The Dragon King turned away, staring into the star-studded night sky.
"You know," he said, after a long silence, his back still to her, "I have never wanted to think of it that way, but I have to concede, you do have a point, Ria Gallagher."
His candidness took the wind right out of her pugnacious sails, "I'm sorry, your Highness, I spoke out of turn," Ria backed down as quickly as she had lashed out, feeling her heart warm unexpectedly to this highly intelligent, yet strangely primal being, simply for that concession. It took a true man to concede where he might stand to be corrected. Especially on this particular topic.
"No, Ria, not at all. I sometimes tire of all the posing and rhetoric. It's nice to hear someone's honest opinion for a change."
Ria thought she must be dreaming. But somehow his unanticipated vulnerability had not made him seem weaker, or less sure of himself. Instead, it seemed that he was taking an honest look at himself and truly seeking to improve. That, in itself, was a strength.
Ria felt herself drawn to him again, even though there were no magnetic waves of dominance emanating from his being. He had never seemed more human to her than he did now, nor more attractive. Perhaps she had been right in what she had said to Venna. Maybe, deep down, his heart really was tender.
Although she wasn't really sure if it was yet safe to do so, Ria moved across to him, placing a hand on his shoulder. She suddenly regretted her narky remarks, and the feeling only deepened when he looked down at her and she saw the troubled look in his eyes.
He really didn't know how to deal with this problem, she realised, since he didn't know any other way to be with a woman than to give in to and satisfy his most basic of physical drives.
The concept Ria had introduced to his reality was terra-incognito for him, and only she could provide him with the map to navigate it. Although, the thought of having to explain it to him made her feel like even that would make it a chore, the same as any other concubinic act.
Suddenly, the wild and reckless idea presented itself that, if she couldn't explain true lovemaking to him, perhaps she could demonstrate. She came to stand in front of him, deliberately not allowing their bodies to touch, and looked deeply, searchingly into his golden, shimmering eyes. She lifted her hand slowly to his cheek, drawing a triple line, ever so gently, with her fingertips, along his jawbone, down his pulsing jugular and onto his chest.
"Will you let me show you how to love a princess, your Highness?"
She felt his ribcage expand as he drew a quick breath, his eyes still locked onto hers, filled with that puzzled look of a child discovering a new sensation for the first time. The moment of wonderment lingered until...
"Your Highness! We have a situation that needs your attention!" the raspy voice of an Onoatiga cut the gentle atmosphere like a blunt blade.
Xagrun let out a long, shuddering sigh, and turned to go without a word.
As the door closed behind him, the full realisation of what was happening hit Ria like a gale force wind from the Arctic wastes.
No! She was here by accident! She was meant to gather tech, find a way to escape and get the hell out of there! Falling for some dragon shape-shifter king was not part of the plan. At all!
Once again, her tears soaked the bedcovers she lay on. Total confusion filled her. She had never dreamed she could tame the wild dragon. She hadn't even wanted to. How was this all happening? And so fast it made her head spin.
She rolled over on her back and stared at the ornate ceiling of her room. Be practical, Ria, she told herself, even if he did fall in love with you, too, he's marrying this Venna chick in the very near future. You'll never be more than a concubine, because he's a prisoner of his culture just as much as you are.
The hopelessness of the situation was glaring. Neither Xagrun nor Venna could hope to be their own person. They were owned by the people they supposedly ruled.
In the public eye they were venerated, honoured, almost worshipped, but behind palace walls, they were simply the puppets, the decoy doves of a handful of faceless, soulless, unidentifiable dictators. If only she could figure out what those Onoatiga's true agenda was...
A sudden pity filled Ria as her thoughts wandered, remembering and sifting through all that she had experienced in the past couple of months since her ship had been sucked into that stupid wormhole.
Worn out with emotional stress, she fell asleep, only just managing to remember to switch off the light.
* * *
With much explaining and gesturing, Ria had managed to procure some spongy earplugs to relieve her of the raucous morning chorus which would have otherwise probably driven her off the edge of sanity.
She had also procured some writing paper and writing utensils that more closely resembled pencils than those she had been given in Dragona. Somehow, writing poetry felt more legitimate when it was done on real paper with a real pencil.
Ria absent-mindedly tapped the tip of the pencil on the creamy yellow page, the sheer enormity of the task at hand making her reluctant to even attempt the first line. What scared her most was the rhyming.
A movement at her shoulder startled her, and King Xagrun's voice found its way through the earplugs in her ears.
"Time to compose some poetry for our Princess?"
She looked up at him, his golden eyes seeming to dance with mischief. Her heart gave a little flutter and she looked down. "Yes. I'm not sure where to start, though," she replied, smiling apologetically.
The Dragon King pulled a chair closer and sat down opposite her at the table. "Can you not just speak, as you did with the first letter?"
"No, that was just prose, ordered thoughts. This needs to be rhythmic and it's supposed to rhyme. That's the bit that scares me the most, and it needs careful thought. Anything I ever rhymed, turned out unbelievably cheesy."
