Red Says the Dragon

by Sophie Stern

  He was not yet sure if Kaira would be up for the task.

  “Kaira,” Sanguine spoke. His voice bellowed throughout the hall. He thought he saw her shirk down, slouching slightly deeper into her chair.

  “Yes?” Her voice shivered and shook. She was afraid.

  She was so afraid, in fact, that Kaira felt like she might cry. She did not expect to feel this way when she saw the dragon again. The truth was that Sanguine was so big and so horrible and so smelly that Kaira couldn’t bear to be around him for a second longer. She wished for her warm blankets and her father and her kingdom and her maids.

  Kaira wished for hot food.

  Kaira wished for someone who loved her.

  Kaira wished she was not tied to a chair, waiting to be entertainment for a huge beast. Did he like to play with his food the way her cats did? Is that why she was still alive? Was he waiting to see her break? Or was it more than that? Was there some sort of test that Kaira had to endure? Was there something else about her presence here? Was there a chance that Sanguine might not kill her?

  Kaira did not know.

  She only knew that she must be honest with the dragon and obey him, no matter what he said.

  If she wanted to live, she would obey.

  “You ran away,” the dragon said.

  Kaira nodded. Her hands were balled into fists. She continued to stare at the table and blink back her tears.

  This wasn’t going to end well.

  Sanguine made his way closer to Kaira. She could feel him. He could sense her heartbeat racing.

  “Tell me why you ran, human.”

  The words were harsher than the ones Sir used with her. Though Sir was commanding and in control, he always called her “Princess.” He always made her feel like she was special. Out of all the girls who had been captured, Kaira wanted to believe that she was something important.

  She wanted to believe that she was something valuable, someone valuable.

  But this?

  “Human”?

  That’s what he referred to her as, that’s what Sanguine thought of her. To him, she was no one special. She was just a piece of meat, just something to eat later when he was done playing with her.

  “I will never tell you,” Kaira said finally, spitting at the dragon. She hated him, though she wasn’t sure why. She hated the way he made her feel: small and useless. He made her feel weak. Kaira had been many things in her life, but weak? Never. She was better, stronger. She was braver. She was valuable.

  She was not weak. She was not something he could play with. She was not his toy.

  Then Kaira looked up and met the dragon’s gaze for the first time.

  His eyes flashed red.

  20

  She despised him.

  He could see it in the way he looked at her. Sanguine had hurt her. He had damaged her. He had scared her. He was desperately attracted to her. He was. There was no denying it. Kaira was gorgeous and there was something about her that made him feel much younger, much more alive than he truly was. Despite her good looks, Sanguine knew there was something much deeper that attracted him to her. There was something crazy about her. There was something just a little bit wild.

  He needed to find a way to show Kaira how valuable she was, how important she was.

  He needed to find a way to show her that she was making him crazy with desire.

  He needed something.

  Sanguine stared at his prize, at his precious princess. There were so many emotions swimming around in her eyes. She looked scared, confused, and curious. Sanguine wondered how he could grasp onto that curiosity and make it work for his own good. He wanted her to like him, to desire him like he desired her. He wanted to know if Kaira could one day be his consort, maybe even his queen.

  Suddenly, an idea struck him.

  “Here,” Sanguine said to her. “Don’t move.” Kaira looked afraid, but did as she was told. Sanguine leaned down over her and gently breathed a small puff of fire out of his nostrils. It wasn’t much, not enough to hurt her, but it was enough to burn the ropes that bound her. It was enough to free her.

  The ropes fell from her wrists and Kaira rubbed her arms quickly, making sure they were fine with no bruising or cuts.

  “Why did you do that?” She asked.

  “Come,” he said to her, and turned to walk away.

  He walked, knowing she would follow. While she hesitated for a moment, her curiosity soon got the better of her and Kaira followed quickly behind Sanguine. She remained quiet as they walked through the room and down a wide hallway. She kept her gaze firmly on Sanguine, still awed by his considerable size. Were all dragons this huge? How could they ever have been hunted? They were mammoth. She wondered, for a moment, exactly what it must take to kill a dragon. Kaira couldn’t imagine it happening very easily or very often.

  They made several turns and explored several caverns before finally settling in the treasure room where Sanguine had first captured Kaira. Her empty cage sat in the corner, abandoned and forlorn. She shot Sanguine a look, as if to ask if he wanted her to go back into it, but he shook his head, almost indiscernibly. No, he was sure they were past the point of caging.

  “This is what I have acquired,” he told Kaira, motioning to the treasure. His voice was deep and husky and he hoped she couldn’t tell just how aroused he was, knowing how she watched him walk the entire way. Did she like his scales? Did she enjoy his coloring? What did Kaira think of him in his dragon form? While he loved touching her as Sir, part of Sanguine hoped she would eventually come to love all of him: dragon shape included.

  “It must have taken you many years,” Kaira commented, walking slowly into the room. While she had previously thought that it was a large, round room with a single large pile of treasure, she saw now that the room was elongated. The area with the first pile of treasure was just the opening to the room. Now, looking behind it, she could see that the pile stretched on for what looked like miles. Though part of the ceiling dipped, the room continued on and on and on. She wondered exactly how much treasure there was here. Enough for a kingdom or seven, that was for sure.

