The Princess' Dragon Lord (12 page)

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.

Her last vision was of Nyx, his face broken
and swelling all over until he resembled a squished prune with
eyes.

Dagda stood before him, passing on his
sentencing to the servant.

“You have poisoned the prince's goblet and
witnesses claim you set a spell upon him. The deaths of Mab's
daughters rests on your shoulders.”

In between this memory, something else came
to her. Not another memory, but knowledge, Nyx's knowledge.

Mab had survived Azoth's attack, and so did
one of Diana's sister's, but the latter had been so wounded that no
one expected her to survive another night, and Mab stayed at the
girl's bedside constantly, not bothering to even come down to
question the servant who supposedly had been the cause for all her
grief.

She would make sure to go to war against the
dragons, however, Diana already knew that.

Dagda was only taking control as the brother
of a mourning queen might be expected to do during such a crisis,
and he was doing a splendid job.

“How do you plead?” Dagda demanded, already
perfectly in command, his voice strong and loud.

“Not guilty.” Nyx said through his swollen
mouth and broken teeth.

The counsel room where the trial was being
handled consisted of mostly empty seats, likely because those
intended to sit in them had been murdered. For those in attendance,
they glared and screamed at the prisoner below, shouting to Dagda
to exact vengeance upon him for what he had done to their
families.

Diana inhaled a sharp gasp, fighting the urge
to cry as she understood.

Dagda never wanted the dowry money. It had
never been about that. He wanted his sister and nieces out of the
way so that he could rule his own grassy kingdom, and the forest
lands belonging to his sister.

Mab's daughters were all dead, and soon Mab
would be killed in the war against the dragons. But
she
was
still here, Diana lived, which meant Dagda had one more task to
accomplish before he could be the true ruler of his sister's
lands.

Dagda silenced the counsel with a raised
palm. It took a moment, but eventually, everyone's blood lust
calmed enough that, when he approached the prisoner, his shoes
clicked noisily on the stone floor.

Dagda knelt down to be at eye level with the
poor man. Nyx flinched in his chains and wouldn't look him in the
eyes.

Dagda leaned close, and Diana expected to
have to strain her ears to hear what was being whispered, but her
uncle's words were as clear as though he were whispering in her own
ear.

“Where is she?”

Nyx jerked back, his purple face darkening in
his rage, and he spat a heavy glob of blood in Dagda's eye.

The counsel went insane.

Diana was pulled out of the vision just as
several guards rushed forth to violently beat him for the offense,
and she was glad. She didn't want to watch her best friend being
beaten to death.

She came out of her vision, still looking in
Nyx's direction.

You saved me.
She thought.

He nodded, and she felt his love warming her,
swelling within her, filling her lungs with the air she couldn't
take in before.

As her body responded, the worst sort of
guilt took hold of her, and she was still paralyzed with it.

What had happened to him was her fault.

The emotion was lifted away as quickly as it
had come, and Nyx shook his head at her. Had he taken her guilt
away?

Yes, he had.

Now do something,
he commanded inside
her head.

Like what?
she replied in the same
manner. She was no warrior and had no strength to do anything. The
whipping hand of the oak above was readying to come down on Azoth's
back again, slowly, slowly. His eyes were screwed shut as he braced
himself for the coming pain. Her anger came again, and her insides
flared.

Do something
.

She did. A flood of twittering and shrieking
creatures emerged from the woods, wings flapping and tails
twitching as every form of bird, squirrel, and insect flew at and
crawled on the attacking tree with all the speed of a rushing
waterfall.

Azoth looked over his shoulder to better
see.

At first the onslaught it was only enough to
make the great tree bat at the swarming creatures, attempting to
frighten them away as one would swat at a group of attacking bees,
but then the sheer number of creatures became too much.

Claws gripped on the bark, teeth gnawed into
the branches, and the insects burrowed into the heart of the tree
itself, eating away at it until they found the heart of the monster
and it weakened and fell, but even then the creatures did not stop
their attacking until the spell fell away and the tree stopped
flailing.

“Your doing?” Azoth asked. His body was warm
with sweat, his heart pounding.

“Yes,” Diana answered, her breath coming out
in tiny gasps. Her fingers felt along Azoth's back, and the warm
wetness she found there was enough to make her chin tremble and her
eyes burn. The tree had struck him so forcefully that his
protective scales had ripped away, leaving him bleeding and freshly
scarred.

“Nothing I have not had to go through
before,” Azoth assured her, rising with a wince to stand. “I will
live.”

Dagda roared then, reminding them that he was
still there, and still wanted them dead.

Azoth spun around, and Diana had to take hold
of his arm to keep him from toppling over as the blood loss took
its toll on him. Diana never wished for a sword more in her entire
life.

Dagda continued to scream, but it was not a
war cry, and he was not about to attack, or send another small army
of creatures to do his bidding.

Azoth's rust colored eyes widened as he
looked over Dagda's shoulders, the man falling to his stomach in
agony as he fought and struggled against that which he could not
touch.

“You,” he said.

“You can see him?” Diana asked.

Nyx stood behind the pretender king, face
contorted with rage, and his hands gripping tightly against the
stems of Dagda's fragile, papery wings. The king kicked his legs,
thrashed his body, and dug his fingernails into the soft earth, but
he could not shake off a ghost.

Azoth's previous words came back to her as
she watched the scene.
“A ghost has many powers, sometimes more
than they had in life. It's not wise to cross one.”

No shit
, she thought.

Dagda's screams brought a shiver to Diana's
spine, and she curled into Azoth's side, sometimes hiding her face
into his chest, but unable to stop herself from glancing over from
time to time to look at the bloody progress it took to rip a set of
limbs out of a man's back.

Nyx threw down the wings when finished,
disgusted, and he looked up at the both of them.