King Xagrun laughed, for the first time ever, that Ria could remember. She stared at him, wondering how her words could have been that funny.
"Oh, no, it's okay, I guess we forgot to tell you. Hautian poetry never rhymes. In fact they hate rhyme. It's considered very unpoetic, and only fit for silly children's songs."
On the one hand, that didn't make sense, but on the other hand, Ria could understand completely. She still wasn't sure, though, if the new revelation made her task easier or harder.
"Okay, so let's try," she set the pencil to paper and began scribbling.
The galaxies are filled with stars
And princesses for miles and miles
But few can boast the splendour
Or the beauty of one hidden treasure
"Impressive," the king said, nodding slowly as Ria read it back to him.
"But maybe splendour and treasure are too close in sound, they could rhyme if you said them a certain way and then she would hate it!" Ria began frantically scratching out the last line, but Xagrun placed his hand over hers and stopped her.
She looked up into his face. He wasn't smiling, but something in his eyes made her think he was. "It's perfect."
"Really?"
"I see you don't need my help here, perhaps my presence only serves to make you feel more pressured. I shall check in on you presently and see how the poem is progressing."
Then he was gone, the door closing quietly behind him. Ria had not been prepared for such a display of tenderness and sensitivity. She sat staring at the door for a while after he had left. What depths was she reaching in this divergent being?
Suddenly, as if his confidence in her had awakened new inspiration, she rewrote the last line and continued:
A treasure that lies deep beneath
The trappings of society
It glimmers like a distant sun
With the promise of a new beginning
Ria stopped. Who was she really writing about? She brushed the thought from her mind and gave the creative juices free flow. If crazy infatuation was going to help her do her job and save her neck, then so be it.
A secret worth enduring
/> Much distress and anguish, too
A mystery of mysteries
Is Dragon King Xagrun
She wrote it all down before realising what she had done. "Oh, gosh, no! Heck!" She scratched out the last line of a stanza for the second time. It was still visible. Frantically, she folded the page, covering that last line, wrote the previous lines on a new page and hunted for something that she could burn her faux pas with.
There was nothing. She would simply have to hide it and dispose of it later. She folded the sheet of paper up as small as she could and tucked it into her robe.
Completing the last stanza with the correct name,
Is Princess Venna of Haut,
she wrote a few more stanzas and read it through from beginning to end. It felt a little overdone, but then again, she had no frame of reference when it came to Hautian poetry, and if it wasn't perfect it would lend more authenticity to their claim that the king had written it himself. Kings were expected to be powerful rulers, not prize-winning poets.
She didn't feel good about lying like that, especially since these were the kinds of lies that would be easily exposed as the situation progressed, but orders were orders.
* * *
Venna listened silently as Ria read the poem to her. She read it carefully, making sure not to have too much of a rhythm and making sure that words too similar in phonics were sufficiently distorted to not have an obvious rhyme.
A short silence ensued. Then Venna spoke, her voice thoughtful, "I had no idea King Xagrun had such a way with words."
Ria wished she could see the princess' facial expression, even her eyes would have shed more light on her true thoughts.
"I could get used to listening to poetry like that," Venna's voice seemed to hold a warmer tone than Ria had heard before. She wondered how much coaching Xagrun would need before she could leave him to his own devices with his reluctant bride.
"I am sure the king would be only too happy to write more for you," Ria said, vowing that from now on that would not be a lie. She would sit him down and make him write the infernal poems himself. He was supposed to be making this girl love him, not some trumped up version of him.
"You are a most kind courtship mediator, Ambassador Ria," Venna's words broke into her thoughts. "You are making a very difficult situation almost comfortable for me."
Ria didn't know what to say. She smiled self-consciously. Every act she had performed since being spewed unceremoniously out of that wormhole had been rooted in survival instinct, and yet, here she was, impacting a life she had never known existed, until now.
"You're welcome, Princess. I shall see you again at our next visit."
"I look forward to it."
Chapter 8: Heart to Heart
Walking past the huge windows of the landing, Ria caught sight of the palace gardens stretching off into the distance. The triple sun's rays danced tantalisingly through the openings, beckoning to her. She tapped her bracelet. It was still a few hours before the evening meal, and she had nothing really to do for the rest of the afternoon.
Her mind was easily made up as she skipped down the grand staircase and let herself out at the rear entrance. It felt good to get away for a moment and just be Ria. All the titles and role plays she had to fulfil here were beginning to make her feel like she was losing herself in all the otherworldliness surrounding her.
Perhaps that was why she felt these strange stirrings of affection for King Xagrun. A memory of one of the lectures she had attended, presented by the famous US Navy psychologist, Dr Lovenstein, drifted to the upper waves of her conscious. She remembered one specific topic the good doctor had mentioned during the session on kidnapping.
"It has been recorded that kidnapped captives will sometimes form a bond with their kidnapper or kidnappers, and actually work with them to further their goals. This is known as Stockholm syndrome and is evident in roughly 8% of kidnapping or hostage scenario victims."
