by K. M. Shea
“We’ll just have to do it sometime when Azmaveth is out,” I decided as pushed up the sleeves of my dress. It hitched halfway up my arm when loose thread tangled around one of my silver charms.
I absentmindedly fixed the bracelet, pushing it back down to my wrist before folding up my sleeves. I shook my wrist once to hear the reassuring pings of the charms hitting one another.
The noise drew Aaron’s attention. He glanced at the bracelet before doing a double take and freezing. “May I see this?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said, offering out my wrist.
Wonder flashed across his face before he carefully wiped it clean, as though he was wearing a mask. “Could you take it off so I could look at it? It’s very pretty,” he said with a charming smile.
“Sorry, I can’t. Azmaveth gave it to me and last time I misplaced it he nearly took off my head,” I said, removing my wrist from his grip so I could straighten my white apron. I figured that would be the end of the conversation.
It wasn’t.
Oh how little did I know the true nature of the human next to me.
“Do you even know what that is?” Aaron asked, his voice dark and unfamiliar.
I twisted to face him. “Pardon?”
Aaron leaned forward, his face was hard as though it were chiseled from stone. “That is one of the great dragon treasures. It’s called Guardian Charms.”
“…What?”
“Dragons can’t naturally break curses. It’s one of the few techniques their magic fails to cover. So to guard that base the Guardian Charms were forged. Only a human can use it. When they wear it they have the power to break any curse that crosses their path,” Aaron said as he slid off the log.
“Any curse?” I murmured, my thoughts jostling in my head. If I could break any curse while wearing this bracelet I could help in the war against the valkyrie!
I was knocked out of my thoughts when I heard the sizzling sound of magic. I yelped and rolled off the log which exploded into fire moments later.
“Aaron, what the—why?” I said, stumbling on my feet.
“I’m going to ask you one more time. Remove the bracelet and give it to me,” he ordered, holding one hand out as his eyes narrowed.
I’m not sure if he thought I was blind or something, because his other hand was clearly charging up a fireball.
My instincts finally took the chance to kick in, and I twisted and plunged through the forest without looking back.
Aaron caught up with me in seconds, slamming me into a tree before pinning my neck to the bark with his hands.
“Why?” I whispered, clawing at his hands as I tried to conserve oxygen.
“Stupid girl. Haven’t you figured it out? Whoever has that charm bracelet can save or destroy the dragons!” Aaron growled.
“So we’ll save them,” I said, tears stinging my eyes.
“Wrong. Bartering is the best route. If we can save their precious Tsol they’ll do anything, even if it means submitting themselves to humans,” Aaron said with a smirk as the world started to grow hazy.
I choked, trying to get more air to my lungs as my arms fell limply to my side.
Aaron released me at the last moment, and I fell forward. I slammed face first into the ground, only vaguely aware that he had my arm pinned behind me and was removing Azmaveth’s charm bracelet from my wrist.
“Finally, after chasing after it for years, I have it,” Aaron purred, placing a hand on the back of my neck before pressing down, pushing my face into the dirt. “I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to get rid of you. Can’t leave any evidence behind, after all,” Aaron said, not sounding sorry at all. The hand on the back of my neck was growing hot, and the hair on the back of my neck stood on end.
“Good bye, Princess Ahira,” Aaron said.
I twisted my neck and spat dirt out of my mouth before screaming. “AZMAVETH!”
“Quiet!” Aaron hissed, almost snapping my neck in his hands. “Don’t even dream that your precious dragon can save you now!” he sneered as I choked on dirt and my tears.
Both Aaron and I froze when a dangerous, murderous voice spoke. “Don’t count on that, wizard.”
Seconds later Aaron went flying through the air, tumbling head over heels.
I immediately pushed up and coughed up the dirt chunks and leaves that had gotten stuffed in my mouth when Aaron pushed my face into the ground.
I wiped dirt off my face and glanced at Kohath. My body went paralyzed with fear.
Kohath looked absolutely murderous. Never before had I seen him so furious, including our run in with Trila. His eyes were swirling black pits and every one of his muscles was tense with rage.
