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“Charming?”
“It is true, Emmaline,” Charming growls in a voice that makes the very stone resonate. “I am…”
I can barely hear him. The entire conversation being punctuated by Balthazar’s mad laughter does not help one bit. The evil wizard knew all too well where this story was heading and now he cannot help but interrupt.
“See! See, if you had listened, if you had remained banished, if you had simply been able to accept irrelevance, all of this would have been avoided. The tragedy of your love, my young lovers, is that you believe in royalty and happy endings. You believe good things will come as long as you just love hard enough.” He clenches his fist and dashes it against his palm. “That is not how this world works. That is not how any world works. All things are simply mechanical, even magical ones. The beast will out eventually, and the false princess of common blood will fail.”
Charming is truly monstrous. His dragon head is a thing of brutality, designed for cruelty. Fangs the size of my body jut out from under his upper lip, and even larger curl down from the same. There is what appears to be a perpetual bloodiness about his scaled lips and snout, as if the blood of previous enemies is forever embedded there. His eyes gleam dark and green with ancient pain. I can see him inside there, trapped in the beast. When he moves, it seems to cause him pain. There is just too much of him and just too little of this prison room.
“Are you not horrified, alien girl?”
“Of course not!” I exclaim. “He’s a dragon. That’s incredibly cool, not something to be ashamed of. I wish I was a dragon. I’d roast you alive.” I put particular emphasis on the last part, because that’s the part I want Charming to hear.
Charming the dragon grunts and growls and seems to remember for the first time in all of this that he is a fucking dragon. I don’t know why the beast has been so ashamed of his true form, or maybe I do if I really think about it, given what’s happened to the kingdom as a whole, but shame and guilt aside, he’s still a dragon. And dragons, even dragons trapped inside large dragon prisons, are hardly helpless.
When things go wrong, in any world, they go wrong quickly. They go very wrong for Balthazar incredibly quickly. This may be a prison for dragons, but typically when one imprisons a terrifying beast, one does not make the rookie mistake of being in that same prison. Balthazar hasn’t thought about that.
While he is thinking about it, I climb up the dragon, scaling the tail and making my way up and along the spine until I settle in around his neck where there’s a sort of natural indentation that if I did not know better, was made just for a princess to occupy. I am not afraid of the beast. I have seen this beast before. This beast has saved me before. The beast has loved me from the beginning, and I think, in truth, I have loved it too.
“Yes,” I say. “If I were a dragon confronted by an evil wizard, I’d turn him into organic wizard charcoal and then grind that charcoal up and make something soothing and cleansing out of it. Maybe a soap of some kind…”
“What twisted machinations…” It is at this point that Balthazar realizes he has made a huge mistake and it is a very satisfying revelation to behold. Charming turns toward him just a fraction, scales gleaming, massive body arched in an attack position.
“You cannot turn your fires on…”
I am sure Balthazar was about to say me, but I’ll never know, because Charming lets forth such a glut of fire that there is barely even ash of Balthazar left behind. He has been cleanly burned away in one of the most environmentally friendly manners possible.
“And that’s how that story ends,” I tell the faint smear on the wall and floor that used to be Balthazar.
Of course, we’re still somewhat stuck in this prison, because the castle walls are still very thick and presumably enchanted, and Charming is still far too large to fit out any of the doors or windows, but I like to think we’ve made good progress by killing the self-identified bad guy.
I slide from Charming’s neck and walk around to look him in the eye. I want to see his dragon face.
“We did it!” I lift my arms in celebration. “High five!”
He lets out a soft, smoky snort. There’s not enough room in here for him to give me a high five. He can only just reach out to me and wrap massive dragon talons around my body in what feels like a sweet, squeezing dragon hug.
