The Air Witch's Dragon

by Severine Wolfe

  She’d seen through him quite easily, Ryluth smiled. His attraction to her increased. Whatever she had experienced amongst the Demons, it had not wiped out her intelligence.

  “So, Sofia,” he continued to grin, totally delighted with her. “What are you hoping to see while you are here on Wushin?”

  She thought a moment. “I would very much like to see Dragons. I think any person would. Your people are legends on Earth and we Humans find you fascinating,” she explained.

  Oh, yes. Quite fascinating. Just not fascinating enough to stay and raise their own young.

  “I hope to learn more about your culture and your world before I move on to another one to learn about,” she continued. “I love to learn. Even back on Earth I was learning to use a computer and a cell phone.”

  “I don’t even know what those things are,” he said, leaning towards her, as her voice decreased in volume, when it came to talking about her own wants.

  “I look forward to showing you my world, and it is the wish of every male here that all of you decide to stay.”

  Sofia nodded. “And, will you keep us here if we do not wish to stay?” This was said so quietly that Ryluth would not have heard her at all if he had not concentrated solely on her. He burst out laughing.

  “As if I could keep any of you here with Cassie all too ready to grab you back if you merely express the wish.”

  Sofia smiled at that thought, it was true.

  “May I ask you a question?” She asked, her voice becoming stronger.

  Ryluth nodded.

  “You have the same problem the Demons had, and yet you have never, to our knowledge, taken women against their will, to try to repopulate our world.”

  Ryluth continued to look at her. “Is there a question in there?” He would make her ask it. They needed to get past this if she could ever begin to trust him.

  She huffed out an impatient sigh and sat up straight in her chair.

  “What is to keep you from doing the same thing the Demons did? Who could possibly win us back if you decide to keep us whether we will it or no?” Her voice had risen and all conversation had stopped with every eye now clapped on Sofia. She noticed and her face reddened, but, if anything, her back got straighter and her head tilted up.

  She was a queen demanding answers. Honest answers. Ryluth found that the most attractive thing about her. She was brilliant in her demand.

  “There is not a dragon on this world or any other that would take a woman without her consent. It is quite beyond any Dragon to take any female against her will, as it diminishes every single one of us as a whole, and it ruins us, as it did the Demons.” He looked around at the Dragons who had been invited to this dinner and they were all nodding. “We know that it starts with one, just one of us, and it all goes downhill and until we are completely lost. Only one of us betrayed Threlzin, yet we all pay for it. The moment one of us takes it into our heads to force a female, we, all of us, are lost.

  We have invited you all here in the hopes that we can end this curse we labor under and we can rebuild our world in the same way the Demons are.”

  When he finished, all of the Dragons cheered and the witches all clapped their hands, looking happy.

  Ryluth stared intently at Sofia. “Each, and every single one of you is the new beginning of a new world. We sincerely hope that is so. However, it is up to each and every single one of you to decide if you wish to be a part of this one.”

  Sofia stared at him and nodded slowly. He prayed he’d answered the biggest question in her mind, whether or not she’d be forced here. He knew that’s what she had been asking. He desperately wished he could find the magic words that would reassure her that he would never touch her if she didn’t ask for it first, even knowing it would kill him. However, he realized that she had had a long, brutal history among the Demons and he admired her bravery in going back to it, but more than that, it showed that Sofia would face her adversities and fears head on, not shirking from what she knew needed doing. She was everything he needed in a queen. He could only pray that she realized that and didn’t run from him for too long.

  *****

  Sofia readied herself for bed, sitting at the vanity in her bed chamber, she brushed her hair and went over the evening in her mind. She was a woman who cherished the quiet moments to deliberate and mull things over. She had a quick and clever mind, however, she tended to want to think things through before commenting on them when it was possible.

  Each stroke of the brush in her thick, waving hair was a comfort, allowing her to sink further into thought.

  She felt that Ryluth and the Drakkos present at the meal had all been very honest and fervent in their vow that no woman would be taken against her will. In fact, although she was quite unfamiliar with the act, she was sure she’d seen a bit of wooing going on at the table.

  Especially between some old Dragon and the Chinese witch, Lei Yep. Who could help it? There was no harm in a little flirtation and wooing, in fact, that was how things were supposed to be. The woman was an exotic beauty and incurable flirt. It would serve them both right to end up together, for Sofia could tell the old Dragon would hoard Lei among his treasures, growling at anyone who took her attention off him. He was in for quite a ride, as Cassie would say, if he thought he could control the Chinese firecracker that Sofia knew Lei to be.

  Sofia knew not to trust. She had been promised kind, gentle treatment and it had always been lies. Demons had been brutal to her, cruelly invading her body in all manner of ways then quite literally thrown aside when they were through sating their priest-induced lust on her unwilling body. She’d been used hard by uncaring males, sometimes as many as three at a time, when urged by their horrific priests. So many times, she’d prayed for death, and yet she still lived. She lived with the memories, with no relief from them. The only lesson she’d learned was to fear the touch of any male. Not for the first time, she cursed her inability to wipe away her own memories.

