The Princess' Dragon Lord (8 page)

“I have been punishing the both of us.” Azoth
said, his lips thinning. “I may have transformed into my dragon
that day, but we are both responsible for your death.”

“But you still put most of the blame onto
him.”

A slight hesitation. “Perhaps.”

Diana looked back up at the dragon. She felt
no fear of it any longer, not now that she was so confidant in what
Azoth told her about her former life. This dragon was still a piece
of her lover, and when Azoth punished the dragon, he punished
himself. When the dragon felt pain over Azoth's cold shoulder,
Azoth himself felt pain.

Diana wasn't sure how she knew this, but the
sudden knowledge was just so right, there was no other explanation
for it. It was almost comparable to self mutilation, whether Azoth
knew it or not.

She stepped forward again, her strides longer
this time, until Azoth's hand whipped out and snatched her arm. “Do
not get any closer,” he seethed, his eyes darting towards his
dragon, as though making sure the creature wasn't about to
strike.

She resisted when he tried to pull her behind
him again. “Let me do this,” she said.

“You cannot—”

She glared at him, her eyes hard, daring him
to finish that sentence.

He stopped talking, but he didn't release her
arm.

One step at a time
, she supposed.

Turning her eyes back to the dragon, she
reached her hand up to it.

The giant creature took the hint and leaned
down its large head. A gentle gurgling sound was released from its
throat.

Diana realized with a start that it was
purring. Then its nose was under her hand. Despite the steam she'd
witnessed coming through the nostrils as it breathed, the scales
were cool and smooth to the touch. It felt like everything that
used to make her shudder when she ever thought about touching a
lizard, but this was alright. The large, basketball sized eyes slid
shut at the gentle contact. Diana smiled and stroked the place
between the mounds of its nose.

She looked back at Azoth, ready to be all
smug. His eyebrows had gone right up to his hairline, and his mouth
hung ever so slightly.

“This doesn't look like a creature that could
ever hurt me,” she said.

“I do not understand,”

“I—” Diana's reply was cut off as an all
encompassing hellfire consumed her body. She opened her mouth to
shriek, but nothing came out, and her fists clenched until her
nails bit into her skin.

Despite the pain and the panic, she was still
perfectly aware of what was going on around her, which made her
suffering that much worse as it was the only thing she was able to
think about.

It was like she was being electrocuted, the
same feeling as the last time this had happened, only this one was
so much worse than the last, and a thousand times more painful. Her
skin burned like hot lava until it became as cold as January snow.
She couldn't move her body, could barely hear Azoth's screams or
the dragon's roars until they faded into the background like
nothing. Her eyes stopped working and she bit down on her tongue
until blood filled her mouth like a water balloon had just burst
inside.

Despite her lack of eyesight and hearing and
the paralyzing fear that put inside her, the image of a man,
someone who was not Nyx, but equally familiar, flashed before her
eyes.

Chapter Eight

Diana came into this new memory shivering.
The pain had abruptly faded but its effects were still upon her,
and it was like her nerve endings were getting used to the sudden
changes in her body.

She wasn't physically hurting anymore, but
her mind still recalled the horrific pains, and her muscles were
reacting.

She didn't know how much more of this she
could take.

“Uncle!”

Diana looked up at the sound of her own
voice. The princess ran into the arms of the new man in her
memories, the one she'd seen just before being pulled back into
this place.

Uncle? Was this the man she—the previous
Diana—had spoken of when trying to tutor Azoth?

The man's lips were turned up in a warm
smile, his arms outstretched in welcome as she flung herself into
them.

Dagda. Diana's mind supplied her with the
name instantly. This man was the brother of Mab, and her uncle
Dagda. She recognized him now from one of the paintings in her
former room, one of the paintings she'd been packing away for when
she would leave with her husband.

