Dragon Princess (25 page)

The fact that I wore Princess Lucille’s body meant I easily got an audience with King Alfred the Strident and his royal court. The fact that I was backed by an army of a few hundred men meant that it was only slightly harder to include Lucille in that audience. King Alfred and his retainers received us in the courtyard of Lendowyn Castle, where Lucille and I explained exactly what had happened.

It was easier to convince them than I had expected. It helped that we still had
Dracheslayer
and that there were corroborating stories from all over the kingdom. No to mention that everyone admitted to being a bit creeped out by Elhared, and even the king mentioned in passing that “the sour old bastard was probably capable of anything.”

Of course, once the details had sorted themselves out, and everyone understood what had happened, the Lendowyn legal system reared its ugly head.

“Yes,” said King Alfred, “of course we must find another wizard to switch you back.”

“Your Highness,” I said, “I killed my body saving your daughter.”

“Hmm, yes, right. But legally we can’t have you being my daughter now, can we?”

“Father?”

“Not now,” Alfred said, “Father’s thinking. We can swap you into the dragon? Would that work? Or maybe the elves could sell us the wizard’s body—”

“I
want
to be a dragon!”

“You don’t know what you’re saying.” Alfred turned to one of his advisors. “We’ll set up a reward. The wizard who returns my daughter to her body will get her hand in marriage—”

“Daddy!”
Her frustrated scream shook the walls of the surrounding castle as she reached out and scooped the king up to hold him in front of her smoldering maw.
“
Shut up! I am not some all-purpose stipend to award to anyone you can’t afford to pay real money. Are you trying to be known as King Alfred the Pimp?”

“Honey, you’re a
dragon
.”

Smoke curled from her nostrils and I thought I saw the hint of a smile touch her face.
“
And I suggest you don’t forget that.
”

“Besides,” I told him. “I understand that you’ve already promised ‘my’ hand in marriage.”

King Alfred looked down at me as Lucille gently placed him down on the ground. “What are you talking about?”

“Your daughter’s hand to whoever brings you the princess along with the head of the dragon.”
She reached out and touched a talon gently on top of my head.
“Princess.”
She removed the talon and reached up to place it against her cheek.
“Dragon’s head.”

The king sputtered, his face turning shades of purple that were not normally found in nature. “You can’t be serious.”

 • • • 

Unfortunately for the sanity of King Alfred, we were.

When she had first broached the subject, I’ll admit to being as incredulous as the king, if not in such a spectacularly flustered fashion. But her brainstorm made a perverse sort of sense. As she had said, she had made peace with, and probably preferred, being a dragon.

That didn’t mean there weren’t some practical problems with that lifestyle choice. The primary one being that she would become an enemy of the state, and a target for would-be dragon slayers. Also, she didn’t want to abandon her home and family, and it seemed that sticking to life as a giant fire-breathing lizard would probably break those ties.

So, her reasoning went, to avoid those consequences she had to reclaim her identity as a member of the royal family
as
a dragon. And, since overturning centuries of Lendowyn legal precedent was probably impossible at this point, there was only one way to do that.

As much as the king might hyperventilate and plead with his advisors, his prior declaration—the one that enticed me into this whole mess—awarded his daughter’s hand in marriage to whomever brought her and the dragon’s head back to Lendowyn. No provision had been made for the case of the dragon’s head still being attached to the dragon. More to the point, nothing in the wording of the declaration prevented the dragon itself bringing the princess back for the offered reward.

The king and his ministers put up a valiant fight. However, in this case, the law was clearer than it had a right to be. There was even a precedent for royal interspecies weddings. Lucille’s great uncle Charles the Unbalanced had taken a unicorn as his royal consort. When he died from hoof-and-mouth disease, Queen Starmane reigned for about forty-eight hours before abdicating by escaping from the royal pasture and running off into the countryside.

Lucille told me that she was still remembered as the least objectionable monarch Lendowyn ever had.

So, despite the king’s best efforts, under Lendowyn law, I had just been betrothed to a dragon.

 • • • 

So by the end of the month, Lucille was telling me, “
You look adorable in my grandmother’s gown.
”

“Yeah.”

“Cheer up! It’s your wedding day.”

“Funny, I never pictured it like this.” I leaned on the sill of the window in my royal chambers, waiting for the ceremony to start. Lucille, being fifty feet long and weighing several tons, perched on the battlements outside, sunning herself as she talked to me.

