by Mandy Rosko
It seemed like a breakfasty sort of meal, so she was going to call this time morning.
Azoth nodded. “Any of your relatives, or Mab herself would do, assuming any survived the war. It was what my father had offered in order to calm the enraged queen without sentencing his son to death. I would be imprisoned, and my freedom then rested in the hands of your kin. I assume this stipulation includes you, as a member of Mab's living children.”
Diana picked at the green bit of dragon fruit (what else?) that grew out of the pink oval with her thumb nail. “Guess they weren't in a hurry to let bygones be bygones.”
He looked at her strangely. “If you mean to forgive me, no, they were not.”
It bothered her how Azoth didn't sound the least bit bitter over that part. He'd been here for a thousand years, yet he spoke about her former family's unwillingness to see the truth as a mere matter of fact. Something to be stated without really getting emotional over.
There was no way in hell Azoth, that formerly shy young man, bitter over his circumstances while still falling in love with his new fiancée, could have purposely done the things he said he did.
“What happened in the fae court, after I left?” Diana said.
Azoth had already peeled away a long strip of the pink fruit with a long dagger. The rest of the skin came off easily after that, as if the spotted white insides were shrugging off a jacket. It looked kind of like cookies and cream ice cream. He dumped the fruit into a small wooden bowl and licked his fingers.
“I know only what I have been told, but your servant, Nyx, was implicated in your death. He was found guilty of adding a potion to my chalice. I know not what that potion was to this day, but it was what blinded me with rage until I transformed,”
He didn't go on.
He saw her still picking at her fruit, and took the softly spiked pink oval out of her hands, and in a smooth motion, cut it in half for her and gave her both pieces.
“Thanks,” she said, looking down at the fruit.
Azoth handed her the rough metal spoon he'd been using and nodded.
She thumbed the utensil, still not eating. “Do you know what happened to him?”
Azoth looked at her sharply, then back down at the fruit he ate with his fingers. “I know not, but if I was flogged and imprisoned while being a lord and a king's son, I can only imagine what would have befallen a servant.”
Images of Azoth's ugly scars came to the forefront of Diana's mind, and her spirit sank. No doubt Nyx would have been killed, but it wouldn't have been an execution by lethal injection. They would have tortured him first, made him want to die, then killed him.
“Does this upset you?” Azoth asked.
She just kept on staring down at her white and black speckled fruit, thinking about Nyx and his face when he proposed to her, and then when she denied him.
She looked back up at Azoth finally. He had a faraway look to his sad eyes, as though he were in deep thought.
“I'm not sad for him because I'm in love with him,” she assured him. “It's just...we were friends, you know? And I'm still not even positive he had anything to do with what happened.”
Azoth raised a brow at her, then cleared his throat and shifted closer.
It made her nervous. His body language as a whole spoke volumes. He'd learned something just now, and it wasn't going to be pretty to hear.
Azoth gingerly touched her arm. “Diana, sakkra, he confessed to the crime.”
She sucked in a sharp breath. “Are you sure?”
He nodded. “When the fae who has had me drugged, using my body as a vessel to destroy all I hold dear, has been captured and confessed, one of my brothers made sure to deliver the news to me. It was then that my family began to petition to Mab to allow my release from this place, seeing as the true culprit had been seen to.”
“And when she said no, the dragons went to war?”
He nodded. “As far as I understand, yes, though I do not know who was the first to draw a blade. I never saw any of my brothers, or my father, after the day I was informed of the servant's confession.”
Because they'd all fought and died, leaving Azoth alone in this place, his only company the dragon, equally in pain and equally a prisoner.
Diana cleared her throat of the swelling that had begun to build up.
“Do you need water?”
She shook her head. “No, I'm okay. Weren't you shouting at Nyx?” She added.
He cocked his head at her.
“I heard you yelling at him. I think it was the first time I had a seizure. You were pacing around, screaming and calling him names.”
Recollection dawned in his rust colored eyes, and he nodded. “I was speaking to his ghost.”
“Ghost?”
“Of course. How else would I be cursing a dead man?”
“Well, doesn't that make a whole lot of sense.” she said dryly, digging her spoon into the soft, strange looking fruit and taking a bite.
It had the texture of kiwi and was deliciously sweet. Strange considering the spiky outside.
She couldn't help but look at Azoth with that thought.
He was ignoring his own fruit and staring at her. “Do you not have ghosts in the place where you have lived all this time?”
“Well, yes, but no one actually talks to them.”
“Mortals do not speak to their dead? Ever?”
Diana squirmed, suddenly recalling the many times when she had spoken, inwardly, or out loud, to her dead parents, asking for guidance, or even just thinking back on pleasant memories.
It saddened her to know that most everything she recalled in this life she'd been living, likely never happened at all. Who were these people in her memories? Were they made up? Part of the spell? What could she count on as being real?
She looked back up at Azoth as he took a bite out of his fruit. Her husband. That was real. She smiled a little.
“I guess we do, sometimes,” she added. “But no one really expects them to answer back.”