Aaron righted himself and stumbled to his feet. “I knew you would be a problem,” he shouted at the steward before throwing a fireball at him.
Kohath flicked it away with a single hand gesture.
I stared, open mouthed, at him. This was the precocious, vain, and perhaps some what inept Kohath, right?
“That is where you are wrong, feeble human,” Kohath said. One moment he was next to me and the next moment he popped up by Aaron, slamming the boy in the jaw with the hilt of his sheathed sword.
Aaron went down like a sack of grain, clutching his most likely broken jaw. Kohath snatched my charm bracelet out of his hands and tossed it to me.
Kohath stood over Aaron, his eyes whirling. “I’m not just a problem,” he said as he carefully slid his sword out of its sheath. The sword itself started to pulse with purple light. “I’m you’re worst nightmare,” Kohath snarled before slicing his sword through the air.
The blade sang, and the forest exploded.
When the dust settled Kohath was standing in front of me, brushing off his clothes.
Aaron was crumbled on the ground, unconscious at the very least, most likely severely injured, perhaps even dead. The trees around us were twisted on their sides liked snapped twigs under Kohath’s incredible power.
I stared blankly at Aaron. Even as I tried to understand the situation I could feel that the back of my mind was gnawing at a nearly finished puzzle.
“You didn’t kill him?” I asked.
“No. Not yet,” Kohath said, smartly sliding his sword back into its sheath.
“Don’t, please,” I said as I pushed myself into a standing position. My legs wobbled beneath me.
“Oh no. That would be too merciful,” Kohath said, a smirk crossing his lips. He abruptly shook it off. “Are you alright, Ahira?” he asked, closing in on me.
My forehead wrinkled as I tried to sort through all the facts. “Maybe… I think so?” I said, rubbing my head. I felt funny. Something wasn’t adding up, and it wasn’t the new information about the Guardian Charms. I could have sworn that Kohath, when he first started talking, sounded exactly like Azmaveth.
I was unperturbed, for once, when Kohath reached out to hug me. “Aaron will be out of it for a day at least. I’ll send Levi by to come pick him up. For now we need to get home,” he said, glancing at the sky.
He took my hand before carefully leading me through the woods. I followed him, squinting at the back of his head.
Within minutes we left the forest and started to walk down a dirt road, still hand in hand. We only broke contact for the short while it took me to re-clip my bracelet on my right wrist.
As we walked I was finally able to sort through what was bothering me. Kohath and Azmaveth. It wasn’t just one isolated incident. In fact, it started as far back as I met him, when I noticed his weirdo purple hair. There was the way that Kohath seemed to move around the den, as though he owned it. His stupid support of Amaveth’s dumb princess books, not to mention that he seemed almost completely clueless about the processes of the female heart. And his magic, his magic was so familiar.
I released my grip on Kohath’s hand and abruptly stopped in the middle of the road.
Kohath, who was gazing at the sky, stopped to stare at me. “Ahira?” he asked.
I tipped m
y head back as I considered him. “I don’t believe I have ever seen you and Azmaveth in the same room together,” I announced.
Wrinkles creased Kohath’s forehead. “What are you talking about? We—,”
He was cut off when four dragons circled overhead, casting black shadows on the ground.
Kohath cursed under his breath and reached out to take my hand. I yanked it away, still staring at him.
“Ahira—,” Kohath started. He was cut off when the dragons landed around us, stirring up dust and shaking the ground.
“Come, Azmaveth,” a large emerald dragon said, his glorious eyes pinned on Kohath. “You know the rules.”
“Yes, yes,” Kohath said, carelessly swiping a hand through the air before turning to me. “Everything will be okay, Ahira,” he promised as a crimson dragon shuffled forward to offer out his claws.
Kohath stepped in the dragon’s paws first, and I followed, staring at his back.
“When we reach the court, try to stay close to me Ahira,” Kohath said, reaching for me.
“No,” I said, staring back as the dragon closed his paws around us before leaping into flight.
“No?” Kohath said, looking surprised and perhaps a little hurt.