I really shouldn’t have been complaining. The streets of the capital were hung with ribbons, and the population had spent the last week celebrating the upcoming nuptials. If anything, the people of Lendowyn seemed to not only accept the unusual nature of the new royal, but seemed to be taking it as a point of pride.

I guess it made a good story, for once having the princess capture a dragon.

My problem was, I was nowhere near as settled with the change in my identity as Lucille was with hers. And while she was one of the only people in the world who could understand what I felt, she had been so happy since coming home that I couldn’t bring myself to tell her that I still didn’t want to be a princess.

“Lucille?”

“Frank?”

“Can I ask you a personal question?”

“As your future husband, I don’t see why not.”

“I’ve just been assuming . . . That is a
male
dragon’s body, right?”

“Wha—you’re not worried we have to consummate the—”

“No!” I held up my hands. I didn’t want to start thinking how that might even be physically possible. “Just. I didn’t know for sure, and I didn’t want this whole marriage thing to get hung up on a technicality.”

Lucille laughed.
“Frank, you’re royal and this is a political marriage. Normal rules don’t apply. You could be betrothed to a hay wagon and it would all be legal. There might be a bias toward procreative unions, but since I’m a dragon—”

“It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Nope.”

I didn’t know how I felt about that. “Hey, you didn’t answer my question.”

“Yes, my dear. I’m very much a boy dragon. Want to see?”

“No thanks.”

“Suit yourself.”

I closed my eyes as it sunk in that I was going to be married to a dragon in the most extravagant ceremony Lendowyn could afford—meaning a hell of a lot of people, but little in the way of alcohol. And all I could think of at the moment was that I would have to go through the thing stone cold sober.

There was a knock on the chamber door and I was grateful for the interruption of what was rapidly becoming an uncomfortable conversation.

“I’ll be right back,” I told Lucille.

I walked across the chamber and pulled open the door. The hinges squeaked, then groaned, then became the low cry of millions of tortured souls. The daylight in the chamber became suddenly dim, red, and cloaked everything beyond ten paces in impenetrable darkness. The open door let in the smells of fire, rancid fat, and rotting meat.

I faced the Dark Lord Nâtlac in my doorway, and he greeted me with a bow.

Oh, crap.

“What are you doing here?”

There was some loophole, some flaw in the way I dispatched Queen Fiona. He was here to collect me—

“I am here to offer my respects, my thanks for dismissing an annoyance, and to present you with a wedding gift.” He held up an ornately carved wooden box. His smile made me think of the wails of dying children.

“Is it a good idea to take a gift from you?”

“Is it a good idea to refuse one?”

“You have a point.”

The Dark Lord held out the box, and reluctantly I took it.

“My dear confused Francis, I know your heart’s desire on this day. It is beyond even my powers to return you to your old body. It has been consigned to the clay from which it came. I can, however, present you with this small token.”

I opened the box, and inside glittered a small crystal pendant on a silver chain.

“Should you wear that, you can again live life in a male form, if only temporarily.”

I looked down into the box. “Really?”

“Lies are one sin I do not indulge in.”

“Does it require blood sacrifices or something like that?” I asked, but the lighting was back to normal and Lord Nâtlac was gone.

“Oh, pretty, what’s that?”

I looked over to the window. It was filled by the side of Lucille’s face, one eye blinking at me.

I closed the box and placed it on a table by the bed. “Wedding present,” I told her. It was something I’d deal with later. It came from the Dark Lord, which meant there had to be some sort of catch.

The one that came to mind when I looked at Lucille is that Lord Nâtlac had not specified what
kind
of male form I’d be wearing.

“Who’s it from?”

“Ah—” I was interrupted by the sound of trumpets announcing the start of the official ceremony.

“Oh, I need to get down into the courtyard.”

“Yeah.”

She turned her head away, then she turned back,
“If I haven’t said so recently, thank you for going through this for me.”

“You’re welcome,” I told her. I watched her fly off the battlements.

“What else would I do?” I whispered to myself. I walked over to the table by the bed and placed my hand on Lord Nâtlac’s wooden box.

What else?

Another knock came on my chamber door and I paused for a few moments as I glanced up at a mirror in the corner of the room. It wasn’t Frank Blackthorne looking back. Instead I saw an attractive young woman, hair done in elaborate braids, poured into a white dress of silk and lace that did its best to emphasize the femaleness of the body inside. My hand clutched into a fist on top of the box.

I straightened up and looked the princess in the eyes.

“I’m doing this for you,” I whispered.

The knock repeated and I strode out of the princess’s chambers to go marry a dragon.