The Princess' Dragon Lord

by Mandy Rosko

  “You are real,” She'd heard him say, before he squeezed her as tightly to him as she would allow before the pain constricted in her ribs. “You are real.”

  They'd been together for hours. Azoth asking questions Diana had few answers to, and Diana asking questions that Azoth was ashamed to give reply, all the while he constantly provided her cups of water to drink from his fountain of healing.

  She was quick to assure him that she knew neither he, nor his dragon, would ever willingly hurt her, although he was not so forgiving of himself.

  It was as though with her knock to the head, the spell had been switched, and Diana had all of her memories from her time as princess, but few from the time she lived as a normal mortal woman.

  She wished to tell him of her uncle's involvement in their botched marriage ceremony, but before she could do so, her husband lost control and could hold back no longer.

  He took her, and Diana came into his arms willingly. She had opened for him, and begged for him, and he gave into her with fierce passion at first, and then, as his control returned, he became gentle and serving to her needs as well.

  They joined several times. On more than one occasion, he shed tears for the both of them afterward.

  Perhaps it was the healing power of the water from the spring that caused her to slip back into the previous spell. If a knock to the head could jar her memories, then, perhaps, healing the blow with magic could undo any progress she'd made.

  It certainly explained why she woke up with little to no memories of Azoth, or taking him into bed.

  Azoth collapsed on top of her with a hard groan, pulling Diana back into the matter at hand. Sensing she had not come to her pleasure, though oblivious as to why, he grinned wickedly at her as he shimmied his way down her legs.

  She didn't think anyone would want to do that to her after making love, but she didn't offer a peep of protest either as he got down to business and made her gasp and shiver.

  He crawled his way back up and pulled her close so that they were chest to chest. His nose was in her hair, inhaling and exhaling in a deep, and sleepy, sigh.

  She allowed her fingers to play along the expanse of his wide chest, hesitant to ruin the moment.

  Considering the last time she hesitated, she woke up in his bed with no memories of how she'd gotten there, she decided to just be out with it.

  “I know who did this to us,”

  Azoth tensed, and he lifted himself onto one elbow to look down at her. “Do you?”

  She nodded. “And I know why, and I'm pretty sure Nyx was as set up as you were.”

  Chapter Ten

  After untangling themselves from each other, though not before Azoth could coerce her into another slow, and sensual tryst, Diana found the mirror, right where her husband had said it would be, kept safe inside a silver chest decorated with prancing elk and swooping birds.

  She explained its magic to him, and all color drained from his face, leaving him whiter than snow.

  “All this time...”

  She put her hand onto his arm, and he took her fingers and grasped them tightly. “You couldn't have known,” she said, referring to the mirror's powers of searching for loved ones, and, in times of desperate longing, transporting the wisher to that person.

  Had he known about it, Azoth could have freed himself from his prison and found his lost wife ages ago.

  “You thought I was dead. There would've been no reason for you to ask to see me in the mirror.” And that was something he just might have done if he knew the mirror was spelled to do such a thing.

  The fae were not quite as notorious for spelling things as the stories all claimed them to be. In fact, Diana was willing to bet everything she owned that the mirror was the only item in that pile, in all the piles of treasure in this whole strange cavern, that was spelled to do anything at all.

  If Azoth had been given lots of cool toys to play with, it would hardly have been considered a prison. No wonder he learned to make paint.

  “We're getting out of here,” Diana said.

  Azoth stared at her blankly.

  “The mirror was what brought me here,” though she had no idea how it got out of this place and found her to begin with. “If we wish it, it will take us outside.”

  “Out,” Azoth said, testing the word on his tongue. A slow smile spread over his mouth. “I should like to see the sky again.”

  “I'll show you everything you could ever want to see. The world's changed so much, there's so many great things to see and do.”

  She wasn't planning on taking him on a tour of New York or anything any time soon, but showing him books, movies, and radio was definitely on her list, and with all this gold laying around, buying a cabin on a lake, somewhere remote, with frost topped mountains, would definitely make for a good home. It would also make Azoth's shock at all the new technology around him easier to manage.

  She held the mirror in one hand, and offered him the other. Big Azoth lumbered over to get a look at them, crooning down at their joined hands.

  “You too,” she said, reaching out with the hand that still held Nyx's mirror to pull his snout down on their clasping fingers.

  Azoth muttered a sentence in his dragon tongue. With her memories returned, Diana knew several words of the language, but she was still anything but fluent.

  But Azoth's tense shoulders and startled face gave her an idea of what he said.

  “You both need to rejoin now.” Diana said. Azoth opened his mouth as though to argue but she quickly cut him off. “That part of your imprisonment wasn't based on whether or not a fae forgave you. I'm fae and I'm telling you right now that there's nothing to forgive, so, since you're both still separated, it means you'll have to forgive yourself and take him back into you.”

  Azoth's head turned up at the dragon, whose giant eyes regarded him thoughtfully, as though the creature had understood Diana's every word.

  Still, he didn't immediately accept her wisdom and forgive himself like she hoped he would.

  He seemed to deflate a little, Big Azoth's enormous eyes shining now with sadness.