“All of this, the magic, the similarities, the same obscene impertinence, it only makes sense if you, Kohath, are really Azmaveth,” I said, my voice was wooden and dangerously calm to my own ears. “And that means that all of this time you’ve been lying to me.”
Kohath stared at me in stunned silence, and for a moment I breathed easier. It was a preposterous idea, of course I was wrong!
“I didn’t mean for it to go this far!” Kohath-who-was-really-Azmaveth shouted as he slumped forward.
A part of my heart crumpled. I had hoped he would deny it.
“From the first month you’ve been lying to me,” I calmly continued. “That’s why you wanted to know what I thought of Kohath. I was just a research topic. A way educate and entertain yourself. Oh what fun you two must have had at my expense. You and Zerah, I mean. After all, Levi must be Zerah if you are Azmaveth.”
“Ahira, it’s not like that,” Azmaveth in a human body argued.
“I’ve been a proper fool for not realizing it earlier. You’ve said before that breaking curses is really the only magic dragons cannot perform. Naturally you would be very skilled at the art of transfiguration, which I suppose would allow you to take on a human body,” I ruthlessly continued.
“Look, I may have started this as an experiment, but really Ahira, you’ve got to believe me—,” Kohath started.
“Believe you? When you’ve been lying from the start!” I snarled.
“This is not the right time to try and properly explain,” Kohath groaned, rubbing his forehead. “I honestly didn’t think she would squeal so soon. Really, Ahira, I would have told you sooner, but—.”
My ears popped as we landed with a thump, the dragons paws jiggling in spite of his efforts to keep them relatively stable.
The crimson dragon unclasped his paws, allowing Azmaveth and myself to crawl out of his claws.
The same gold dragon who had divvied out the princesses the day I arrived was waiting a few feet away.
Azmaveth and I had been dumped in the center of the cave. Dragons sat around us in a ring, whispering and talking to one another.
The gold dragon cleared his throat before speaking in his rumbling voice. “Hear ye, hear ye. The Dragon Court is now in session for the trial of Azmaveth, a Duke of the Dragons. Long live the King,” the gold dragon finished with a complicated bow in my direction.
I spun around. Behind me was a gigantic platform where three dragons were seated, their silhouettes barely visible thanks to the bright lights that beat down on me. I could see that the dragon in the middle was the biggest.
It was that big dragon who rumbled, “Azmaveth, it is best if you reverse your transformation.”
Human Azmaveth sighed. “As you wish,” he said before muttering a stream of words under his breath.
There was a boom, and the magic was filled with purple smoke. When it parted Azmaveth, in his usual, elegant dragon body was revealed.
Chapter 16Dragons on Trial
Another piece of my heart crumbled. I had hoped that he really wasn’t Azmaveth and that he wouldn’t be able to transform.
“I’m so sorry Ahira,” Azmaveth whispered to me, his lean, cat-like body stretched out behind me as he lowered his head to try and nuzzle me.
I stiffly stood like a stone statue and did not respond, much less acknowledge the change.
Was everything I encountered in Tsol a lie, just like Kohath and Levi?
“Explain what you have done Azmaveth,” the middle dragon ordered as the lights dimmed some. This dragon was a lovely royal blue and the edges of his scales were plated in gold. He had to be the Dragon King. “Why have you betrayed the codes of our kind and shape shifted into a human?”
Azmaveth raised his head to meet the King’s gaze. “It’s very simple, cousin,” he said.
The rest of the dragons in the cave erupted in shouts, angry that such a traitor would refer to their king so familiarly.
“I fell in love with a human,” Azmaveth continued.
Everyone froze for a second before the shouts were renewed. The room was occasionally pelted with purrs of surprise and thrums of irritation in addition to shouts of outrage.
“So it is true,” the King said. “Lady Flaming Rose did not lie,” he said, shifting his magnificent gaze to Rose, who was staring at me with intense dislike.
“I did break our ancient laws and create a potion that allowed me to change into a human, yes,” Azmaveth easily admitted, shrugging his shoulders as though such a taboo was commonly preformed.
“You will further explain yourself, Azmaveth,” the king said, shifting back to his haunches.