So maybe this all was just Stockholm syndrome, which would make it perfectly normal. Sympathising with her captor would prolong her life and make her escape more possible. That had to be it, Ria thought, bending down to bury her nose in a fragrant flower that looked something between a cabbage rose and a hydrangea. She breathed the scent in deeply, and then stood up, giggling, as the strangest giddy feeling filled her head.
She wandered through the garden, memories of her folks and Brian; her best friend Lillian; pedantic Aunt Susan, whose dogs she sometimes walked; even crazy Martin down at the corner hot-dog stall; flitting across her mind's eye and making her long to be home.
She wondered again what had happened to Major Thomson and the rest of her crew, if anyone had made it back to Earth or if the search crews were still looking for her. There was the thing about wormholes that you never knew how the time was bent, so even if they had found the hole, they might have ended up in the Galaxy of Dragona in an entirely different decade, or century, for that matter.
Suddenly, she realised she had walked a full circle and arrived back at the palace, but on the North side, near the front entrance. No matter, she would just scan herself in at the main entrance, she thought.
With her mind still on her lost past, she hardly heard the low murmur of voices in the front garden, didn't even see the crowd seething between the decorative foliage. But they saw her.
All she knew was that the balmy afternoon atmosphere suddenly erupted into a racket of voices screaming and chanting as a sea of alien life surged towards her. "No alien wedding for Princess Venna!" one screamed.
"Take your Dragonesque king back to his stinking cave!" another sneered.
"Get out, mixed-breed filth! We will find our own Princess a suitor!" still more insults flew.
Ria gave a little scream and began to run for the entrance. There was no telling what these aliens would do to her. Didn't they know there was no point in shooting the messenger? The Onoatiga were the ones they had a beef with, not her.
She reached the front porch of the palace with the crowd hot on her heels, still jeering and shouting insults, demanding that the Dragon King keep his filthy claws off their beloved princess. Standing in the scanner beams she prayed that the technology could work just a bit faster today, but for some reason, even though she was alone and exposed on the porch, the mob didn't come any closer.
Held back by some invisible barrier, some hurled clods of earth at her, and some spat, but they seemed to be unwilling to come close enough to touch her. Perhaps being right in front of the palace was her salvation.
At last the doors opened and she ran inside, turning to watch the crowd disappear from sight behind them as they closed again. Their faces were contorted with hatred, their eyes flashing red and amber, seeming to actually be on fire.
I guess crazed mobs are the same on every planet and in every galaxy, Ria thought, heaving a long sigh of relief that she was safe again.
"What's going on? Are you okay, Ambassador?" the alarmed voice of Princess Venna's aide sounded in her ears.
"Oh, yes, thank you," Ria turned to face her counterpart, noticing that the ridiculous formalities were thankfully dispensed with in times of emergency. "I don't think they really meant to harm me, they just seem very unhappy about the proposed marriage between Princess Venna and King Xagrun."
"Ah, yes." A faintly annoyed expression flitted across the aide's face, and then it changed to a shadow of worry. "We have been seeing some protests taking place in the capital city, but this is the first time we have seen them come this close. They seem to be getting bolder every time."
"Why are they so against it?" Ria queried, wondering at the fact that she kind of felt the same way, which was so very, very wrong for the political position she found herself in.
"They say King Xagrun is too bestial and unrefined," the aide shrugged, looking almost apologetic. "Of course, we who know him realise that he is a highly intelligent and perceptive individual, as well as being of vastly superior DNA. But we have not been able to convinc
e the mob. I suspect there is a faction leader involved in inciting these demonstrators."
"Do you think it's safe for us to continue with the negotiations?" Ria inquired before she could stop the words leaving her mouth. If anyone should cast doubt on proceeding, it should not be her.
"We will not be ruled by rabble," the aide said, her eyes chill and her chin lifted in defiance. "I am glad you were not hurt, Ambassador. I will report this to King Xagrun."
Ria didn't want her to bother King Xagrun with her little close shave, but she knew it was useless to protest. Just at that moment, the bell rang for the evening meal and a flurry of lizard butlers appeared, carrying trays and jugs filled with delicious smelling delicacies.
It was time to join King Xagrun and the Onoatiga in his chambers. Ria sighed. She would rather not see him, with these confusing emotions churning in her insides.
She wanted to marry him off to Venna as quickly as possible, and yet she hoped it would never happen. The thought of him touching her during their nightly trysts sickened her, and yet she longed for him to love her in the way she needed to be loved.
Stockholm syndrome, she told herself silently as she ascended the stairs. It was easier to process something she could define and label and wrap up neatly in a little box.
The evening meal was the usual, filled with polite talk and long silences. As the dishes were being cleared away, the Onoatiga excused themselves and left just as Venna's aide arrived.
"King Xagrun," she postured, bowing low. "I thought it expedient to inform you that your esteemed Ambassador Ria was accosted by demonstrators this afternoon."
The Dragon King turned to her abruptly, "Ria! Is this so? Why did you not say anything?"
Ria found it vaguely hypocritical that the great King Xagrun should be so worried about his Ambassador, who was really just an object for his own gratification. She merely shrugged, avoiding his eyes, and the aide went on.
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