Princess Ahira (32 page)

I wiped dirt off my face and glanced at Kohath. My body went paralyzed with fear.

Kohath looked absolutely murderous. Never before had I seen him so furious, including our run in with Trila. His eyes were swirling black pits and every one of his muscles was tense with rage.

Aaron righted himself and stumbled to his feet. “I knew you would be a problem,” he shouted at the steward before throwing a fireball at him.

Kohath flicked it away with a single hand gesture.

I stared, open mouthed, at him. This was the precocious, vain, and perhaps some what inept Kohath, right?

“That is where you are
wrong
, feeble human,” Kohath said. One moment he was next to me and the next moment he popped up by Aaron, slamming the boy in the jaw with the hilt of his sheath
ed
sword.

Aaron went down like a sack of grain, clutching his most likely broken jaw.
Kohath snatched my charm bracelet out of his hands and tossed it to me.

Kohath stood over Aaron
, his eyes whirling. “I’m not just a problem,” he said as he carefully slid his sword out of its sheath. The sword itself started to pulse with purple light. “I’m you’re worst nightmare,” Kohath snarled before slicing his sword through the air.

The blade sang, and the forest exploded.

When the dust settled
Kohath was standing in front of me, brushing off his clothes.

Aaron was crumbled on the ground, unconscious at the very least, most likely
severely
injured, perhaps even dead. The trees around
us were twisted on their sides liked snapped
twigs under Kohath’s incredible power.

I stared blankly at Aaron. Even as I tried to understand the situation I could feel that the back of my mind was gnawing at a nearly finished puzzle.

“You didn’t kill him?” I asked.

“No. Not yet,” Kohath said, smartly sliding his sword back into its sheath.

“Don’t, please,” I said as I pushed myself into a standing position. My legs wobbled beneath me.

“Oh no. That would be too merciful,” Kohath said, a smirk crossing his lips. He abruptly shook it off. “Are
you
alright, Ahira?” he asked, closing in on me.

My forehead wrinkled as I tried to sort through all the facts. “Maybe… I think so?” I said, rubbing my head. I felt funny. Something wasn’t adding up, and it wasn’t the new information about the Guardian Charms. I could have sworn that Kohath, when he first started talking, sounded exactly like Azmaveth.

I was unperturbed, for once, when Kohath reached out to hug me. “Aaron will be out of it for a day at least. I’ll send Levi by to come pick him up. For now we need to get home,” he said, glancing a
t
the sky.

He took my hand before carefully leading me through the woods. I followed him, squinting at the back of his head.

Within minutes we left the forest and started to walk down a dirt road, still hand in hand. We only broke contact for the short while it took me to re
-
clip my bracelet on my right wrist.

As we walked I was finally able to sort through what was bothering me. Kohath and Azmaveth. It wasn’t just one isolated incident. In fact, it started as far back as I met him, when I noticed his weirdo purple hair. There was the way that Kohath seemed to move around the den, as though he
owned
it. His stupid support of Amaveth’s dumb princess books, not to mention that he seemed almost completely clueless about the process
es
of the female heart. And his magic,
his magic was
so
familiar.

I released my grip on Kohath’s hand and abruptly stopped in the middle of the road.

Kohath, who was gazing at the sky, stopped to stare at me. “Ahira?” he asked.

I tipped my head back as I considered him. “I don’t believe I have ever seen you and Azmaveth in the same room together,” I announced.

Wrinkles creased Kohath’s forehead. “What are you talking about? We—,”

He was cut off when four dragons circled overhead, casting black shadows on the ground.

Kohath cursed under his breath and reached out to take my hand. I yanked it away, still staring at him.

“Ahira—,” Kohath started. He was cut off wh
en the dragons landed around us
, stirring up dust and shaking the ground.

“Come, Azmaveth,” a large emerald dragon said, his glorious eyes pinned on Kohath. “You know the rules.”

“Yes, yes,” Kohath said, carelessly swiping a hand through the air before turning to me. “Everything will be okay, Ahira,” he promised as a crimson dragon shuffled forward to offer out his claws.

Kohath stepped in the dragon’s paws first, and I followed, staring at his back.

“When we reach the court, try to stay close to me Ahira,” Kohath said, reaching for me.

“No,” I said, staring back as the dragon closed his paws around us before leaping into flight.

“No?” Kohath said, looking surprised and perhaps a little hurt.

“All of this, the magic, the similarities, the same
obscene
impertinence
, it only makes sense if you, Kohath, are really Azmaveth,” I said, my voice was wooden and dangerously calm to my own ears. “And that means that all of this time you’ve been lying to me.”

Kohath stared at me in stunned silence, and for a moment I breathed easier. It was a preposterous idea, of course I was wrong!

“I didn’t mean for it to go this far!” Kohath-who-was-really-Azmaveth shouted as he slumped forward.

A part of my heart crumpled. I had hoped he would deny it.

“From the first month you’ve been lying to me,” I calmly continued. “That’s why you wanted to know what I thought of Kohath. I was just a research topic. A way
educate and
entertain yourself. Oh what fun you two must have had at my expense.
You and
Zerah, I mean. After all, Levi must be Zerah if you are Azmaveth.”

“Ahira, it’s not like that,” Azmaveth in a human body argued.