  “It did,” Sanguine commented. “Though you might not know it now, I was once quite the collector.”

  She scoffed.

  “I bet you were, big boy.” She walked toward the treasure pile and stared at it for a moment before picking up a small gold bracelet. She hung it over her wrist, examining herself for a moment, then placed it back in the pile. “Don’t worry,” she said, glancing back at him. “I’m not going to take anything.”

  “Princess,” Sanguine told her, “you can take anything you like.”

  “Why?” She looked at him, curious. “Aren’t you just going to eat me? Will I taste better adorned in gold, Dragon?”

  “My name is Sanguine,” he told her.

  “I know what your name is.”

  “Then I suggest you begin to use it,” he said harshly.

  Kaira stared at him for a moment, unblinking, then finally turned away.

  “Apologies, Sanguine.”

  “Tell me about yourself,” Sanguine said to her. Kaira was getting more and more excited about the treasure. He could tell. Her heart rate was up and she was walking faster and faster, picking up different things and dropping them back down. She looked like a child receiving gifts.

  She stopped and turned back to him, then walked over. She held a necklace in her hand. It was on a silver chain and displayed a beautiful heart-shaped ruby.

  “What do you want to know?” Kaira asked, walking very close to Sanguine. She took another step closer, so close that she could almost touch his snout, if she wanted to. He wondered if she would reach out and rub his nose or pat his neck. Part of him wanted her to. Part of him wanted her to explore him.

  “Everything,” he said simply.

  “I’m quite ordinary,” she shrugged. “There’s really nothing to know about me.”

  “What do you like?” He asked her, not believing for a mome
nt that Kaira was ordinary. He had seen many princesses and many queens. None of them had smelled as sweet or tasted as delicious as Kaira did.

  “I like adventures,” she said without thinking about it.

  “What about the adventure you’re having now?” Sanguine asked.

  Kaira looked at him for a moment, thinking about his words. She opened her mouth, as if to say that this was the worst adventure she’d ever been on. Instead, she reached out her hand and rubbed his snout. She was tender in her touch, gingerly rubbing him before coming closer.

  “It’s like nothing I’ve ever done before,” she said finally.

  Then Kaira turned and walked back to the treasure.

  21

  Kaira wasn’t quite sure what possessed her to touch the dragon’s snout. She was being quite truthful when she said that she had never enjoyed an adventure like this. She had never been captured before. She had never been held against her will. She had never been touched the way Sir touched her. She certainly had never been away from home, away from her father’s watchful eye.

  As she walked away from Sanguine’s steely gaze, she continued to touch and explore his treasure piles. She wondered exactly how many kingdoms Sanguine had conquered, once upon a time. She wondered how many villages he had plundered, how many knights he had killed. Though she didn’t think him to be vicious, she knew also that he wasn’t good. He was a dragon, after all. He was someone who had captured her.

  She found a gold cup that looked interesting. It was covered in sapphires. She brought it back to Sanguine.

  “Tell me about this,” she said, though they both knew she was asking: not demanding.

  “What do you want to know?” He asked.

  “Do you remember when you got it?”

  “I do.” Sanguine nodded his dragon head. Again, Kaira reached up and touched his snout. He loved the way he felt beneath her touch. He wished they could stay like this forever. Kaira rubbed him for a moment, then her hand dropped and she looked at him expectantly. She wanted to hear him speak. She wanted to hear his story.

  “What do you know of dragons?” He asked her.

  “Only fairy tales,” she admitted. “Stories I’ve long forgotten. Stories my mother told me.”

  “Well,” Sanguine began, lying down, “this may take awhile then.”

  Kaira sat next to him and crossed her legs comfortably. She rested her hands in her lap. Sanguine thought it strange that for someone so casual and relaxed, she still managed to look like royalty.

  “Once upon a time,” Sanguine began, and Kaira smiled. “There was a world where dragons lived. Dragons ruled all the lands, taking what they pleased, enjoying what they pleased, roaming where they pleased.” He looked at Kaira. Her eyes were closed as she listened.

  “But a dragon’s rule cannot last forever, and it did not. The time of dragons began to come to a close as the rise of man began. Men gained more and more numbers and dragons, as their lands were taken from them, found that such numbers were impossible to rule.”

  “But why didn’t the dragons just have more children?” Kaira asked.

  “A dragon egg takes many years to hatch,” Sanguine told her. “Sometimes it can take up to a hundred years. Humans learned this and began hunting dragon nests, destroying the eggs before they could hatch.”

  “How horrible,” Kaira shivered, looking sad. Sanguine thought it was nice that though this was a story of two very different races, she was sympathetic.

  “One dragon,” he said, became isolated from her kind and turned to find companionship amongst the humans. She did, with a young man.”

  At this, Kaira looked interested. A dragon and a man had mated? A human man? How would that even work? She didn’t want to ask, but the idea fascinated her.

  “When their child was born, the unlikely couple discovered something very strange. Their child was sometimes human, but sometimes dragon.”

  “You mean part human and part dragon.”

