Princess Ahira (7 page)

“Wait!
You’
re supposed to come with me!” h
e protested.

“Why?” 

“Because you’re a
princess, and I’m a prince!” he said, as if that piece of so called logic justified it.
This is what those ballads are doing to young
minds: rotting them to the core.

“So?” 

“Well, well
,
” h
e stuttered.

“Ahira!
Who’s
there?”
Azmaveth yelled from within the safety of his library, hoping I had
n’t killed our visitor
. 

“A traveling sales
wizard!”
I yelled, if I knew anything it would be that Azmaveth would most likely deligh
t in torturing
me over
this poor prince—he’d
research princes in books and reference it for days to come. I wouldn’t put it past him to ask me about human mating rituals or something
.
So really, it was in my own self interest to send the prince on his way.
Besides, if he really did try to fight Azmaveth for me he would probably impale himself on his own sword. 

  “Okay!
If you need any help, just call,” Azmaveth answered
as I sighed in relief.

“That must be the evil drag
on who’s keeping you captive!” t
he p
rince said as he suspiciously gaze
d into the darkness behind me.
I closed t
he door and walked down the dirt
path that lead to our cave
, stopping when I could see the
main
road. 

“Follow that road and it will take you by the
dens of several dragons.
Just ask them
who’s
taken Princess Cinders
as a maid and they’ll tell you,” I carefully explained
once he stood by my side. 

“Don
’t you want to come with me?” h
e asked.

“No,”
I said turning around to go back to Azmaveth’s cave. 

“Why not?” h
e asked sounding flabbergasted. 

“
I just don’t
,”
I said as I reached the door.
Arms locked around my waist and I was suddenly s
wooped up into the air and thrown over the Prince’s shoulder.

“Put me down!”
I yelled
p
ounding my fists on his back. In spite of
his pansy, wimpy
looks he was surprisingly strong. 

“No!” h
e said as he walked over to his horse. “I don’t feel lik
e looking for Cinders anymore. She was ugly and scary,” h
e said shuddering as a memory flitted through my mind of
the
creepy princess with black hair that was kidnapped in the same raid as I.

I no longer blamed him for not wanting to search for her. 

“How did you get here so fast?”  I asked. 

“I started out the night she was kidnapped. My country is the Alfing Region, the area directly next to mount
ains so it wasn’t that far away,” h
e said with a shrug as I
beat my fists on his head.
“Ouch
! T
hat hurts
,
stop doing that!” 

“Put me down!” 
I demanded. 

“No!”
h
e insisted.

“Yes,” a
deep rumble replied for
me.
I looked up to find myself face to face with Azmaveth, well not exactly face
to f
ace because he is so huge. The p
rince
turned around and Azmaveth was whirled out of my view. 

“Oh,” the p
rince said,
promptly dropping me
.
I picked myself off the ground and dusted my dress off before I walked towards the dragon.
 

His eyes were whirling
and his fang like teeth that were usually hidden b
ehind his lips were now bared.
His dark purple scales seemed to take on a black hue, and he looked
quite dangerous. Not at all like the usual scholary, if not somewhat dopey, Azmaveth.

“Azmaveth,
”
I
said standing in front of the p
rince.  “
Thank you, you’ve done quite enough
.” 

“You want to go with him?”
Azmaveth asked incredulously. 

“No, NO, no!” I assured him as I stopped at his side. “But you can just release him into the wild, right? No need to maim or kill him.
You promise to leave
right away p
rince, don’t you?”
I ask
ed, turning around to find the p
rince gone and already gall
oping down our driveway with his horse.

“
A pox on you too
,”
I said rubbing my hands together before turning to go back inside. 

“
Why didn’t you leave with him? You easily could of,”
Azmaveth said,
calm once again
as we entered his den. 

I snorted
.
“
Please
,
give me more credit than that. He was quite obviously an idiot,”
I said as I walked off toward his bedroom. 

“Oh, yes, by the way.
Three of my friends are
coming over tomorrow afternoon,
”
Azmaveth causally said.

“WHAT?” I cried
. 

“Sorry?” Azmaveth
cried back
.

“Why didn’t you
tell
me so instead of wasting my time cleaning your room I could have
cleaned the rest of the cave?”
I groaned
.

“I was going to!” he said.
“But then you got all bossy on me and decided that you were going to clean my room
and
that nothing would stop you,”
h
e declared.

