The Princess's Dragon (12 page)

Around him, sea serpents circled, waiting for the best opportunity to attack, their hungry jaws trailing seaweed and saliva as they watched the two dragons struggle outside of their element.

Sondra came around only to choke and struggle in panic; her lungs filled with salt water on her first gasp, and it burned through her body like acid. She fought the urge to swim blindly or suck in another lungful of seawater as she attempted to gain her bearings. Her heart stuttered in terror as she caught sight of the serpentine creatures swimming around and around her and Tolmac. The monsters appeared easily as long as Tolmac himself, and though they lacked his bulk and evident strength, they possessed the ability to breath under water and also boasted rows and rows of dagger-length teeth. Barnacles and tiny schools of fish clung to the pitted and scarred surface of their bodies, showing grayish-green in the strange limited light of the undersea. They breathed through extensive gills that pulsed obscenely as they swam closer and closer to Sondra, growing bold enough to bump her as they passed. Substantial, spine-enhanced

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dorsal fins waved with their movements; their only appendages—long, finned front legs—propelling them forward to slam into Sondra again.

Tolmac reached her within moments that felt like rotas. What little breath she had managed to hold ran out and she moved into the realm of suffocating pain. Tolmac slashed away at a sea serpent that grew too eager and it lost a good portion of its horrible grinning maw. Blood darkened the water around them, and the serpents grew more frenzied. They descended on their companion like wild dogs and ripped the wounded creature apart, gobbling down bits of flesh and gore.

Tolmac urged her toward the surface as she slowly lost consciousness again, but the serpents still desired a feast and plagued them, wrapping around their limbs, pulling them back toward the abyssal depths. Tolmac kicked one and then another away from Sondra, whom they’d decided made the easier target, and he snarled and clawed away at one that grew bold enough to tear away a chunk of Sondra’s flesh. She jerked out of her unconsciousness long enough to feel the agonizing pain and responded, instinctively sparking off a stream of skyfire at her tormentor.

The skyfire ripped through the monster that had bitten her and streamed off to slam into the creatures closest to the beast. Scorched chum floated gently in the aftermath—all that remained of the closest sea serpents. Tolmac took that opportunity to push them to the surface with all of his strength, breaking the surface of the waves just as Sondra lost consciousness a second time. The sea serpents finished the feast on their dead and wounded companions and swam after the retreating dragons; loathe to part with a fresh meal.

Tolmac swam swiftly, lacking the strength to lift both of them into the air and desperately struggling to catch his own breath, even while the fires in his lungs sizzled out. He dragged Sondra, her head looped over one shoulder. The serpents harried them to the shore, pulling away at the lethal kicks but always returning in an attempt to snack on any vulnerable portion of their bodies.

The shore loomed but hovered frustratingly out of reach, when a horn sounded and the serpents immediately backed away. Tolmac paused, waiting.

He feared for the unconscious young dragon and the fact that he no longer felt her breathing. He didn’t need to wait long. The waves before him parted and the upper body of a stunning woman emerged from the ocean. She swayed before him, buoyed by her lower body, one that resembled a jeweled and flawless version of the sea serpents. Rather than hair, turquoise waves crashed over her 68

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brow, frothing past her shoulders and pouring back into the sea. Starfish and anemones collected on her body, the only concealment for her nudity. Her skin gleamed pale and luminous white in the sunlight, and strands of pearls in every color dripped from her slender arms and neck. Her full lips parted and she spoke.

“Tolmac! You trespass in my territory; you killed my pets, why have you come here?”

“Greetings, Aquea. It has been far too long since I last basked in your beauty.”

Aquea, goddess of the element of water, practically purred as she swam closer to Tolmac. “If I believed you meant that, my sweet fire-breather, I would gladly take you below to my kingdom and make you my consort for all eternity.” Aquea stopped and pursed her lips in irritation. “But I know better. I recall that you rejected me once before. I did not imagine you would so foolishly place yourself at my mercy again after you cast me aside.” Tolmac bowed mockingly, remembering vividly his previous encounter with the goddess and his narrow escape from her amorous clutches. “I recall that you sought to enslave me, Beautiful Goddess, just as you have enslaved your pets, as you call them.” Even now he could sense the pull of water currents beneath him as thousands of sea serpents circled.