His hair was long and straight, the pale
brown color of a dogwood branch. For a split second, as the
memories swam in front of her vision, Diana thought his cape, the
same color as his hair, had some sort of white fur trim as a neck
attachment.

Then his cape fluttered, revealing that they
were truly oversized insect wings, and that the white trim was
really a sort of fluff growing from out of his neck, like a
moth.

Nothing shocked her anymore, and Diana found
herself accepting that fact with more ease than she probably should
have.

Dagda, her uncle, and king of the fae in a
neighboring land, was impossibly tall. Memory Diana, wearing a gown
that consisted of oversized blue butterfly wings, had to jump high
in order to make it into his arms. The man's back remained stock
still during the catch. Her weight was not enough to produce any
sort of physical reaction out of him.

Though his countenance was warm, his voice
and smile genuine as he congratulated her on her upcoming marriage,
Diana felt cold at the sight of her former self walking off with
him, arm in arm, discussing normal things like how his journey had
been and the food they would be having at the evening meal.

She didn't understand the significance, and
found her body tightening in agitation. “What am I supposed to be
seeing here?” She called out as the two ghostly figures
disappeared.

She could no longer assume that these
memories, suddenly haunting her now, were all a coincidence. If she
was going to assume that her life wasn't real, that it was all the
product of some kind of spell, then someone was breaking through
that spell to send her a message. There was no other
explanation.

Her vision swam, and this time, for the first
time, she began to witness memories that didn't include her at
all.

She reappeared in the center of what sounded
like a sharp worded argument, but it was spoken in low hissing
tones. To keep others from overhearing? Guess even in the magical
world people still had to watch out for spies.

Dagda was there, speaking with a man who
looked remarkably like Azoth, but older, with crows feet under his
eyes and hints of grey in his long red hair.

His father
, her mind supplied again.
She must've met him some time in her previous life to have known
about that.

The king of dragons stood tall, his heavy red
brows pulled together in a viscous frown as he pointed a thick
finger in Dagda's face. “I'll be dead before I see my family joined
to yours, fae devil!”

Dagda was the epitome of calm. “Oh? You would
be willing to share those thoughts with your son? He has quite
taken to the girl. He has been seen flying with her in his dragon
form. I would not be surprised if they have also taken to each
others beds already.”

“He will get over it, and you had best mind
your filthy tongue before I cut it out and have it for my
breakfast.”

Diana's brows shot up at the threat, and her
eyes stayed glued on the elder Dracamire's back as he stormed off,
fists clenched and massive muscles tense.

Dagda watched him go as well, then did a half
turn and looked right into Diana's face.

She gasped. “You can see me?”

He ignored her. “Come out of your hiding
place, servant.”

Diana frowned, confused, then turned and saw
what Dagda was really looking at.

Nyx, hiding in the shadows, an easy feet
considering how dark he himself was, watching the exchange.

He paled at the command, obviously caught.
Then he turned tail and ran quickly in the opposite direction.
Dagda gave chase.

Diana was pulled ahead in the memory, and she
allowed herself to go, not fighting it this time. Her heart rate
picked up, her excitement grew, and she got the feeling that the
end was near, that she was finally about to see whatever it was
that she was meant to see.

But then her heart really became fast. Her
chest and throat swelled and became hot and it took a moment for
her to realize she wasn't breathing. She couldn't breathe!

Like being rudely snapped out of a dream,
Diana's eyes yanked open. Her vision was assaulted by more of that
blur she was becoming used to, but this wasn't from some fog in her
brain as memories from a former life came and went as they pleased.
It was more like she was underwater.

She exhaled sharply, heavy air bubble s
leaving her mouth as the realization shocked her. She
was
under water! Hard hands, Azoth, gripped her and pulled her out of
the pool.

She gasped for air, sputtering water and
shaking, and she threw her arms around his shoulders, as though he
were her personal life-jacket and would keep her from going back
under.

A strange thing for her to think since he was
the one to put her under. She was back in the pool where he kept
his ever healing philosophers stone.