“I’ve been a proper fool for not realizing it earlier. You’ve said before that breaking curses is really the only magic dragons cannot perform. Naturally you would be very skilled at the art of transfiguration, which I suppose would allo
w you to take on a human
body
,” I ruthlessly continued.

“Look, I may have started this as an experiment, but really Ahira, you’ve got to believe me—,” Kohath started.

“Believe
you
?
When you’ve been lying from the start
!” I snarled.

“This is not the right time to try and properly explain,” Kohath groaned, rubbing his forehead. “I honestly didn’t think she would squeal so soon. Really, Ahira, I would have told you sooner, but—.”

My ears pop
ped
as we landed with
a thump
, the dragons paws jiggling in spite of his efforts to keep them relatively stable.

The crimson dragon unclasped his paws, allowing Azmaveth and myself to crawl out of his claws.

The same gold dragon who had divvied out the princesses the day I
arrived
was waiting a few feet away.

Azmaveth and I had been dumped in the center of the cave. Dragons sat around us in a ring, whispering and talking to one another.

The gold dragon cleared his throat before speaking in his rumbling voice.
“
Hear ye, hear ye. The Dragon Court is now in session for the
trial of Azmaveth, a Duke of t
he Dragons. Long live the King,” the gold dragon finished with a complicated bow in my direction.

I spun around. Behind me was a gigantic platform where three dragons were seated, their silhouettes barely visible thanks to the bright lights that beat down on me. I could see that the dragon in the middle was the biggest.

It was that big dragon who rumbled,
“Azmaveth, it is best if you
reverse your transformation
.” 

Human Azmaveth sighed. “As you wish,” he said before muttering a stream of words under his breath.

There was a boom, and the magic was filled with purple smoke. When it parted Azmaveth, in his usual, elegant dragon body was revealed.

Dragons on Trial

Another piece of my heart crumbled. I had hoped that he really
wasn’t
Azmaveth and that he wouldn’t be able to transform.

“I’m so sorry Ahira,” Azmaveth whispered to me, his lean, cat-like body stretched out behind me as he lowered his head to try and nuzzle me.

I stiffly stood like a stone statue and did not respond, much less acknowledge the change.

Was everything I encountered in Tsol a lie, just like Kohath and Levi?

“Expl
ain what you have done Azmaveth,
”
the middle dragon ordered as the lights dimmed some. This dragon was a lovely royal blue and the edges of his scales were plated in gold. He had to be the Dragon King. “Why have you betrayed the codes of our kind and
shape shifted
into a
human
?”

Azmave
th raised his head to meet the K
ing’s gaze. “It’s very simple, cousin,” he said.

The rest of the dragons in the cave erupted in shouts, angry that such a traitor would refer to their king so familiarly.

“I fell in love with a human
,” Azmaveth continued.

Everyone froze for a second before the shouts were renewed. The room was occasionally pelted with purrs of surprise and thrums of irritation in addition to shouts of outrage.

“So it is true,
”
the King said. “Lady Flaming Rose did not lie,” he said, shifting his
magnificent
gaze to Rose, who was staring at me with intense dislike.

“I did break our ancient laws and create a potion that allowed me to change into a human, yes,” Azmaveth easily admitted, shrugging his shoulders as though suc
h a taboo was commonly preformed
.

“You will further explain yourself, Azmaveth,” the king said, shifting back to his haunches.

The tip of Azmaveth’s tail
made a steady beat
on the ground, like a cat’s tail. “I started researching the potion out of sheer curiosity. Ahira was, and always will be I suspect, an interesting sampl
e
of her kind. I wanted to see what made humans tick. But it wasn’t enough just to study their anatomy or psychology. Living with Ahira made me want to try it for myself. As everyone knows, if an
ything I am a scientist at
heart.”

Dragons in the crowd murmured, agreeing with him.

I tried to hold back tears.

I was right, I was nothing but an experiment. A scientific
discovery
, a testing ground for his dratted research. All of our times, our memories, were created because he wanted to
experience
being
human
.

I unconsciously rubbed my lips with a hand. That meant that even
that
day, what I thought was a bet between hi
mself and “Levi”
to see if he could kiss me was probably nothing but a scientific wager between two dragons.

“After days of research I was able to create a potion that would grant a dragon a human transformation. It was only temporary, and it was shaky at best. I spent weeks and months perfecting it and prolonging the periods of time it allowed me to move about as a human,” Azmaveth said, his dark eyes rested on me as he shifted.  I could feel his gaze even though I refused to look up at him. His front paws were carefully placed on either side of me.

“I made up an identity that would allow me to roam like a human. I used my middle name, Kohath, and gave myself the title of Azmaveth’s steward. Ahira, the main attraction of my experience, didn’t know a thing about dragon culture. Of course she wouldn’t know that dragons don’t have stewards. As long as I, acting as both myself and Kohath,
affirmed the false relationship
Ahira wouldn’t question it.”

I grit my
teeth so hard I thought my they
might crack. I had
trusted
him.

“I grew fond of my princess and disliked some of the company she kept, particularly that of Aaron, a wizard. He constantly tried to cozy up to Ahira, an action I didn’t appreciate. I decided to use my Kohath identity to win her heart and make the wizard keep his paws off her,” Azmaveth said, spitting out the last part of the sentence.

“Unfortunately, like many scientists before me, I failed. Ahira found my human form to be a friend at best, and more annoying than loving at worst. She remained friends with Aaron, and in a superb twist of irony, I fell in love with her instead.”