“He's all yours,” he said, speaking for the
first time through his mouth and not with his mind. He motioned
down to the bleeding man on the damp leaves and pine needles, as
though they could have missed him.

Then he began to disappear.

Diana reached for him, quickly before Azoth
could pull her back. “Don't go!”

She grabbed him by the arms, shocked that she
was even able to touch him. She'd half expected to run right
through him, but he was as solid and real as herself.

He smiled at her, the smile reaching his
formerly sad, purple eyes, and he smoothed a lock of hair behind
her ear. “I am free. Do not mourn me.”

Like that was even remotely possible.

His hand was behind her neck, pulling her
closer, and before she could put together what was happening, he
was kissing her.

It was a chaste, simple sort of thing, like
the respectful kiss Azoth had given to her when they said their
marriage vows.

Just as quickly, it was over, and Azoth was
next to her, bristling like an affronted hedgehog.

“I suppose a kiss is not unjust payment for
our lives,” he said between his teeth, then he relaxed a bit. “And
I do owe you my apologies for my suspicions all these years.”

Nyx laughed again, releasing Diana's arms. “I
have always loved you, and now I can be happy knowing you are
finally as free as I.”

“Nyx...” Tears were freely running down her
face. She didn't know what she would have said to him in return.
She didn't get the chance to say anything because he vanished
completely from sight.

Azoth took her into his arms then and allowed
her to cry into his chest.

He gave her less than a moment to do so, as
Dagda's groaning pulled them both out of their thoughts.

Azoth gently pulled the both of them away to
a nearby tree. A small sapling that hadn't been one of the ones to
attack them. He carefully pried her loose and set her down to sit
in the pine needles.

“You do not want to witness this,
sakkra
,” he said. “Turn away.”

Eyes wide with the knowledge of what he
planned to do, Diana nodded, lifted her knees and hugged them
close, putting her head down and hiding her eyes. At the last
second, she thought to cover her ears, but of course, that barely
did anything, and she still heard everything that happened.

“I do not enjoy having to carry out a
sentence on a member of the royal house, especially as helpless as
you are, but,” Azoth trailed off, and the sickening crunch of bones
followed. Dagda didn't even scream.

Epilogue

A couple of weeks later.

Diana hugged the comforter around her
shoulders. The morning air was chilly, and even more so when she
was outside in her bare feet, wearing nothing more than her pajama
bottoms and a flimsy little tank top.

She'd enjoyed their flimsiness when Azoth
took them off her last night, but now she wished she were wearing a
sweater or something as the cold air hit her feet and wafted under
and up the blanket.

She'd done this at least three times before,
woken up in the early dawn's light to find the other side of her
shared bed cold and empty.

With all the gold from Azoth's cavern, they
were both living like, well, royalty, and she'd done as she'd
promised and bought a remote cabin (okay, it was a mini mansion)
away from cities, noise, and just about anything that would stun a
man-dragon from a thousand years ago. The road leading to their new
home wasn't even paved, their nearest neighbor was five miles away,
and the closest town had less than two thousand people in it.

Sometimes she missed malls and shopping, but
there would be time for those later. Azoth was still getting used
to her car, and was still a nervous passenger whenever she managed
to coax him inside it. At least there was a nice art supply store
to keep them busy whenever they got too antsy to stay inside the
house.

For Azoth, that was most of the time. After
living for so many years confined, walls all around, regardless of
how well spaced, now that the option to enter to outside was
finally upon him, he did it as often as possible.

Though he did manage to keep himself
preoccupied on the property itself. He hunted in the woods
surrounding the house and lake, swam, fished, flew in his dragon
form—Diana had warned him to be cautious of that last one—and at
night, sometimes he stole away while Diana slept to stargaze.
Usually this ended with him falling asleep out in the cold, and
Diana waking to go and search for him.

Those other times, just like now, she would
come to him at dawn, and they would both settle with her comforter
to watch the rising sun.

It seemed only fitting for a man who hadn't
see the sky in so long to adore everything about it. Diana had
trouble keeping him indoors half the time.

She knelt down, smiling as he slept, mouth
open a crack and softly snoring. She shook her head and nudged his
shoulder. “Hey,”

He awoke with a startled jerk. Then his eyes
found hers, and he settled again. “Good morn, my love.”

“Good morning,” she allowed him to put his
large hands around her waist and pull her down with him. She would
never get over how small she felt in comparison to his size. He
didn't seem to mind that she was still clutching their dampening
comforter, leaving none for him as he snuggled into her, kissing
her neck.

“I was thinking we'll have to move the
bedroom into the sun room if you keep on doing this.”

“As I suggested before, hm?”

“Don't be a smart ass,” she said, pinching
him just under the little dragon tattoo on his shoulder.

She really loved that tattoo. It seemed to
appear right after he became one with his dragon. Azoth said it was
a symbol of his status.

“Seeing the sun and stars while I make love
to my wife would be nice,” Azoth said, shifting and pulling her
away from her thoughts on the little dragon. “But feeling the earth
beneath my skin is also nice. I could do this every morning.”

“You won't want to when the winter
comes.”

“Let it come. I'll take that too.”

She shook her head and kissed him, letting
him enjoy the peace of being outside, the wind gently swaying the
stray hairs of his head around his lips and cheeks and closed
eyelids. Although it had been chilly and damp, his body heat
quickly warmed her, and she found herself also being able to
appreciate the cool dewdrops against the back of her neck and
fingers along with her husband.

He was the one to break the silence, just as
her body and mind were relaxing back into sleep.

“When,” he hesitated. “When did you wish to
let the fae world know you live?”

She snuggled closer to him, no longer sleepy,
but trying to hide from the question in the comfortable warmth of
his chest. “Let's give it another week,” she said.