  “I...I cannot...I do not know...”

  Diana settled the mirror under her arm and clasped Azoth's trembling hands into hers. She'd never before felt him cold, but his hands were now like ice.

  “I know it's hard. You've been angry at yourself for so long, and maybe asking you to give it all up at once is too much,” she said, noting the way his body trembled as he fought against her words. “If that's the case, then we'll work on total forgiveness later, but right now you need to at least acknowledge the fact that you were not wholly responsible for what happened on our wedding day. Someone else did this to us too.”

  Azoth shut his eyes, as though pained. His head bent and jaw touched his chest as he inhaled sharply, and then exhaled with just as much force.

  In. Out. In. Out.

  For a second she feared he was hyperventilating, and she put her arm around his shoulders, drawing him closer, willing her warmth and her love into him. A difficult feat considering his size.

  Big Azoth released another throaty coo at the sight, and Azoth's trembling became less and less violent, before stopping altogether.

  “That...” he started, his voice so soft Diana wouldn't have heard it had his mouth not been so close to her ear. “That I think I can do.”

  Big Azoth's wings spread as the dragon stood a little straighter. Diana, startled at the sudden movement, looked up at him in time to see the red and orange scales glow like there was a fire burning beneath them.

  The bright flame-like light lasted for a second before it transformed into something resembling more of a switched on light bulb. A switched on light bulb that she happened to be staring directly at.

  Despite the danger to her retinas, she couldn't bring herself to look away, and when the light vanished, the dragon too was gone.

  Azoth breathed in deeply. This sounded more like a contented sigh, than his choking gasps from
earlier.

  “I am whole. I had forgotten.” He smiled and clutched her tighter, hugging her to his large chest until she damn near disappeared inside it. “I am whole,” he kept on saying.

  He was also dotted with little sparkly stars, but Diana couldn't tell if that was because he'd just been rejoined with his dragon half, or because she'd basically stared into a mini-sun.

  She blinked her eyes hard a couple of times, but the tiny speckles didn't vanish.

  The cave, however, did. They reappeared in the wooded area of the park, bright light shining down on them instead of the red light of Azoth's prison. Birds twittered, swooped and dived about to collect insects and berries for their morning meal, and the long, dark, skeletal trees that had chased her so ferociously were standing all around, looking down at them with no faces, waiting.

  “Azoth,”

  “I see them, Sakkra.”

  “Do you see me, as well?”

  Diana's head whipped around at the startlingly familiar voice. A tall man, with hair the color of dogwood branch and cape of pale brown wings at his back, with a white fur trim lining at his neck, stood tall with his arms crossed between two of the uprooted, walking trees.

  Diana's heart lurched at the sight of her uncle. With her memories returned, her emotions had as well. This was a man whose arms she'd once jumped into as a little girl, and then later, a young woman, who had once sat her and her sister onto his knees for stories, who had also been responsible for the deaths of so many fae, her friends and family included. Hell, the entire reason most of the magic was out of the world, could all be heaped on Dagda, since it was his actions that brought on the war, practically wiping out both species altogether.

  The scar running diagonal down her face burned. She wanted to cry over the inner turmoil the sight of him brought onto her.

  He looked almost the same apart from one thing: he was older.

  Grey streaked his straight hair, and while he was far from looking like a he needed a walker, deep lines still marred the skin under his eyes and across his forehead. He stood with the air of a man comfortably approaching middle age.

  Azoth grabbed her wrist and all but threw her behind him and growled at the man. His fingers became red, stony, and clawed. Hard scales appeared, like some sort of armor, over his chest and shoulders. He was preparing for a fight.

  “You will die for what you have done.”

  Dagda puffed out a laugh. “The lower prince sentencing a king? You think too highly of yourself.”

  That was all the small talk Dagda would go for. He lifted his hand in a delicate manner, snapped his fingers, and the trees stepped forward, their roots pulling free with loud rips and crunches from where they'd re-burrowed back into the earth.

  Their crackling branches put a fear into Diana that she hadn't known existed, and she clutched tightly to Azoth's shoulders.

  He stepped forward quickly, shooting his hands out. “Wait!”

  The trees kept right on coming, caught in their spell, but it had been Dagda he'd called to. The fae king regarded them both coolly, and snapped his fingers again. The trees halted, just as they'd bent down, as far as they could go without snapping themselves, frozen on command.

  The trees, their trunks, branches, everything, groaned in the slight wind that quaked through their awkward positions, but they didn't move.

  Dagda waited patiently, but said nothing. He just looked at Azoth, as if to ask, well, what do you want, you stupid bastard?

  Diana wanted to claw his eyes out.

  “Battle me,” Azoth said simply.

  Diana froze as the meaning to his words came onto her.

  Her memories had returned, but it wasn't like one big info dump, there were still things she didn't realize she knew until she saw something, or something was said.

  This was one of them. Azoth spoke of a warriors battle. The honorable dragon's battle to the death.

  Dagda's pale brows were suddenly lost in his hairline. “Battle you?”

  Azoth's head bobbed in the tiniest of nods, otherwise, his body was as rock solid as one of the mountains where he used to live. “Leave my wife be. If I lose, take all the gold as your prize, but do not harm her. We settle this like warriors.”

