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“He is not a fucking idiot!” I leap to the defense of my king. “He’s at least of average intelligence.”
“What a stunning vote of confidence,” Balthazar drawls. “Anyway, I have dinner plans, so, let’s get this out of the way, shall we?”
He pulls a golden cord which I assumed was to summon servants, but instead of servants, it causes many of the wall hangings around the room to begin to fall from great glass mirrors.
“Oh, how beautiful!” I exclaim, because it is. The rather dark, large space is suddenly lit up with an enchanted kind of light. It looks incredible with all the great metallic ornaments and chains suddenly illuminated and shining.
“No! Not the mirrors! Not the mirrors!” Charming starts to shout in distress.
Balthazar continues to pull the sheets from an array of mirrors installed on either side of the very large chamber. Most of them fall immediately, though a few stick awkwardly on their ornate frames and take a few extra tugs, somewhat undercutting what I imagine is supposed to be a very dramatic moment. Balthazar is all about the drama.
“See your king for what he is!” Balthazar shouts. He sounds like an absolute madman, until I see what is revealed.
There is a dragon where Charming just stood, but this time I did not blink, and I did not look away by chance. This is third time lucky, or unlucky, depending on how you look at it. This time, I see the part I have not seen before, the most important part. I see the actual transformation, forced by the light of the mirrors.
Charming has been the dragon all along. It is a revelation and yet it is not a revelation for I think on some level I always knew. The first time we made love, I saw his dragon self. I assumed we were talking about a different dragon when it came to gatecrashing weddings and such, but it is now obvious that the enemy of my lover is my lover.
The alien master I love compounds in size by a factor of at least a hundred. His body becomes even more scaled, and infinitely powerful. His hands and feet elongate and grow claws. I have the awful but very convincing feeling that this is not a transformation being forced upon him. Charming is not being hounded by a dragon. Charming is a dragon.
He is the very same dragon that saved my life on my first day, the one who caught me before the ground turned me into a princess pancake. He is the dragon who crashed our wedding and made the sky turn dark. He is my savior. He is the love of my enchanted life.
He occupies the entirety of the grand hall, something I realize is not a coincidence. This is a room designed to be vast not because it is impressive for the people who walk about this place, but because it is a prison for a dragon. The purpose of the great metal shackles on the wall suddenly become very, very clear. We’re talking captivity. Or maybe dragon BDSM. There is no way for Charming to leave this room. He cannot spread his wings here. He is like a cat curled up in a cardboard box that is just too damn small for it.
“He is cursed!” Balthazar laughs in the way stereotypically evil people do, with more glee than amusement. “Your precious prince is cursed!” He looks at me with his dark, beady eyes, as if I am going to be particularly horrified by this revelation.
“Wow,” I exclaim. “He’s a dragon, but cursed to be a prince?”
Balthazar’s expression is pricelessly annoyed. He looks like a five-thousand-year-old Chip Taunton right now, his face screwed up in what I can only describe as ancient petulance.
“Of course not! He’s a prince cursed to be a dragon, do you not know anything!?”
What Balthazar does not know is that I have been training for this showdown all my life. I have been wrapped up in stories that are nothing more than vehicles of pedestrian expectation. And I am very adept at escaping them.
Balthazar takes an impatient breath, very irritated that he has to explain this to me, so he thinks. “This is why you will never have a Happily Ever After. While he remains king, he will poison the throne with humans and enchanted animal servants, and his own corrupt nature. He cannot help his hunger or his greed. He is a dragon, and that makes him a devourer and defiler of all that is innocent and good.”
Charming makes a low growling groan, and I get the very strong impression that he is deeply ashamed of what he is. It’s not merely that he is a dragon. It’s that he’s a dragon who wishes that he was just a normal king. Which is stupid from a modern perspective because obviously being a dragon is far cooler, but this is what tradition gets you.