“In our world, sometimes they do. A ghost has many powers, sometimes more than they had in life. It's not wise to cross one.”
“Or curse at one?” Diana asked with a catty smile.
Azoth suddenly found something interesting in his dragon fruit to stare at. “A singular incident.”
She laughed, then quickly grew serious. “I don't think he had anything to do with...with what happened that day.”
“You said it was his voice—”
“I know, I know, but he was always telling me to run. And he was telling me to run right before the trees came to life and started to chase me.” she said. “If he wanted to kill me, why would he do that?”
It was a fair question to ask, regardless of whether or not Nyx ever confessed to anything, and Azoth knew it. Hell, if someone tortured Diana enough, she'd swear up and down that she was from Mars if that was what her captors wanted.
“I know not. He could still find a better method of returning your memories, if that is what he is indeed doing, instead of inflicting tortures upon you.”
“Maybe he has no choice. The mind is a complex thing, maybe forcing memories out of it is supposed to be painful, and if I'm under a spell to make me forget, and he's going against that spell, wouldn't that hurt too?”
She was on a roll now playing detective, forgetting all about the fact that the guessing game she was playing at involved her own life, and if she was wrong on all counts, well...
“Do you believe your uncle was involved, in my poisoning and your murder?” Azoth asked. His eyes were narrowed in thought as he too began to see things the way Diana was laying them out for him. She'd already told him about her last set of visions, the memories that were not her own this time, since she was not even in the area when Azoth's father and Dagda were having their strange conversation.
She shrugged. “Maybe. I don't know anything about him at all.” Except that he put on a friendly face in front of her when she was still a princess, an
d then spoke in a threatening manner to exalted guests, and frightened the servants enough to make them run from him.
“I never told you about the mirror I found, did I?”
“Mirror?”
She made a shape with her hands, indicating its size. “About this big, a dragon frame swirling around it with rubies in its mouth and claws. No handle.”
Azoth thought about it, then nodded. “Yes, I recall that. You never found it, however. It was a wedding gift from Nyx. You seemed most happy to have received it from him. To be truthful, sakkra, I was jealous of your admiration for it. Many times I have considered destroying it.”
“Never found it?”
“Your memories must still be fluttering about in your head.”
“But I did find it, when I was walking through the park. It was under a tree, just sitting there. I picked it up and brought it with me up the hill.” It had been in her bag when she ran away. Was probably at the bottom of the stream she'd fallen into now.
“Sakkra, I have had it here with me the entire duration of my sentence.”
“What?”
Azoth sighed and put his uneaten dragon fruit aside for later. He licked his thumb, wiped his hands on a cloth of questionable material, and offered his hand to her. “Come, I will show you.”
Diana set aside her own fruit on the square bit of flat topped rock that acted as Azoth's bedside table. She took his hand, and went with him.
Big Azoth was waiting for them, lying curled up by the carved doorway. He crooned when they emerged, and Diana wished she'd brought the dragon fruit with her to offer as a treat of sorts.
She just settled for running her hand across his nose as they passed. He crooned again and settled his head down on scaled, reptilian claws, eyes closing for sleep.
Azoth was in no hurry to drag her away from the dragon, nor did he admonish the creature for sleeping there.
Maybe he was finally beginning to...not forgive, but at least let go of some of his self hatred, and the hatred he'd been directing at the dragon for all these years.
That might explain the crooked smile on the dragon's long mouth as the beast slept.
Azoth took her to a particular mound of treasure that was smaller than all the rest, as well as containing items different in design from the other piles spread out all along the cave.
For one thing, there were very little gold coins, emeralds, and rubies to be seen. Most of what lay in this pile was silver in color. There were scepters instead of swords, crowns of silver and gold leaves, and even gowns that looked to be made from shimmering moonlight.
Without a doubt in her mind, Diana suddenly knew that, that was exactly what they were made out of, the same way she'd once worn gowns woven from spider webs and morning dew.
“This was part of the dowry my family received on the contract of our marriage.” Azoth said.
“Your family was allowed to keep it?”
The after the attack part was left unsaid.
Azoth's cheeks became noticeably pink. “Of course, much of it was sent back after my loss of control. Dragons, as you can see, are known for their love of treasures. This lot they refused to part with. You wore the gown on the day of our marriage.”
Diana looked at him sharply. He refused to look back at her.
Now her face was becoming warm. The difference was that she never looked good when she blushed. “I guess that was the part of the treasure you refused to be without?”
He nodded stiffly.
Diana went over to examine it. It was another medieval looking thing with a lace trim around a square neckline and long trumpet sleeves. It shimmered like a thousand tiny diamonds in moonlight, yet was softer than silk. She had flash of vision pass before her eyes, this time without seizure or pain.
It was herself, wearing this gown, smiling bright and feeling happier than she'd ever felt before, despite how mere days earlier the knowledge of her coming marriage saddened her.
Azoth was in the same chamber as she, long jeweled sword at his hip, red cape at his back, dark leather boots on his feet and legs, with a metal breastplate to protect his chest.