“AH!  I’m going
have you declawed! This place is a mess!
What will your fri
ends think if they see it now?”
I yelled.

“That it’s really, really cle
an
for me?”  Azmaveth suggested.

“NO!” I roared. “They’ll think I’m a deficient princess!”

“
Truly I’m giving you more time than is expected.
They wanted
to come today but in my book,
All A
bout Pr
incesses, Everything You Need to Know to Keep Your Pet Happy and C
lean
, it says
‘your princess needs at least two days to adjust to her new surroundings, so don’t let your friends com
e over until she is comfortable
’
,” h
e quoted.
He smiled down at me like he
had done
me a great favor.

I contemplated becoming a professional book burner for a few moments before tearing off—hustling through the halls as I tried to restore order and cleanliness to the cave.

I stopped only to make dinner because Azmaveth was rolling aroun
d on the floor, blocking my progr
ess while claiming he was dying of malnutrition.

Shrinking Spells

I shook my head as Azmaveth greedily eyed up the cooked chic
ken, which was
roughly the size of a small hut
. I cut out a tiny portion for myself and Azmaveth took a piece
that was
the size of a horse
. 

“How can you eat that much?”
I asked, turning
green.

“How can you eat so little?” h
e shot back.

I could only sigh and shake my head.

“S
o, tell me about your family,”
Azmaveth ordered.

“I don’t want to,”
I stubbornly said.

“Good, then we c
an talk about my book
,
which is
All About Princesses, E
verything
-.”

“I have one older brother,”
I said cutting in. I cannot stress to you how much I hated that book.
“His name is Caspian
,
and he’s
been
my best fr
iend ever since we were young
.
We tried skipping our lessons together. Caspian always had a tighter guard on him though because he’s the crown prince.
” 

“Do you only have one sibling?” Azmaveth asked.

I laughed. “No.
I have five sisters.” 

Azmaveth
eyes bulged out of his sockets. “FIVE?” he yelped
.

“Yes. There’
s Jezbell,
Brianna
, Debrah,
Annabell, and Leah,”
I said, practically spitting out Jezbell’s name. 

“I take it you don’t like the oldest one
?” h
e asked
, his voice colored with curiosity
.

I shrugged,
“
S
he and I
have
never got
ten along very well.
When I was
four she took me on a walk in the
woods and left me alone there
.
A troll attacked me but
thankfully
a sorc
eress was nearby and saved me.
She took me back home, but my parents didn’t believe me that Je
zbell had left me behind,”
I said as Azmaveth cut another slice of chicken for himself. 

“That’s pretty low. Trying to kill your own sister?”

“I guess. I don’t think she would have really meant for me to die. B
ut
it doesn’t matter.
I haven’t had to see her for about
three
years because she got married,” I finished.
“Do you
have any brothers or sisters?”
I asked.

“No. I am an only child,” h
e said
with a tight smile
.

“That must have stunk,
” I
bluntly
said.

“Perhaps. I never really knew what I was missing though,”
Azmaveth said as he cut yet
another
slice for himself.

“It must have been lonely… playing by yourself,” I said. I could never imagine life without my brother and sisters.

Azmaveth raised his large head
to look up at the ceiling. “Oh, I had a cousin I played with
a lot
. He was a beastly little thing though. Such an insufferable know it all
.”

“Do dragons usua
lly have more then one child?”
I asked.

“Dragon
ets they’re called.
Yes,
usually they have four or so. My case is a rare one,” he said with a half smirk
.
“I was not an easy dragonet, so who could blame my parents?”

“W
hat happened to
them
?
Your parents I mean,”
I asked
.

Azmaveth cringed. 

“Sorry,
” I mumbled.

“No, no. My book says you have a right to know my background. We’re supposed to bond over it.
My mother died when I was young and my father was killed
in an ogre and v
alkyrie raid
a decade ago
. Shortly after I was crowned a duke,” h
e said.

“How old are you anyway?” I inquired
. 

“Lets see…well in dragon years I’m 124, so translated to
human years I’m…about 18
or 19
,” he supposed.

I felt a little taken aback. I had thought he had to be my father’s age! Although after I thought about it, Azmaveth’s age made sense. He didn’t yet have his own family after all.

“And how old are you?” h
e curiously asked.

“I’m sixteen,” I said. I
was still a
little sore about the whole kidnapped-on-my-1
6th
-birthday
thing
.
“
I’m sorry about your parents
,” I added as an afterthought.