The tip of Azmaveth’s tail made a steady beat on the ground, like a cat’s tail. “I started researching the potion out of sheer curiosity. Ahira was, and always will be I suspect, an interesting sample of her kind. I wanted to see what made humans tick. But it wasn’t enough just to study their anatomy or psychology. Living with Ahira made me want to try it for myself. As everyone knows, if anything I am a scientist at heart.”
Dragons in the crowd murmured, agreeing with him.
I tried to hold back tears.
I was right, I was nothing but an experiment. A scientific discovery, a testing ground for his dratted research. All of our times, our memories, were created because he wanted to experience being human.
I unconsciously rubbed my lips with a hand. That meant that even that day, what I thought was a bet between himself and “Levi” to see if he could kiss me was probably nothing but a scientific wager between two dragons.
“After days of research I was able to create a potion that would grant a dragon a human transformation. It was only temporary, and it was shaky at best. I spent weeks and months perfecting it and prolonging the periods of time it allowed me to move about as a human,” Azmaveth said, his dark eyes rested on me as he shifted. I could feel his gaze even though I refused to look up at him. His front paws were carefully placed on either side of me.
“I made up an identity that would allow me to roam like a human. I used my middle name, Kohath, and gave myself the title of Azmaveth’s steward. Ahira, the main attraction of my experience, didn’t know a thing about dragon culture. Of course she wouldn’t know that dragons don’t have stewards. As long as I, acting as both myself and Kohath, affirmed the false relationship Ahira wouldn’t question it.”
I grit my teeth so hard I thought my they might crack. I had trusted him.
“I grew fond of my princess and disliked some of the company she kept, particularly that of Aaron, a wizard. He constantly tried to cozy up to Ahira, an action I didn’t appreciate. I decided to use my Kohath identity to win her heart and make the wizard keep his paws off her,” Azmaveth said, spitting out the last part of the sentence.
&nbs
p; “Unfortunately, like many scientists before me, I failed. Ahira found my human form to be a friend at best, and more annoying than loving at worst. She remained friends with Aaron, and in a superb twist of irony, I fell in love with her instead.”
I couldn’t hold back a snort. The King noticed my action and cocked his head. Azmaveth’s paws stiffened. He must have heard me as well.
I didn’t care if he was hurt, it was a ridiculous claim. If Azmaveth had really cared so much about me he would have told me. He would have spilled his purple guts the moment he started feeling guilty. Instead Rose, Rose who didn’t even live with him like I did, had sniffed out his secret, and I had not.
A few tears spilled out of my eyes, hitting my cheeks like hot coals.
A shifting on the platform gained my attention, and I finally realized that one of the dragons sitting next to the King was Behemoth. The other was a large, black dragon that I had never seen before in my life.
“Fellow dragons,” Behemoth shouted over the whispers and hums. “You have heard Sir Azmaveth, a Duke of the Dragons, confirm with his own mouth the charges against him. What do you say?”
“Kill the girl!” Rose spat. “She is the one who caused all of this.”
“Ahira did nothing!” Azmaveth roared, twisting his neck to stare at the red scaled female. “She didn’t know about any of this. It was you who went through my lab, without my gainsay, when we were gone!”
“It’s a good thing I did,” Rose snarled in return. “Who knows how long this little charade would have continued if I hadn’t!”
“My King, let it be noted that Rose obviously has feelings of hatred for the girl. Not because Azmaveth broke the dragon code and turned into a human, but because he fell in love with the Princess,” Behemoth sharply said, glancing at me out of the corner of his eye.
I bowed my head to show my thankfulness towards him.
The King twitched his tail. “Behemoth is right. Rose is too emotionally involved with this case, even if we ignore the fact that she’s been rallying to be Azmaveth’s betrothed for decades.”
Even in my cold fury, a part of me goggled at this news. Yet another thing I wasn’t aware of. Perhaps I really wasn’t a big part of Azmaveth’s life like I had thought. I considered Azmaveth’s love confession with a great deal of disbelief and scorn. I didn’t know what Azmaveth was trying to accomplish, but he was very obviously not in love with me.
