The Princess' Dragon Lord (11 page)

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 monsters, 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.