"That would be an excessively stupid thing to do," my father remarked, and beside him, my mother nodded her head.
"Yes," I agreed. "It would, but since when were people not stupid? We do stupid stuff all the time."
I purposefully looked at Caspian as I said this, but he'd gone back to gazing out of the window. I wondered for a second if I'd get away with throwing him through it.
My mother stood up, taking the floor between us. My father watched her like a hawk, ready to jump up and catch her in case she fell.
It warmed my heart. If I could guarantee a love like that, I might actually consider marriage. Not to Caspian, but to someone. My eyes caught Milo's and I looked down, worried he'd somehow catch my thoughts.
"The dragons have been coming down the mountain for a while," she said. "Last week, it was over the moorlands; last night, a couple of them rampaged through Zhore. What we don't know is why.
My father answered her. "Historical evidence suggests that it is an omen. Dragons hold a kind of magic that we humans know little about. They have only been known to come down the mountains in times of great stress."
"But it's the dragons causing the stress," Milo pointed out. "Apart from the two instances of them flying low, has anything else happened that could make you think that they are an omen?"
My mother held a hand to her head. "No. Nothing else has been reported. We could treat these as isolated incidents. Maybe, as Azia said earlier, someone was foolish enough to climb the mountains and disrupt them, but for the time being, we all need to be alert and prepare ourselves for the worst."
"I'll get my best men working on a solution to the problem," my father added, standing up to move nearer my mother. He picked up a glass of water and passed it to her. "I'll get them to ask around and see if they have seen anyone trying to sell dragon eggs. As you all are probably aware, the sale of dragon eggs is highly illegal, but that only drives their value up. It is definitely conceivable that someone decided to flout the law to make some money."
"That seems the best option at the moment, Alec, thank you." She took a sip of the water. "Which brings me to the next matter. Azia, I love you. You are my only daughter, and I want more than anything for you to be happy. However..."—she turned to Milo—"and this is no reflection on you, Milo." Turning back to me. "You cannot marry a guard. I took the initiative to look at his records. He's only been a guard for us for seven months. Probation and training last a year. He is not qualified to run a kingdom. I need someone by your side who can protect you. If he'd completed a little more training, maybe we could consider it."
"I've trained my whole life in swordsmanship, Your Majesty," Milo said. "My father made swords using metal from the mines, and I followed in his footsteps. As well as making them, I learned how to use them."
"Keeping a kingdom safe is not going to be helped by one man with a sword," Caspian uttered dismissively, waving a hand in the air. "A leader has to know how to protect all his subjects, not just the ones he lives with."
"With respect, sir," batted Milo back to him. "I wouldn't think of Azia and her brothers as my subjects if I married her. I'd think of them as family."
Caspian narrowed his eyes, and I could see that the conversation was ruffling his feathers. Good! He deserved it.
"It's the same thing when you are in charge," hissed Caspian.
"He called Remy an Idiot!" I shouted, adding to the argument. "he held a sword to my throat!"
My mother stood in the middle, clutching her ears.
"Enough!" she shouted. "This is just like this last time. People fighting over nothing. It doesn't matter about who is wrong or right in this particular argument. Azia cannot marry a castle guard, and that is final. I'm sorry."
"And I'm sorry," Caspian said, the smug look firmly back on his face. "I didn't mean to be offensive to your son."
I noticed he didn't apologize for what he'd done to me.
"Get out!" she yelled at him. I'd never seen her lose it like she was doing. Caspian stood and gave her a brief nod before walking past her and heading out the door. It would have been a moment of celebration if my mother hadn't chosen that moment to fall to the floor. Both Milo and my father moved to catch her.
"I'm fine, really," she whispered as my father took hold of her and pulled her back into a standing position. "I'm just so tired."
My father and Milo each took an arm, and between them, they helped her out of the room and up to her bed, leaving me alone in the drawing room.
She'd screamed at Caspian, which was good, but she'd also said I couldn't marry Milo, which was bad...kinda. I had no intention of marrying Milo any more than I had of marrying Caspian, but if my mother had forbidden it, surely that meant I still had to marry Caspian. It didn't bear thinking about.
As I pondered over the subject in my head, I moved over to the window and gazed out as I had done many times in my youth. Looking up, I spotted one or two dragons up by the snowy peaks of the tallest of the mountains. Up there, they looked serene, nothing like the ferocious beast with blazing red scales and a yellow underbelly that had blazed Zhore the night before. It had flown so close to me. Close enough that if I'd wanted to, I could have reached out and touched the tip of its wing. Once it had passed, Milo had taken my hand and rushed me back to his house.
The sound of the door opening again had me turning my head.
"Your mother is asleep," Milo said, standing by the door. He looked at me with a sheepish grin. "I'm sorry our plan didn't work. For what it was worth, I liked being your boyfriend for the past day, and it would have been the greatest honor to marry you."