Azoth's hand was in her hair, cupping her
head and holding her close. He was in the pool with her, and
dripping wet now that she was clinging to him so forcefully, but he
hadn't been submerged like she had. She could tell because his hair
was still only damp from the last time they'd been in here.

He was speaking to her, more of the dragon
words he fell back into whenever something rattled him, mixed in
with english.

Though the water was warm, her teeth
chattered.

Azoth spoke again, but she couldn't listen to
what he said, not when she was so focused on making the memories
she'd been seeing come back to her before she forgot them. She
needed to hang onto them. They were so real, so familiar, and that
last bit she'd needed to see was just at the edge, behind a curtain
that she couldn't lift away.

It was as frustrating as forgetting a name or
word that she should've known, that was on the tip of her tongue,
but still lost.

Azoth pulled them both out of the pool to sit
along the edge, and he stretched a cloth of some kind around her
shoulders.

It was different from the thin, small towels
they'd used before, and she looked down at it and recognized it as
the same cloak Azoth's father had worn that day he threatened her
uncle.

Azoth was no longer rambling now that he
could see she was all right. He simply adjusted the cloak to better
fit around her shoulders, watching her with open concern, and Diana
held it tighter around her like it was a security blanket.

Azoth continued to murmur soothing voices to
her, like she was a small animal in need of petting and coddling.
It comforted and annoyed her at the same time.

When she pushed herself up to stand,
declining his constant offers to carry her, but more than happy to
accept his arm to lean on, she allowed him to lead her out of the
steaming bathing room and into the warm, open airs of his treasure
trove.

The red dragon, Big Azoth, she'd named him in
her mind, was crooning sadly as she limped across the rock clearing
of the bright cavern, steadied by Azoth, and towards his bed.

After asking her more frantic questions, all
of which she'd answered with a mumbled yeah, or mmhmm, Azoth took
the hint and finally stopped asking her. He became her silent rock
to lean against.

When they made it to his room, he pulled
aside the covers of his bed and helped her underneath them where
she gratefully snuggled under the soft leathers. She hadn't noticed
until now how warm they made her feel, and that made her eyelids
even heavier.

Even with them shut, she could still sense
Azoth's presence above her. He watched her silently for so long she
might have fallen asleep, but then woke up again at the sound of
his nearly silent feet padding out of the room.

“Wait,” she sat up, suddenly afraid of what
would happen if he left her alone.

He had one hand on his carved doorway. The
curtain that he'd used as a door was gone, and with a start, Diane
realized she was wearing it. If he'd lived here alone for so long,
maybe he'd only put up his father's cloak in the first place for
her benefit.

Azoth half turned to look at her,
waiting.

She'd sat up, and that made her dizzy. “Don't
go.”

His entire body went tight, but he didn't go.
“I will find the sprite responsible for this and kill him,” he
vowed. “And if he is already dead, I'll make his afterlife Hell.
I'll not rest until he who makes you suffer, suffers in
return.”

She couldn't take it anymore, sitting up had
been too much effort, and she fell back against his many pillows as
the room swirled around her. She opened her eyes and Azoth was
again above her. They seemed to keep meeting like this.

She smiled and thought to tell him that, but
he spoke first, his eyes seemed to be glued to the scar that
crossed diagonal from her forehead, between her eyes, and down her
left cheek.

“You should never have come here. I am the
cause for this. I know it now.”

“Azoth, no—”

“Do not tell me no!” he snapped. “Surely this
is a new form of punishment. I have grown content with my prison,
so now the only form of suffering that can be heaped upon me is in
the form of my love, returned from the dead, and suffering as I am
helpless to do nothing but watch.”

Diana tried to keep the room from spinning by
focusing on Azoth's face, but it wasn't working, so she threw her
arm over her eyes. The darkness barely helped. “That's the most
ridiculous thing I've ever heard.”