Aquea swam up to Tolmac and placed one webbed hand against his ebony cheek, the soft gleam of nearly invisible scales flashing on her arms. “One such as you would never be a pet, my love. You are too magnificent and powerful to succumb to enslavement.” Aquea shivered as the heat rising off his scales boiled the water from her hand. She pulled it away reluctantly and gazed into his fiery eyes, her green tongue darting out to lick her lips.

“You seek to drown me, Great Goddess; it is the curse of your element and my own that we can never be together.”

Aquea turned away. “We are together now.”

“Only temporarily. I cannot remain in this water forever; even now the moisture douses my flames, and I must struggle against the current just to remain afloat.”

“Oh, then you are telling me you are powerless against me, Tolmac?” Aquea returned, one blue-tinged brow raised.

“I am never powerless, Goddess, not even against you. However, I assure you, great lady of the water, I would never purposely trespass in your domain.

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Unfortunately, my young charge,” Tolmac lifted his shoulder and moved aside his wing, revealing the unconscious Sondra, “fell from the sky while attempting an ill-advised aerial maneuver. I dived in to save her.” Aquea glanced at the young female dragon dismissively, then paused and took a closer look, her brows drawn together in confusion. She saw something in the small female dragon that startled her and she turned back to Tolmac.

“You took on the responsibility of training a fledgling?” she asked, turquoise eyes pinning Tolmac.

“She is a full-grown adult if you can believe it, yet she didn’t know how to fly. My guess is that she hatched from an abandoned egg.”

“Your guess? You mean you didn’t search her mind to find out for certain?

What is this female to you, Tolmac?”

“She is a nuisance and nothing more, but I have accepted the responsibility for seeing to her safety, and I will carry out my duty.”

“You accepted responsibility for someone other than yourself? You? I am to believe that you made yourself vulnerable to a female dragon without finding out everything you could about her first? And yet she means nothing to you?” Tolmac dared to snarl at the water goddess, irritated by her mocking statement and the truth behind it. “Her aura is clean; she is innocent of any subterfuge.”

“Hmm, is she? I think I will let you both live. What happens next should be interesting to witness. You, my darling dragon, have no notion of what you have gotten yourself into. It amuses me that such a fascinating male could make such a colossal mistake. When the foolish female abandons you, remember that you could have had a goddess! ” Aquea snapped, her lips curling back in anger.

A conch shell materialized in her hand and she raised it to her lips. The mournful call sounded out over the ocean, and the sea beneath Tolmac and Sondra boiled, lifting them up and carrying them both to the distant shore where it deposited them in a heap. Tolmac stood and shook, then looked back out to the sea.

The goddess laughed and waved, “The next time we meet, darling Tolmac, I won’t be so … accommodating, no matter how delicious I find you.” She dived back into the waves and the boiling sea calmed, leaving behind nothing but the desolate cry of seagulls.

Tolmac turned back to Sondra where she lay, still unconscious, half buried by sand and seaweed. He hurried to her just as she rolled over and expelled a 70

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massive dose of seawater pushed from her lungs by the unceremonious drop to the beach, and undoubtedly helped along by Aquea. Tolmac sighed wetly in relief and mentally thanked the water goddess, certain that she hadn’t aided them out of kindness, but equally certain that he didn’t care, as long as Sondra lived.

Sondra fell back to the sand, gasping and sucking in ragged breaths.

Her draconic healing knitted together the bite wounds from the serpent and aided in cleansing her lungs and easing the swelling. Within moments she felt almost normal again. Still, she kept her eyes tightly shut, unwilling to suffer the humiliation of facing Tolmac after her stupid mistake. She’d nearly gotten them both killed, and she wasn’t certain how he saved her but could guess that it hadn’t been easy. She wanted to cry, the same desire she’d felt so many times since that blasted wizard changed her into a dragon, but for some reason the tears still wouldn’t come, so she contented herself with wallowing in misery on the beach instead.