His tux for the big day. Guess the fae and the dragons didn't hold the same superstitions about not seeing the bride before the ceremony as humans did.
Diana's memory of her happiness was so great, that it swelled into the here and now, warming her heart, and putting another great smile on her lips.
In her memories, she ran into the arms of her husband to be. He kissed her ear softly, and she felt his lips there, and his warm breath as he spoke.
“I will stay with the fae. You need not leave your people for me. I will stay.”
“Sakkra?”
Diana was jolted out of the memory by a gentle shake of her shoulder.
She turned her head. Azoth was watching her, more of that worry she was becoming used to on his face.
“Are you well?”
She smiled at him, more of her memories becoming clearer, fitting properly together, and the emotions that she'd felt at the time coming with them.
He'd been planning to stay for her. He was going to leave his home so that she could keep hers. She hadn't realized she'd been holding her wedding dress until she clutched it tighter to her chest, hugging it, and the happy memory it came with, closer.
“I love you,” she said.
Stunned pleasure washed over his face. He smiled then and ran his fingers through her dark curls. “And I you. What did you see?”
“Us. You were telling me that you were going to stay with the fae.”
He nodded, holding her close. She came easily, absorbing his warmth and letting it spread throughout her body, lulling her.
“Ah, yes. You should not offer me so much gratitude for that. I had been shivering like a mouse under a cat's claws as I contemplated making such a decision, and nearly convinced myself not to do so many times before telling you my final plans.”
She put her arms around his back, wishing she could just disappear within him. “I still appreciate it.”
She pulled her hands back and inched them between themselves, down low until she found the strings of his breeches. His nostrils flared at her actions, his eyes becoming bright like fire.
“I do not think I can be gentle with you, Sakkra.”
The last time he hadn't been gentle had been amazing. “Good. Kiss me,” she said, dropping the wedding dress to be forgotten between them.
He did, swooping down hard and hungry, consuming her mouth and opening her lips with his tongue.
She was out of breath within seconds.
His hands came around her back and gripped her ass with such a hard pressure she knew he would leave behind fingerprints on her flesh. It hurt, but the amusement of having his hand prints on her butt prevented her from so much as uttering an ouch.
That, and the ache that built inside her for him was too much to ignore, and she was forgetting all about being gentle as well as her fingernails clawed at his back, pressing in and pulling on flesh.
Azoth groaned, lifted her, and put her on her back. He was on top of her now, his body squishing her into the smooth rock floor.
Like their first time together, she realized with a start, as more and more new memories came to her between Azoth's biting kisses and intimate caresses.
They came onto her quickly, and vividly, and just like that, like the curtain had been pulled back, she could tell exactly what had happened after falling in the water from the twin falls.
She'd banged her head on the rocks below, but instead of passing out, or dying, as any other normal person would have, a calm serenity overtook her. She managed to stay beneath the water's surface as the dark skeletal creatures that were the bony trees continued to hunt for her from above. As their feet, or what passed for feet on a tree, stomped up and down along the hills and rocks, they created such a racket that she even heard the muffled pounding from inside the water.
Their forms were twisted and blurred from lookin
g at them, making their branches appear thinner, and much less powerful than what she knew was possible. But she knew their dangers and knew which master they served. She could not be fooled into presenting herself to them for another chase.
Dagda, her beloved uncle and brother to her mother, who, for all Diana knew, was now dead, had called upon these monsters to attack her. She knew this as his spell from memories of her childhood where, when he felt like amusing his visiting nieces, he would bring the trees to life and have them present their blossoms as gifts.
They were not so magical now. That he could command them to do this to her frightened her, but how was she to escape them?
The dragon mirror she'd found then began to grow hot and heavy inside her jacket pocket. She had all but forgotten its presence, had thought it was still with the rest of her abandoned art supplies, and her love for her old friend Nyx bloomed within her as she reached for the dragon frame.
A gift he had given to her, as a peace offering to her marriage and the way they had parted when she refused his proposal. He had given it to her when they both still assumed she would be leaving the forests, to make her home in the mountains with the rest of the dragons. He'd said that it would allow her to see visions of her home should she wish it, and deliver her to that place she most wanted to be, if she wished even harder.
The image within the looking glass was also difficult to decipher thanks to the turmoil of the falls, but she knew whom she was looking at, and wished with all her might to join him and be safe in the arms of her poor imprisoned husband.
She'd just appeared from nowhere, dripping wet, her skull still throbbing.
A clatter to her right pulled her out of her musings, and there he was. Azoth, her husband. He stared at her, his jaw hung in the most laughable sort of way, and the bowls of paint he'd been carrying splattered now on the rock floor at his feet.
“Sakkra,” he'd called her on a whisper, the dragon word for love that she adored. “Diana?”
Her heart cried out at the sight of him, and her body ached for their long separation. She ran to him, and he barely managed to catch her before she could drop to the ground and make a mess of her odd clothing in all that paint.