As if sensing her arrival, he turned to face her. He wore no shirt, revealing the brawny expanse of his chest, sparsely dusted with copper hair, but otherwise smooth and defined with powerful muscle. As was common among the savage barbarians of the east, he wore a strange garment from his waist to his knees, belted in place by thick leather. The green-patterned tartan hung low to reveal a line of muscular indentation on each side of his hips.
Ana wanted to trace her fingers there. He was hard and sinewy in all the right places. Heat rushed to her cheeks, shame urging her to forget any intention of fondly touching this man, this dream stranger.
But if it is a dream, may I not touch him and do as I will? Who would know but me?
As she offered a gloved hand to him, he bowed low and kissed the back of her knuckles. “Good day to you, my lady.”
“Good day, my lord. If you don’t mind my asking, where are we?”
When he smiled, his eyes twinkled with mirth, and her lungs ceased to cooperate. “In my garden, of course. And you’re my special guest of the evening.”
“But I was not aware of an invitation to become anyone’s special guest.”
“That is most peculiar. Are you not my princess, lass?” the young man asked. His voice was soft, a contrast to the rugged angles of his face and the body hardened by battle.
Red. She’d always been fascinated with red-haired men, though they were disliked in her kingdom. Red indicated heathen blood, a trait inherited from those related to the savages east of the mountain.
She had one as an ancestor many generations back, though she was the first child in two centuries to inherit their ginger coloring.
“Your princess?” she questioned.
“Aye. Are you not mine?”
She couldn’t be his princess, could she? While she knew it was a dream, she couldn’t bring herself to lie. After a quick shake of her head, she stepped forward again toward him and became aware of her dress. She wore her favorite, a gown in copper and black with multiple layers of glossy fabric and golden underskirts. The neckline shirred her shoulders and revealed a generous amount of décolletage. She’d loved the gown from the second she saw it in the dressmaker’s shop, especially since the seamstress had admitted she designed the outfit with Anastasia in mind.
“I don’t believe I am,” Anastasia said sadly. “I am Princess Anastasia of Creag Morden, but I belong to no one.”
“If you are not my princess, would you be willing to become mine?”
“My lord, I hardly know you.”
“Will you come to know me then?” he asked.
Anastasia startled awake at noon, baffled to discover the morning had passed her by. She never slept in at the castle. She stared at the swinging pendulum dangling from a cuckoo clock on the wall. The little bird popped out, tweeted, retreated, and bounced out again on its perch. After its twelfth chirp, it sang a song as sweet as the music from the morning finches outside her former bedroom window.
Definitely enchanted.
Although the clock had no way of knowing what it had done, she loathed it for interrupting her reply to the literal fantasy man of her dreams.
“Yes,” she murmured to the air. “You could court me. If only you were real.”
With a quiet sigh, she examined her surroundings and rose from the bed.
Nearby, a neatly folded pair of leggings, tunic, and a traveler’s cloak awaited her. The clothes from her bag smelled as delightful as her loaned nightgown did, as if sunshine infused them. She tugged on the fresh outfit and shambled out of the bedroom to find the old lady humming from a rocking chair on the porch. Her knitting needles glinted in the afternoon sun.
“Good day, my dear.”
“Good day,” Ana murmured back.
“Your mare has some spirit in her, and she’s quite rested and ready to undertake the rest of your journey, but I have a word of advice for you, dear girl.”
“Advice?”
“Yes. Plenty. You will have an urgent choice to make, Anastasia Rose. This choice will affect thousands, and its consequences shall ripple across the lands from one kingdom to the next.”
Anastasia stared at the witch, flabbergasted. “Me? I have an urgent choice to make? Why me?”
“Because you are you, of course,” the old woman stated. “Twice, you will be tested, and each time, you will have only one chance.”
“What must I do?”
“I cannot tell you. But when the time comes, you’ll feel it,” Eleanor said, raising one hand to touch Ana above her heart, “here. Now come and have these muffins. I’ll pack several for your journey.”