"It's probably for the best," I sighed. "I've had so much fun with you, and I like you a lot, but I'm not ready to have a boyfriend. I want to see things, explore. I want to know who I am before I share myself with someone else."
"I can understand that," Milo said, taking a seat on the sofa. He picked up one of the untouched biscuits that my mother had brought in and began to chew it. "Maybe we could hang out sometime...as friends?"
A smile twitched on my lips. I could tell that now the pretense was over, it had taken a great deal of courage to ask that.
I sat down next to him on the sofa. "I'd love that. I really did have more fun last night than I remember ever having before."
"Until we were almost eaten by a dragon, you mean?" he teased, casually bumping my side.
"Actually, you running me back to your home and making pancakes for me was my favorite part," I said, remembering the evening before and how we'd stayed up late, eating pancakes with raspberry jam and chocolate sauce. Then I thought back to how I had felt when I was with him. "I felt safe with you," I whispered.
Milo sighed and looked right into my eyes. "It's a shame your mother doesn't feel the same way... I would have kept you safe, Azia."
I put my hand on his. He was warm, and touching him, even in such an innocent way had me wishing for more. "I know you would have. If things were different, maybe..."
"But you have to marry that buffoon."
I laughed at his choice of words. I had a feeling that Caspian would not like to be called a buffoon. He was one, but that didn't mean he had to like it.
I mulled everything over in my mind. "If only there was some way we could make my parents believe we are in love," I said idly. "Maybe if they could see that, they would change their minds."
"I could think of a way," he said softly. I was keenly aware his hand was still in mine.
He tightened his grip, which forced me to remember the night before when he'd introduced me as his girlfriend. This was all too real for him.
"But it can't be real, remember?" I said, pulling my hand back. "I can't. I just can't. I don't want a boyfriend. I'm sorry." I was playing with his emotions and felt dreadful.
Milo nodded. "I understand. No boyfriend. I already told you I get it. I could fake love you all you need and when the time comes... if you change your mind..."
"I won't," I said, a little too quick
ly. "Not for a long time anyway. I want to travel first."
"It's fine. I was only teasing you."
He wasn't, and we both knew it.
"Where do we start then?" he said a little too jovially. It broke the tension that had been building between us. Now we were all business. It made things so much easier without worrying about emotions being added to the mix.
Where did we start? How should I know? I knew what love looked like. My parents were like walking Valentine's cards around each other. Songs were written about the love they shared for each other, but how could I replicate it? Everything they did was so intimate. They didn't stop gazing into each other's eyes for a second, and when they thought no one was looking, they'd often sneak kisses. I couldn't do any of that.
"How about we start by holding hands when my parents are around. That would show them we are in love. It would piss Caspian off to boot."
As though I'd summoned him, the fae walked through the door.
Taking me by surprise, lips pressed against mine. Milo pulled me towards him, wrapping one arm around my waist, the other cradling my face. He tasted of peppermint, and as his warm lips moved against mine, I felt myself falling into him, moving closer without the need of his arm to guide me. My mind screamed at how wrong this was. This was no fake kiss. This was as real as it got, but my body ignored all thoughts.
It was only when the door slammed shut, that Milo pulled back.
"That works too," I whispered, my heart hammering in my chest.
Across from me, Milo said nothing at all.
5th January
I spent the night fretting over both Milo and Caspian. Yeah, Caspian certainly wasn't happy which gave me a sense of satisfaction. Promised to me or not, I didn't want him, and I'd been very honest about it from the start. Milo, on the other hand, was turning out to be the bigger problem. He'd kissed me for show, but there was nothing fake about the kiss. Echoes of it had peppered my dreams all night, and I could still almost feel the warmth of his lips on mine and the way my body responded to it. My first kiss, ever! It should have been a moment to cherish in my memory, not something that induced heart-pounding guilt. Although thinking about it had my heart pounding for other reasons too.
The whole thing was a mess. Why did everything have to be so complicated?
It was a relief when my father asked me to go out on a ride with him. At least, I wouldn't be in the castle wondering, which of the two to avoid the most.
After saddling up the horses, we set out into the blistering cold day. Once again, thick white clouds threatened snow.
"Where are we heading, Father?" I asked, cantering out of the castle grounds to the bridge that would take us to the fields.
He galloped a little to catch up. This was something we did often, go for rides together in the warm weather, but today wasn't warm, and I had a feeling this wasn't a casual ride for fun.
"We are heading into Zhore, but first I need to check the base of the mountains." I opened my mouth to ask why when he spoke again.
"I hate superstition, but I cannot deny that the last two incidents involving the dragons have made me nervous."
I cast a side-glance at him. He looked forward, his face set in grim determination, his cheeks already reddening in the blistering cold.