  “No.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean,” Sanguine said, “that the child could change its shape. It could be human or dragon upon command. As you can imagine, the couple was ecstatic. They thought that having a shifter child could forge a bond between the world of dragons and the world of humans.”

  “What happened?” Asked Kaira, not really wanting to know the answer.

  “The child grew up,” he told her. “His children were shifters, as he was. Their children were shifters, and so on and so forth. Eventually, the number of dragons grew greatly, but the favor of humans did not.”

  “They killed them,” Kaira said softly.

  “When they could find them,” he answered.

  “This is an outrage,” she said, suddenly, standing. She put her hands on her hips and marched back and forth. “When my father hears about this, he’ll put a stop to it. When I am queen,” she muttered. “None of this will be okay. I didn’t even know dragons existed, not for real. Someone has to tell them. Someone has to tell the villagers.”

  “They know,” Sanguine said softly.

  “What?” She stopped pacing and looked at her.

  “King Liam is one of the kings who banished my kind, Kaira.”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “You’re wrong.”

  “I’m not wrong.”

  “You have to be wrong,” she told him with sadness building in her eyes. “How could dragons and shifters be exiled? How could they be killed? Why?” She wrapped her arms around herself in a feeble attempt at self-comforting. “Just because they’re different, Sanguine? Why?”

  Sanguine loved the way his name rolled off Kaira’s tongue, but he did not tell her that. He loved the way she was passionate about being a good ruler. He loved that she was concerned with caring for others. He loved that.

  “Many humans,” he said gently, wanting to comfort her physically, wanting to touch her. “Do not have any idea what it means to see beyond physical appearances.”

  “Huh.” Kaira scoffed. She crossed her arms and turned away from Sanguine, suddenly frustrated and embarrassed. Her father, the king she thought would always love her, the king she thought could do anything he dreamed up, was a murderer. Worse than that: he was a liar.

  When Kaira wanted to go into the forest, he could have told her. When she became an adult, he could have told her. When she made it clear she wanted to know everything about her future kingdom, he could have told her, but he didn’t.

  He had lied and the thought of it killed her heart a little.

  “I’m sorry,” Kaira finally said, turning back around. Sanguine was in the same spot, still waiting for her, still patiently watching her. His glowing eyes looked up at her, piercing her. She wondered if Sanguine could read her thoughts. She wondered if he was curious to know what she was thinking about. She liked the way his eyes followed her around, she noticed. It made her feel womanly. It made her feel delightful.

  But now, when she met his eyes, they didn’t burn with passion or hunger. They didn’t burn with curiosity. No, now when Kaira looked at Sanguine, the only thing she saw was pain.

  And she thought the sight of a dragon crying might just break her.

  22

  Edward was quite tired when he stumbled upon the entrance to the cave. He wasn’t particularly ready to meet a dragon. He wasn’t particularly ready to save the princess. He wasn’t even particularly ready to go back to the castle. No, Edward was tired, far beyond a usual exhaustion. He was tired and he was spent and the only thing he wanted was a good meal and a good lay.

  Seeing as the only thing that awaited him through the entrance to the cave was a swift and unpleasant death, Edward thought he might save his strength and rest a bit before succumbing to his fate. He took note of the cave’s location and marched back into the woods, walking a good half mile before he finally set up camp.

  He made a small fire to warm himself. He had been on many adventures before and fought many battles, but something about this one ma
de Edward feel more and more uneasy. He didn’t particularly want to slay a dragon, not now that he thought about it. After all, until this week, Edward hadn’t even known that dragons existed. Were they really so horrible? Were they really so awful that just knowing they existed made it acceptable to slay them?

  Edward had killed many men before, but only in battle. He had never killed someone this way. He had hunted, as had all the knights, but this was different. This dragon could take the form of a man. It wasn’t just some vicious beast that had no control over itself. This was a human man who could take the form of a beast.

  This was a human who was also a dragon.

  And Edward was supposed to take the princess and slay the dragon, all on his own. There was no help coming. There were no other troops. He did not have a comrade to rely on when it came down to it. No, on this mission, Edward was entirely alone and he wasn’t sure that he liked it.

  He warmed his hands and ate his measly rations before finally settling against the trunk of a tree and closing his eyes. He was a light sleeper, which served him well in battle, for without such a skill he would have died long ago. Before Edward managed to fall asleep, however, he heard the sound of trolls in the distance. He couldn’t wait forever. If the dragon hadn’t already killed Kaira, the trolls would surely get her.

  “Oh, princess,” he mumbled.

  Then Edward, still struggling with the right choice to make, drifted off into a dreamless sleep.

  23

  Kaira sat on the ground in front of Sanguine with piles of treasure surrounding her. She was very tired and very sad, but she wanted to finish talking to him before she went to bed. She reached out tenderly and stroked his snout. His body was cold: a harsh contrast to her warm hands.

  “Sanguine?” Kaira asked softly.

  “Yes, princess?”

  She bit her tongue. She didn’t want to believe it was true, but Sanguine had practically told her. She just needed to verify. She didn’t want to be crazy or weird, but she had to know. So she took a deep breath before placing her other hand on his snout and looking into his eyes.