As Anastasia devoured one of the berry muffins, the snaggle-toothed old woman prepared a small basket with several more and a fat peach from one of her trees. She nestled a bottle of fresh milk alongside them.
Overcome with gratitude, Ana threw her arms around the old lady. “Thank you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for all that you’ve done.”
“Think nothing of it, dearie.”
“Can’t you tell me more about this choice?”
“I’ve already said more than I should. Go and travel with care, but remember my warning.” The cryptic old woman smiled fondly and kissed her cheek. “You are stronger than you believe.”
Daunted by the gravity of the woman’s prophecy, Anastasia nodded. “Thank you again for taking me in. And thank you for your warning.”
After mounting her horse, Ana watched Eleanor step into her little cottage and shut the door. She nudged Sterling toward the path and set out for the long walk home. This time, she had no trouble finding her way through the forest. The mist had subsided, and the canopy above appeared thinner, allowing sunlight to filter between the branches. She felt its warmth on her face and smiled.
If she couldn’t return to the castle, at the very least, she thought the king would supply her with enough money to cross the sea. She’d take an ocean voyage to one of their kingdom’s allies and start a new life for herself as a commoner.
I can do it, Ana told herself while loosening the white-knuckled grip on the reins. A difficult life as a commoner beat a privileged life as a slave. Her father wouldn’t doom her to imprisonment. He loved her that much, didn’t he?
Would knights and guardsmen from Dalborough await her at the castle, ready to nab the runaway princess and discipline her for crimes against the crown? With two charges remaining on the magic wand, she wouldn’t go back without a fight.
In his dreams, Alistair was human again.
He’d had fingers and toes, the ability to walk on two strong legs, and a voice that didn’t rumble on the edge of a growl. He’d been human, and there had been a princess of such breathtaking beauty he’d been struck dumb at the sight of her. And when she spoke to him, he couldn’t help but ask if she was his.
When he awakened on the top of the tower in the cool air, awareness of his oversized limbs and serpentine tail reminded him of the truth. He stretched one immense foreleg and curled his claws over stone. The wind buffeted against the thick membrane of his scaled wings.
He wasn’t a human man again after all.
Almost thirteen years had passed since the fairy cursed him to live as only a beast, unable to shift from his dragon body to the two-legged form of a man again. In this massive state, he could no longer visit most rooms of the castle where he had been raised, and wherever he traveled outside of Cairn Ocland, he was feared and loathed as a monster.
Cairn Ocland, the kingdom his family had nourished for centuries, was all but destroyed. The enemy had raided the villages, scattered its people, and afflicted the earth they once worshipped under a curse so dark no druid could grow a single bean in its soil.
Why couldn’t he have died with his parents, fighting for the kingdom they’d loved so much?
At the time, he’d been a young man of eighteen, ignorant and hurting when he emerged from the castle cellar to find a wasteland on their mountain peak. Soldiers from Dalborough had razed their orchards,
slaughtered their livestock, and killed the magnificent Witch Queen Liadh. He found his mother’s corpse at the edge of the mountain overlooking the countryside below. She’d fought to the very end.
His father’s ashes weren’t far from her. While the people of Cairn Ocland knew him as the Dragon King Rua, people to the west knew him only as the witch’s monstrous mount and bodyguard. Their ways were held sacred and secret, the truth of his ability to shapeshift taken to the grave.
Along with the knowledge of their son. At the onset of the battle, his mother had enchanted him beneath a powerful sleeping spell and hidden him in the castle before concealing it beneath a magical barrier.
At first, he mourned, and as time went by, he grew bitter and angry. And in his brief, as well as childish rage, he’d done the unforgivable by taking his fury out on others who were innocent. But he didn’t deserve this awful curse. He didn’t deserve to have his humanity stripped from him.