  Suddenly, she longed for Ava, Lauren and Brigid. The four of them had been rocks to each other in the horrors they had faced. The only one of them who had not been brutalized was Lauren who had had the presence of mind to make her private parts look diseased so no Demon would touch her when none of the priests could heal her, or so it appeared. Sofia chuckled at the thought that at least one of them had made it out of there with their virginity intact. Lauren had always been so cheerful and funny that she had bolstered the others when their courage and will to go on flagged under the onslaught of rapes and horror they experienced.

  She wondered how beautiful Ava was doing with her reluctant mate, Tal. Her friend had had a tough go of it, but she eventually won, because Ava was a winner and always managed to find a way to see something funny or amusing about any situation she faced.

  The mere thought of Brigid made Sofia laugh out loud. She knew that the poor Irish healer was probably being dragged into whatever room was closest while her mate, Seth, had his way with her. Brigid was the biggest shock of all of the women who had accepted Demons as mates. She had suffered as much as Ava or Sofia until Faisal, their Demon kidnapper, had decided her healing skills were too valuable to be endangered by being raped to death, as had happened to scores of women in their harem.

  The fact that the woman had carried a torch for Faisal’s Demi son, Seth, for so long had shocked them all. Knowing that the shy, timid Demi was fiercely in love with her, desired her to the point of marking her very visibly, caused jaws to drop by every person who had existed in Faisal’s household. The Demi sure made up for lost time by impregnating Brigid during their first go. Even years after their mating, the Demi could not keep his hands off his mate for very long. It was the running joke of the Demonworld.

  Sofia sat back on the small stool at the vanity and thought for a moment. She had decided to come to Wushin because she could not stand to be amongst the Demons any longer. Not even Seth. It made her skin crawl being around them and she was on high alert constantly, waiting for
an attack that didn’t come, because these were not the same Demons she had known for over two hundred years. One could not constantly live at that level of awareness. It was too exhausting.

  She didn’t want to be within arm's length if she could help it and she certainly had never found any of them attractive. However, Ryluth... Her brows dipped towards her nose as she thought of him. He was an attractive male. She had noticed that right off when he had first come to Faisal’s holding to discuss trade with Cassie and Gramish. She, who had never found any male attractive, had taken a second look at him, and then a third.

  Unfamiliar with what she had been feeling, she had tried to avoid thinking about it. Gazing at him when he wasn’t aware of her, it made her tingle inside. She’d had Brigid check her out and she wasn’t sick, so it had to be Ryluth himself.

  What was it about him that had lured her into accepting the invitation to come to his home? Because she was honest with herself enough to admit that her decision to come to Wushin had a lot to do with him and only then, the desire to visit a new place and see new things. Could she possibly be physically attracted to the male? She shook her head, but there was a small voice inside her sighing and repeating the word, ‘yes’ over and over. Was it such a horrible thing? Not so horrible, no. Especially, when she had seen her friends in such loving, rewarding relationships with their males.

  The most telling factor, at least to her, was that her skin did not crawl when he was around.

  But she shuddered at the thought of being intimate with any man. Ryluth would know how debased she’d been, how horribly she’d been used and would never want to touch her. Who would want a woman who had been used as she had? What man would accept the things that had been done to her? What man would want a woman like her?

  That thought sickened Sofia and she felt unworthy, dirty, and craved a bath. Even though she’d taken one before dinner she ran another one, a habit she’d indulged in since her emancipation. There were times she’d bathe five times a day, trying to get the dirt off her, trying to wash away the memories.

  As she sat in the bath, scrubbing away at her skin, she began crying in the realization that she was poisoned to the depths of her soul by what had happened to her. No matter what she might find she might want in the future, she could never forget the horrors she’d experienced. It would color every single encounter she had with every single being she ever met. The Demons had completely ruined her life and they’d gotten away with it.

  She was angry and inside she railed against the injustice of never being able to get a little of her own back against them. Cassie had wiped them all out with a thought, then whisked the women away, back to Earth. Many of the women had taken their own lives, unable to accept their new reality or the horrors of their past that would overwhelm them. Sofia understood them.

  When they had been back on Earth, in the Home for Wayward Witches, as Cassie still jokingly called it, Sofia had been angry with the women who committed suicide. She had been a Catholic before her abduction, and to her, taking one's own life was still the ultimate sin, as well as being incredibly selfish. That had taken the way out that was denied her by her own belief. Each death had brought them all closer to that brink, but Sofia understood the despair that had driven them over the precipice.

  And yet, she stopped scrubbing, she couldn’t approach the precipice, something had always held her back. She had too much she wanted to learn, so many things she wished to see. She had not experienced much in her long life, she recognized. She knew that her abduction and debasement were not all there was to the universe or her. Dammit, she wanted to see it, embrace it. Nothing would hold her back.

  She knew what she needed to do. She would consult with the half-elves the next day. They were trained in spirit magic and she would see if they could help her so that she could move forward and quit sinking into the past. She had too far she wanted to go in the future to be held back now that she was free.