  Dagda laughed, and a chill spidered up Diana's spine. “Dear boy, I am not a warrior.”

  He snapped his fingers again, and the trees came down upon them as quickly as though they were falling.

  They wanted her, not Azoth. Diana ran, but the reach of the heavy oaks outdid even her fastest sprint. She screamed as the shadows came on top of her. They were going to crush her to death!

  A heavy, rock solid force knocked into her, pushing her out of the way just as several of the tree monsters came down upon the earth in a bone jarring smash that put a tremble in the earth.

  Azoth had grabbed her, and he was so much faster that he was able to leap into safety with her. She gripped his arms tightly, unable to let go, even with the freshly grown scales that were there cutting into her palms. His wings spread out , arched and proud behind him.

  He was in mid transformation, something she'd seen him do many times before when they were still getting to know each other in their previous lives. That certainly explained his unnatural speed.

  The oaks, pines and alders were piled one on top of the other, their branches tangling amongst themselves. Only those on the top of the pile were able to get up, shaking loose leaves, while the ones on the bottom struggled and flailed. Their gnarled limbs reminded Diana of flies she'd seen, caught upside down in pools, their legs kicking helplessly.

  Azoth gripped her arms, careful not to pierce her skin with his red claws, and he held her away from him.

  “Run away, Sakkra, I will see to this.”

  He certainly looked like he could, but the fearful coward inside her was reluctant to leave his side. She worried about what else would come after her if he wasn't around to keep her safe, but, in some stupid place in the back of her mind, she also wanted to keep her eyes on him, as though just by watching him meant that she could keep him safe in return.

  As though reading her thoughts, he gave her a hard shake. “You will only distract me.”

  Harsh, but he was right.

  One of the giant oaks suddenly remembered that it was supposed to be attacking them, and, although missing several of its branches, it swiped out its only remaining long arm at them.

  This time Diana had to grab onto Azoth's shoulders and pull him to safety. She saved them from being slapped into the air, but Azoth still took a hit. He cried out as the smaller branches towards the end of the long arm whipped across his back.

  Diana winced at the sound, the air rushing out of her as Azoth's weight fell on top of her, knocking the wind out of her lungs and keeping her from breathing in anymore, or from getting up.

  “Azoth,” she croaked, her throat constricting for air.

  His body trembled, but he managed to get to his elbows, taking most of the weight off her. She still had trouble breathing.

  He murmured to her in his dragon language, but she had difficulty hearing him.

  Ringing sounded in her ears and an unbearable heat bore down on her, and then everything became slow and quite. The beating of her own heart sounded in her ears, and her vision sharpened. Everything around her was suddenly in HD. A hummingbird flew passed the chaos of their circle, and she could make out the exact colors of its wings, and count the feathers on its body.

  Azoth's face was pale from the whipping, which, she realized with a start, he was still taking.

  The tree behind him lifted its arm up and down, striking Azoth's back like a cat o' nine tails. Blood spattered from his back, splashing as he was struck. Warm droplets landed on her face.

  Azoth stared her in the eyes as he took his punishment, protecting her from bearing the brunt of the abuse.

  Her eyes then found those of her uncle, standing tall, his arms crossed, watching the beating with glee while the rest of his forest monste
rs, now that she and Azoth were helpless, were returning to their proper places in the park, ready to re-root themselves.

  She glared at him, hating him.

  At least, she hoped she was glaring at him. Her face felt frozen, and he hardly seemed to notice any look of hatred she was supposedly sending him.

  But then her hatred vanished as a new figure appeared, smaller, and dark, next to the tall, light colored figure that was the king of the Fae.

  Nyx.

  Despite how everything seemed to be going in slow motion around her, Nyx moved as quickly and normally as though he weren't apart of the general scenery.

  He wasn't. Diana was looking at the ghost of her best friend.

  He smiled sadly at her, and Diana easily fell into another vision.

  It was painful like the last, but she didn't fight it this time, and it felt like nothing more than a small headache. Her mind and body was entirely drained of energy, and she had no choice but to watch the images unfold in front of her.

  More memories, but these, like before, were not her own. They were Nyx's.

  Flashes passed by. First of him, trembling as he was pressed against one of the stone walls of her home, a dagger at his throat, held by Dagda.

  “Speak of what you saw here and I'll have your head.” The fae king threatened.

  It swirled away, and then it was the day he gave her the mirror, which, judging by the tiny red line at his neck, had been shortly after her uncle's attack. “Should you ever wish to come home,” he'd said.

  And then there was her wedding day. Nyx watched the ceremony, hidden behind many decorative flowers, alone and on the sidelines.

  Diana remembered feeling unhappy as she took her vows, thinking her friend had not come to see her marry, but he had been there after all.

  Nyx's body tensed as she and Azoth drank their wine. The other guests assuming the prince to be sick when he dropped his goblet and clutched at his stomach, rushed forward.

  Nyx's spell flew out as Azoth's clawed hand sliced down upon her face, and she disappeared from the fae world forever just as Azoth transformed and rampaged, setting fire to the guests and palace itself.