about. For all their magical power, the Kumari spent an awful to of time worrying about where their next meal was coming from.

  “Now you are running up against one of the fundamental laws of magic. Everything has to come from somewhere. When you make fire, you are simply applying a concentration of energy to material already there, taking magical energy and transferring it to heat. When you make water, you draw on the water present in the air, to make ice, you merely suck energy from it. And you make illusions, which is a combination of manipulating light and influencing the minds of others,” he said with a smile and a flourish of his fingers. The image of a rose appeared in his hand, and then disappeared just as quickly.

  “But if you wish to make food appear from nowhere, there are two ways you might do so. You can make it directly, forcing the primordial matter around you into the food you wish to create, but it is very difficult. It take a great deal of energy, and if you want it to taste like real food and to nourish the body as it should, you must be extremely gifted.

  The other way would be to summon the food you need from another place or time in the world. But that takes some energy too, and besides that, if you summon a steak for your dinner, you have likely robbed someone else of their meal. Perhaps even yourself, or your child. It is considered an unethical and wasteful use of power, especially when we have plenty of resources of our own.”

  “Hmm. I suppose that makes sense. Does that mean if I wanted a Coke, I could summon one from my world?” she asked him with a cheeky grin.

  “You could,” he said with a laugh. “Although it would take a fantastical amount of power just to satiate your thirst for colored sugar water.”

  ***

  The next morning, they began their cautious exploration. Library wasn’t, as far as Zoe could tell, an accurate term for the vast ruin.

  “The word has come to mean something rather different for our people,” Kian admitted. “Libraries were storehouses of knowledge, yes, but more than just books. Paintings, sculpture, even important inventions were stored and displayed in places like these. Also, the Kumari came to libraries to teach and to learn. For large, private collections like this one, this was also likely the main residence of the owner. In fact, my house in the mountains, where I first brought you, is formally known as my library,” he said with a grin.

  “So, who does this place belong to? Anyone I know?” she asked as Kian sent a questing ball of light into the next room. Like nearly all the ones before, it was empty of nothing but mangled debris, long swept clean by the sea.

  “No. I do not know who lived here, but they are no doubt long dead,” he replied with a sad shake of his head. “I only discovered the location through a vague mention in one of my old mentor’s journals, but he died years ago, so I cannot ask him anything more. I am interested because the journal reported that there was extensive demographical records here. The owner of the library had been a proponent of a national census.”

  “You’re hoping to find information about exactly when birth rates started dropping and then look for records of events during that period that might have been the cause.”

  “Exactly. I only hope that this is not a complete waste of time. Of course, I was expecting a ruin, but it looks like very little survived the centuries intact. Our only hope is that, if the owner truly valued this information, he will have kept it in a well-protected area. Cool, dry, and out of the sunlight.”

  “I don’t know how likely that is,” Zoe said with a frown, indicating a pile of mushy seaweed at her feet. “This doesn’t seem like a great location to store stuff that shouldn’t get wet.”

  “Unfortunate, but true,” he agreed. “Oddly enough, all the information I could discover suggests that this was not originally located in the ocean. Nor indeed, anywhere near it.”

  “That’s weird. I can’t imagine the sea level rose that much. You’d think someone would have least mentioned that.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” he replied as they came to a dead end. Kian made to turn around, and then he stopped, beckoning his ball of light closer and peering at faded markings on the wall. “Ah, this is promising. It is a map. Census records are in the lower levels of the central tower. And we are in the southeast. We can reach it by going down two floors and traveling this connecting corridor. With any luck, they have not flooded.”

  Of course, they were flooded. But Zoe was a good swimmer, and after a bit of thought, they decided that it shouldn’t be too difficult to swim down the hallway, using magic to preserve a bubble of air around their faces. They stripped off their clothing. There was no one to see, and wet clothes would only make swimming more difficult.

  No clothes also made concentrating more difficult. “Stop it,” Zoe giggled, swatting Kian away as he kissed the back of her neck.

  “I apologize,” he said, with a smile t
hat was the opposite of contrite. “I can hardly help myself in the face of such loveliness.”

  “We are in a smelly, barnacle-encrusted ruin, about to undertake a difficult and dangerous underwater journey. Somehow, I don’t think this is the ideal environment for lovemaking,” she retorted with a roll of her eyes.

  “Actually,” Kian said, taking her into his arms, “I believe the moment immediately prior to a dangerous venture is the perfect time to spend in the arms of one’s lover. But, you are correct, the setting is less than ideal.” He kissed her forehead. “We shall save this moment for when we are back at our camp. Now, let me go first. I should at least make sure the way is clear and we are not entering the lair of a hungry creature of the deep.”

  Zoe nodded and watched as he dove into the dark water. She could see, at least for the first few minutes, the glow of his image light bobbing along with him, but that eventually disappeared, leaving her alone with nothing but the sound of water, dripping and sloshing all around, waves slapping softly against the walls while the ocean roared outside. She shifted nervously from foot-to-foot as minutes stretched into eternity. Just as she was beginning to panic, Kian’s head emerged with quiet splash.

  She fought the urge to tackle him with a relieved embrace. “Was it all right?”

  “It is remarkably clear of debris, and though it is a long swim, I do not think you will have trouble maintaining an air supply. The doors are a puzzle, however, and once we get that far, you can help me examine them so we might discuss what to do next.”