“If thou wish to behave like a beast, then a beast thou shall be.” The fairy’s words rang through his memory, imperious and undeniable.
Until I find a true love to see the human in me.
Could he find any woman willing to love him when all she saw was teeth and enormous claws? Alistair had his doubts. Women wanted a beautiful prince in shining armor, or so claimed the tales his mother once told him. Those stories never featured a prince in shining scales.
His dream troubled him long after he awakened to endure another day of his lonely existence.
What he wouldn’t give for a book to read, but he couldn’t hold one between his large claws. Could he even remember how to read or would the words swim together in a mystifying jumble of letters?
Alistair sighed.
Time blurred, each day the same, but hours after his awakening, he realized something was amiss with his surroundings. He had descended the tower to eat, but when he returned to the castle grounds, he smelled the unmistakable, familiar scent of human perspiration. Oily notes of fear and anxiety reached his nose.
The king had sent another mercenary to steal from Alistair’s garden. The realization swept him into a rage and sent him bounding down the abandoned path. He sprang into the garden but found only the lingering smell of an intruder. His eyes picked up nothing.
Alistair growled. He hurried to the wall of purple dusk roses and investigated them thoroughly. Unharmed. The last group the king sent had maimed them so thoroughly he’d been afraid they would never grow back. While the castle’s enchantment seemed thrilled to rejuvenate the orchards and regenerate the structures on the grounds, it had never meddled with his mother’s beloved, strange flowers.
Perhaps it was because they too were magical, and magic conflicted with magic?
He glanced around again. His spine tingled from his nape to the tip of his tail. He didn’t feel alone.
He sniffed, and the smell of perspiration worsened, the source of it nearby. He growled and swung around again while following the smell.
No one. He saw no one. The garden was wide and open, its paths made from circular stepping stones decorated with garnet chips arranged in the pattern of fairies. Several marble benches occupied the edge of the vast space. A fountain featuring a statue of a woman in dance occupied the center. She held a pitcher in one outstretched hand, and from it, water poured in a stream toward the pool around her feet.
His mother had loved this place, and it incensed him to smell a stranger among her most cherished belongings.
Growling, he twisted around to search behind him, seeing movement from the corner of his eye. As he did, a flask arced through the air and crashed against the stone beside his right foreleg. Alistair glanced down at it. Steam arose from the puddle of dark substance; then his next breath caught in his lungs. He couldn’t breathe. The steam created a choking fog and strangled him.
Dragon’s bane!
He knew of its existence but thought only the people of the distant Liang knew how to create the foul concoction. His mother claimed the difficult alchemical process limited the number of people capable of creating it. His father had warned him of its highly toxic effect to their kind.
Bounding forward to escape the smog cloud, he searched the area for the source. His eyes burned, and tears blurred his vision, the pain indescribable. A quick figure darted across the path; then a storm of blades cut through the air. Alistair arched in pain, giving a soundless roar.
The king had sent another assassin.
Another blade struck him from the right. Before he could whirl and snap his jaws, the thief vanished and appeared to the left. He jabbed forward with his deadly sword, slicing easily through Alistair’s tough hide.
Also enchanted.
Following his instinct, he whipped with his tail in a wide arc, catching the killer-for-hire as he materialized again. It was a lucky hit. The man’s sword skittered away over the stone. The assassin sucked in his breath and somersaulted backward, and in the blink of an eye, vanished into smoke again.
Breathe. Breathe. I must get it out, Alistair told himself. The toxin was lodged in his lungs, as if it were more than poisonous smoke. His chest shuddered from the exertion and his ribs ached. A stream of smoke left his nostrils, a fraction of what he’d taken in.
Like most dragons, he could hold his breath for an extraordinary amount of time. For nearly ten minutes. Sometimes fifteen on a good lung of air. While he had no fear of suffocating, the object of the poison had been designed to do something else.