As I breathed out, my breath made its own little clouds. It rarely got cold enough in Draconis to do that. "Do you really believe the dragons will bring about dark times? I don't really see the correlation."
My father shrugged, passing me slightly on his horse. "I don't want to believe it. I consider myself a rational man, but dark magic has ways of getting through. I'm hoping it is merely a human aggravating them that has caused it. That is why we are out today. I've ordered a long fence to be put up along the base of the mountains. It won't keep the dragons out, but it will keep any humans from going in, and hopefully, that will be an end to the problem. The mountain range is thousands of miles around, so I've tasked almost my whole army on it. Let's just hope that our neighbors don't intend to attack, huh?" He laughed mirthlessly.
He meant his words as a joke, but they left unease in my gut as I considered our one true neighbor. On one side of us stood the peaceful kingdom of Badalah. To the south, our kingdom bordered Urbis for a while, but Urbis didn't really count as a kingdom. It was controlled by men in suits and governed all the kingdoms to some extent. Any king or queen could make a law for their own kingdom, but first, that law must get passed by the governors in Urbis before it could be used. To our north and east, rugged coastline stretched for miles bordering the great sea. Badalah would never attack us. Their king, the great Aladdin, and my father had met many times and got on well.
My father picked up the pace once we rode past the pastures and out onto the moors. I raced to keep up with him, but the wind in my face as the first snow began to fall took my breath away. I usually only saw snow on the top of the fire mountains in the deepest part of winter, but every few years or so, a dusting of snow would fall making everything white for a few hours before it thawed and the landscape turned red again. Even the weather, it seemed threatened to prove my father right about dark times coming.
Eventually, we came upon a group of men and women clad in fur coats, working against the weather to erect the fence, which stretched out miles behind them. The few small snowflakes that had begun to fall turned into flurries as my father jumped down from his horse.
"How are things coming?" My father asked what looked to be the man in charge. He was a thickset man with furs wrapped around him tied by a belt that strained.
"It's going to take weeks," the man said gruffly. "If the snow keeps up, it could run into months."
My father glanced up at the sky. At least, the dragons remained hidden from us by the snow-ladened clouds. Pulling my arms around myself to keep out the cold, I listened in to my father's conversation.
"It won't snow for long. It hasn't snowed like this since..."
"Since the dark days," huffed the man. "I know, but I still maintain that this is a waste of our precious time and resources. With dragons attacking, we need to be in the towns and cities ready to fight, not stuck out here in this cruddy weather building a wall that a dragon could fly over."
My father sighed, moving closer to the man. I noticed that the other workers had now stopped what they were doing and were listening in to what my father had to say.
"I've explained my reasoning, Jacob. I don't believe the dragons are coming down here to hurt us."
"Coulda fooled me," Jacob said, folding his arms around his rotund middle. "I suppose they were breathing fire in the main town to keep us all warm, eh?"
Behind Jacob, some of his crew smirked.
My father held firm. "I understand your frustrations, but I've given you a job, and I expect you to do it. Liking it is optional."
I gave my father a silent cheer as he stood up to Jacob. Jacob, on the other hand, scowled, his face sour.
"I'd rather send all my people up the mountain and kill the bloody lot of them," Jacob responded. "If we do it at once, they won't know what's hit them."
My father shook his head and jumped back on his horse. "I've given you my orders. No one is to go up these mountains until we find out why the dragons are coming down. There will be severe consequences for anyone that disobeys my order."
With that, he turned his horse around and began to walk back towards the road that would take us to Zhore.
"Some of the people don't like the way I'm dealing with things," my father admitted once we'd trotted out of earshot of the fence crew.
"I can understand why he is upset, but he had no right to talk to you like that. Besides, I don't like the thought of anyone killing the dragons. This is all some big mistake. I honestly think someone disturbed them."
My father gave a low chuckle. "You really like the dragons, don't you?"
"I think they are misunderstood," I said, tugging the reins to the right to take us on the path to Zhore. "They've been peaceful
for over eighteen years. Creatures don't change habits on a whim, not even dragons."
"I hope you're right, Azia," my father answered slowly. "I really do."
We rode in silence for a mile or so as the snow became heavier around us. "Why are we going to Zhore?" I asked.
"I need to show my face there," he explained. "Ninety percent of being a leader is presence. There is little damage, and those with injuries will make full recoveries, but people are scared. They need a leader to let them know that they will be alright."
That would have comforted me if I knew that he thought things would be all right, but he was flailing along with the rest of us.
It took longer than usual to reach Zhore, owing to the blanket of white snow. Despite the weather, hundreds of people came out to see my father, filling the main square like the audience at a somber music concert. While my father took to a stage to tell everyone about the fence being built, I walked around the square, glancing in the shop windows. I'd not prepared myself for the blistering cold and my fingers hurt.
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