“Shall we dance, then?” he asked softly, before taking the hand David offered and leading his prince down the stairs to the dancing.
A Beast and a Beauty
ZARRIN CRANED his head to stare at the tangled branches of dried hawthorn, wild roses, and wattle that had been stacked together to form a wall taller than most human men, and as thick as the stone masonry of the Quaking Palace with its many towers.
He had walked the perimeter of the wall of thorns, more curious than angry at the dedication it took to build it, although he was tired from his journey through the woods and up into these foothills. The wall must have taken weeks to complete, and the builder must have bled for it. A remarkable feat, truly, even if it was a problem for Zarrin.
It seemed the rumor the Princess had heard was correct.
Zarrin sighed heavily. It was one thing to be such an oddity among dragons that his parents had decided to interfere and find him a companion since he had yet to find one on his own. It was quite another to realize he was so unwanted that someone had constructed a barrier to keep him away.
He told himself he was not entirely the cause of this wall. It had likely been here for some time before the royal family had sent out a decree for each city, town, and village to send their most accomplished or beautiful young person to the Quaking Palace so that Prince Zarrin might not be alone.
They had sent beauties who had cowered at the sight of Zarrin’s bronze scales and long tail, schemers who could barely look at Zarrin but gazed with avarice at the luxury of his rooms, poor farmhands who were overwhelmed by the palace, musicians who thought Zarrin would eat them, scholars who did not want to be anyone’s companion, and one nosy baker. Zarrin had sent them all home, save the baker, whom he had directed to the Princess since the baker needed a job and Azar liked sweets.
Everyone had sent their best, or, as Zarrin suspected, someone they would not mind being rid of. Everyone, that is, except for one town. One town barely more than a village had sent no one. When Azar had inquired, she heard that the beauty chosen had scorned both the offer and the town itself, and taken off into the foothills, scaring the townsfolk away when they had tried to force him to go.
The townspeople did not want to offend the royal family, but apparently no one else in their town was worthy—or worthless. Zarrin was not sure which applied here, but he had decided to interfere. It was his companion problem, after all, that had gotten this beauty into this trouble. Zarrin should fix it.
He considered the wall again. His scales were hard but they would not keep out all the thorns. He would bleed. That he hesitated at all was a sign of his strangeness and his weakness, the dragon prince who hid in the palace. But all the dragons hid behind the stone of the towers. The humans had forgotten them, feared them, did not know what an honor it was to be chosen.
Zarrin lowered his head, shut his eyes, then shoved forward through the brambles. Thorns slid off his scales and caught around his ankles. They sliced the soft underside of his tail and left stinging trails around his nostrils. He exhaled, not fire, not wanting to set the entire wall and whatever lay beyond it aflame, and stumbled when the branches not dry enough to break wrapped around his legs, thorns piercing the flesh between his toes.
He roared, something he had never done, an earthshaking sound that sent more branches tumbling to the ground to both make his way easier and bring him more pain as new thorns found their way beneath his scales.
A moment later, he was free, the echo of his roar the only sound for several moments, except for his harsh breathing.
Then someone shouted.
Zarrin opened his eyes and beheld a beast. It ran toward him from the direction of a small house only to stop several yards away. It also breathed harshly.
Humans were afraid of dragons now, Zarrin remembered. And thiswasa human, for all that it was dressed as a beast.
Humans came in many sizes and varieties, but Zarrin thought this one might be a man, from the height and general build, though, of course, he would need to ask to be certain. A large coat of thick gray fur hid its body from view. Spikes of carved bone had been sewn onto the shoulders. Gloves made of thick leather, with eagle or hawk talons at the tips of the fingers, added to the beastlike appearance, but it was the helmet of a Great Wolf’s skull that took Zarrin aback. Where he should have seen a human face, there was only a long snout and teeth.
He stared, and the human in the beast suit stood still and said nothing.
Zarrin was a dragon, if small, and bleeding. He had come this far, so he raised his chin. “I’m sorry you were driven to this. Tell me, please, how should I address you? I do not want to offend you further. Humans are different, you see. Are you a they? A he? She? A word I’m not familiar with but would like to be?”
“I do not care if you are a dragon or a dragon prince royal, I did not invite you here,” the human in a beast suit declared in a husky voice, then visibly paused, as though Zarrin’s apology had confused it. “What? I don’t care what you call me. You were not invited. He,” the human added a moment after that.
“That is true. I was not,” Zarrin admitted in the momentary silence. “But the people will not let you be until this is resolved. If you cannot deal with me, others will be sent. I have no doubt of that.” Zarrin nodded toward the pieces of the wall of thorns on the ground around him. “They already forced you to this.”
The human man did not move. “If they are afraid, then they will stay away.”
“Or they will send more like me,” Zarrin pointed out, reasonably, he thought, despite the pain he was in. “Or not at all like me,” he added, whipping his tail around to emphasize that he was little. Zarrin was larger than a tiger, perhaps as big as one of the Great Wolves would have been, if they still lived. Most dragons were well beyond that in size.
“What makes you so different?” the human demanded. “That you are dragon?” Zarrin stopped, bewildered by the question, but was given no time to answer. The man snorted derisively. “Dragons and humans are the same where it matters, and the dragons in their towers care nothing for us except when they summon us for some whim.”
Zarrin tossed his head, which dislodged several pieces of hawthorn from his mane. “Marriage is hardly a whim,” he huffed, and had no idea what to make of the utter stillness from the man, or the small, garbled noise he made. “And I am not in a tower. Surely, this is obvious.” His family might still be, but Zarrin had come down.
“You could cook me where I stand.” The man was very stubborn and also a bit rude. Although very few of the humans Zarrin had met recently seemed to know anything about dragons or how unlikely it was for Zarrin to roast anything.
“But I haven’t.” Zarrin studied the claws in the human’s gloves and wondered if they were longer than his own. “I could have set fire to your thorns, too, and forced you to flee. It would have been much easier.”
“You’re bleeding.” The man was either ignoring Zarrin’s words or incapable of linear conversation.
Nonetheless, Zarrin glanced down. “Yes,” he said, while staring blankly at his feet, the lines of crimson trickling down around his scales, the blood pooling in the dirt beneath him. “Oh. More than I thought.”