If he couldn’t exhale the air trapped in his lungs, he couldn’t breathe fire to defend himself. He could take flight and escape, but the act of flying would burn rapidly through his air reserve. He’d suffocate and plummet from the sky.
No. I won’t lose to him. Not now.
The human was close, confident but not unafraid. Alistair took control of his own senses, though the smell of his opponent surrounded him. It was everywhere at once. A cut to his back, a slice to his wing, a jab at his belly that his scales deflected. He swiped with his claw, but the agile man deflected it.
Back and forth across the stone paths they battled, claws and steel, tooth and magic. A bolt sizzled from the man’s gloved palm where an enchanted crystal contained the spell for electricity.
The magical lance sparked across Alistair’s snout, blinding and painful. His eyes closed instinctively, and within seconds, he was under siege again by the next attack.
He had to fight and push through the pain. His lungs seized again, but with another cough, he heaved out the toxin.
Sweet air filled Alistair’s lungs.
They continued to battle, and a lucky blow caught the assassin’s side with one talon, ripping through his protective armor. The man fumbled for another flask from a line of three in a row on a leather bandolier. He threw it down on the ground, but before it could shatter, Alistair spread his wings and swept them down. He launched his body into the clean air and avoided the fog.
His assailant vanished, realizing his missed opportunity might cost him his life.
“Coward!” Alistair roared. He sucked in another breath of clean air, letting it fill his lungs and expand his chest. His jaws opened, and a wave of fire flashed from his gaping maw. He swept it to each side, incinerating plant life in the process.
The assassin cried out, startled by an indirect hit. The substance of a dragon’s breath weapon wasn’t mere fire. It clung to skin like a flammable fuel. Screaming, he brushed it from his armor and streaked toward the edge of the courtyard. He moved quickly, but not quicker than a dragon in the air.
No, you don’t, Alistair thought. He swooped down and exhaled another breath. This time, the full force of his fury struck his target.
The nameless warrior from Liang threw up a spell wall, but the onslaught of heat vaporized it, and the resplendent, magical barrier collapsed. Moments later, nothing remained but ashen bones.
Alistair collapsed to the smoldering ground and gasped for breath. His entire chest ached, and every inch of his body hurt.
Hours passed while he lay ravaged by pain, and when he was finally able to move again, rage took the place of his agony.
No longer would he allow the king to send thieves, knights, and alchemists. For the first time since their war began, he’d felt close to losing his life.
Alistair turned to the northwest and stared at the distant horizon.
No more.
Today, he would seek the king and teach him what happened to men who meddled with dragons.
By evening, she was once again on the path to Lorehaven. She nibbled one of the muffins Eleanor had packed in the satchel and stopped once to allow Sterling to graze from the knee-high summer grass beside the road.
She was stalling. Fear made it easy to drag her feet, so to speak, but she pulled her hood up and sniffed the air. A peculiar smell reached her, and it only intensified as she traveled the road leading to the city’s southern gate.
But her suspicion wasn’t confirmed until Lorehaven sounded the alarm. Shrill bells tolled, screaming for citizens to take refuge in the pre-appointed safe havens.
It wasn’t a drill. The dragon had returned again.
She saw him approaching from a few miles east of the city and moving fast. The tiny, scarlet speck in the distance grew larger until Anastasia distinguished the outline of two enormous wings. Dark, black smoke billowed toward the sky, rising from the scorched remnants of the guard post outside the city.
A sinking, heavy feeling at the pit of her stomach told her where the dragon was headed.
“Hurry!” she urged Sterling as they raced for the city gate.
The watchman stationed at the nearby tower appeared as startled to see a lone rider as he did to see the dragon approaching the city from the east. He screamed down to someone below, and the gates rolled open.
They must have thought her to be a terrified traveler hoping to find safety in the city. She didn’t stop to answer questions when she burst past them en route to the castle despite their cries for her to halt.
Beauty and the Beast: An Adult Fairytale Romance Page 5