After a while, the silence grew deafening and Sondra knew that Tolmac waited for her to open her eyes and look at him. He must know that she had already recovered, that she only delayed looking at him. She didn’t know what to expect from him. How would he react? Would he yell at her and order her from his sight, finished with helping her learn to be a dragon? When she first encountered him, she didn’t want to learn dragon things, she only wanted to survive her misfortune long enough to find the wizard. She still wanted to find the wizard and become a princess again and regain her old life. However, she enjoyed Tolmac’s company most of the time. She even liked some aspects of her new form, and the last thing she wanted was for him to cast her aside while she remained trapped in dragon form.

“You are not the first dragon to fall from the sky from inexperience.” Sondra lifted her head, darting a glance at Tolmac. He crouched, dark and menacing on the beach in front of her, but his aura sparkled with gold as it often did when he was amused. At least he didn’t chastise her or laugh at her.

“I’m so embarrassed.” She hadn’t meant to admit that so bluntly. For some reason she couldn’t prevaricate around him; she simply said what she felt. She imagined he could see it in her aura anyway. She wondered what it looked like.

“I know. Still, I took many spills when I learned to fly as well. I blame myself for failing to catch you.”

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“You couldn’t know I planned to do something so stupid! How can you blame yourself?”

“Of course I knew you would do such a thing. I just told you that I did it myself many times when I learned to fly. I made an ill-advised decision to take you over the Easterly Ocean so soon. I knew the sea serpents proliferated here.”

“Is that what they were? They were horrible. I always thought sea serpents were a myth just like drag … uhh,” Sondra choked, coughing to cover up her near slip of the forked tongue. It appeared she wasn’t through being stupid today.

“No, the sea serpents are very real and always very hungry. It isn’t wise even for a dragon to swim where sea serpents make their home.” Thank the gods that Tolmac hadn’t noticed her near slip. Such a confession could prove absolutely disastrous at this point, especially after Tolmac had saved her life. She hoped that he would never discover the truth. When she learned enough about her dragon form to survive and move around humans unnoticed, then she could find the wizard and turn back, and Tolmac would simply believe that the dragon he’d come to know had left for parts unknown.

Somehow, the idea of just leaving him like that made her sad. Still, he was just a heartless monster anyway. He didn’t really care about her, did he? He viewed her presence as a nuisance to train and get out of his scales, didn’t he?

Sondra told herself that, but found it very difficult to convince herself in light of the time they’d already spent together. What monster would pull her from the clutches of sea serpents rather than leave her to her fate, and take flight to escape with his own life?

“I am sorry; I won’t act so foolishly again.” Sondra pushed aside her musings, telling herself that there remained plenty of time to worry about leaving Tolmac and returning home. She still had a great deal to learn.

“Of course you will, because that’s part of being young and learning. I will simply need to watch you more carefully and choose where I take you and what I teach you based on your experience.”

“Don’t be too careful! I want to learn as much as possible. Most of the lessons have been fun.”

“Hmm, most of them? Not all of them?”

“We-e-ell, I didn’t really enjoy hunting at first. But now I like it. And I 72

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wasn’t thrilled about having to fly. I like gliding but after today’s incident I am not so sure about going over water again.”

“Just remember to keep it simple. No aerial acrobatics until you practice the basics.”

“I saw you do it and you made it look so easy …” Tolmac sighed, covering his own embarrassment. He’d been showing off, trying to impress Sondra, he hadn’t thought she would attempt such a complicated maneuver herself. Now that he grew to understand her, he should have expected she couldn’t resist trying the feat. “I have been flying a very long time, little one.”

“How long? How old are you, Tolmac?”

“Old enough to know better, little one, and that is all I will tell you on that subject.”

“Know better about what?”

Tolmac just turned away without answering. He spread his wings in preparation to lunge into the sky. He glanced back over his shoulder at Sondra.

“Let’s return to my lair. You have learned more than enough for today.