  Chapter Three

  Awakening early in the morning, as had always been her habit, Sofia got dressed and quickly went out to find Nei and Meira. The twin half-elves from Era who had answered Cassie’s call for females to come to Wushin with an eye towards finding a mate and helping the Dragons with the problem of populating their world again.

  An astonished guard answered her request to be shown the other women and quickly pointed her to the nearby wing the other witches had been given rooms in. Escorting her to their room straight away, then standing guard outside the door.

  The twins had been delighted to see her at the door when they opened it, excitedly inviting her in where they were breaking their fast on fruits provided to them. Sofia politely accepted a cup of tea, but was not hungry and wouldn’t be until after she spoke with them. Her stomach was in knots.

  “I am so glad you came to visit, Sofia,” Nei told her, as she sliced open a juicy fruit that looked like a peach but was the size of a Human head.

  Meira grinned as she snagged a piece of fruit from Nei’s plate. “But, the most important question, is, of course, why have you come to visit?” She winked at Sofia who sat, utterly delighted by the friendliness of the two half-elves who could not have been treated well on their homeworld, being seen as even less than chattel by their full-blood “betters”.

  “I was wondering if you have any experience in the dulling of memories?” She came right out and said it. There was no point in dancing around the point.

  Nei cocked her head to one side, looking intently upon Sofia. Meira merely continued to munch on her fruit and sipping her tea but, she gazed at Sofia.

  “You wish to dull your memories of your time with the Demons?” Meira asked quietly while Nei continued to look at Sofia.

  Sofia fidgeted under the half-elf’s regard, but cleared her throat. “I know with Air Magic, we can dull the edges of harsh memories so that they are not so stark. I cannot do that to myself, and, so far, I’ve not been able to bring myself to ask Cassie to do it.”

  “Because she is your friend and you do not want her to know the extent of your abuse.” Nei finally sat back and said starkly. “She would get a momentary glimpse of the memory and she would know the horrors visited upon you.”

  Sofia swallowed over the huge lump with suddenly presented in her throat and nodded.

  “So, you come to us as we don’t know you, or you us, in the hopes that you would not be judged... no, that’s not right... you do not wish anyone to pity you because of what happened and that’s what keeps you from going to your friends who could rid you of the memories entirely.”

  Nei was far too observant, Sofia thought as she began to fidget like a student not prepared for a lesson with a tutor.

  “I cannot go forward in my life and live as I would like with the memories in my head. They color everything I do and experience. I want to enjoy something and not worry about the memories overwhelming me when I should be enjoying the moment.” This was the full reason behind her seeking out the mages.

  Both twins smiled and nodded. “We cannot completely remove the memories as your fire witches do, but we can dull the edges of them so that they are not felt so immediately and perhaps allow you some perspective to come to terms with what happened to you,” Meira said cheerfully, as if it was nothing.

  Nei got up and gave Sofia a soft embrace. “We will fix you, little witch. Do not worry. Your spirit will become lighter and you will enjoy your experiences as the person you are, not the person you were.”

  With that the twins joined hands over her head and both of them hummed, harmonizing between themselves. Sofia relaxed and allowed them access to her memories. Nei had been correct, she neither feared their knowledge of her memories or pity over them. This had been a good decision. The humming changed. Nei kept with the melody that they had begun, but Meira started a harmonization that caused Sofia to relax even further. She closed her eyes and allowed herself to submit entirely to their magic. Before she knew it, she felt someone wiggling her shoulder.

 
“Wake up little Air Witch,” she heard. “It’s time to embrace your new destiny.”

  Sofia opened her eyes and felt more rested than she could remember. Gasping she put her hands on her face. Nei had been correct, her entire being, down to her soul, felt lighter than it had in... centuries, since she’d been taken.

  She lifted her eyes to the sisters. “Thank you!” She cried, tears streaming down her face at the relief she felt all the way to the depths of her soul. “Thank you so much! I had no idea...”

  The elves laughed with her. “Your soul was weighted down and we have removed much of that weight. Everything you do from here on out, is up to you and not determined by anyone but you.”

  Sofia laughed and hugged each woman.

  “Thank you!” she said again, and quickly left, laughing. Which was how Ryluth found her when he came to call on her for breakfast. She had been on her way back to her rooms with the guard following her closely, and she literally walked into Ryluth.

  She felt arms immediately grab her to keep her from falling, set her safely on her feet and then pull away. She hadn’t shuddered at the touch, hadn’t panicked, thinking she was going to be raped again. She continued to laugh over that wonder.

  “Good morning, Sofia,” Ryluth smiled back at her and she found his smile charming and suddenly she wondered if he ever smiled in his Dragon form. She wondered what he looked like in that form.

  “Please, excuse me, Majesty. I was not watching where I was going.” She was too full of utter relief to transmit anything but her joy in the moment. Ryluth chuckled and just stared at her.

  “I —uh —I came to, uh, invite you to breakfast with me, if you so desire,” he bowed and held out his elbow.

  Sofia looked at his elbow and reached out her hand to place it on his arm, and when she didn’t flinch, didn’t become nauseous, she put her hand in the crook of his elbow and bowed her head.

  “Lead on, sir,” she chuckled. She, Sofia, had willingly touched a man!