Total pages in book: 58
Estimated words: 52915 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 265(@200wpm)___ 212(@250wpm)___ 176(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 52915 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 265(@200wpm)___ 212(@250wpm)___ 176(@300wpm)
“I am sorry,” he says, in a huge, gravelly dragon voice. It is a little whispery, because I think he is trying to sound soft and not blow my eardrums out.
“It’s okay. We’ve done it! We killed Balthazar! So I’ll smash all these mirrors or whatever, and then you can presumably turn back into your humanish form and bam, Happily Ever After.”
Charming shakes his large dragon head. “That won’t work.”
“Why not? We killed the bad guy. It wasn’t even hard. Super easy. Barely an inconvenience!”
It was, perhaps, I realize now, a little too easy. Perhaps a little anti-climactic.
“Balthazar was never the bad guy,” Charming says. “I am the bad guy.”
He speaks with a heavy sorrow that makes me feel a very uncomfortable churn in my stomach, like things are still going wrong even though they’re supposed to be right. We’re supposed to be actively Happily Ever Aftering right now.
“You are not bad!” I argue, as if arguing will change anything when it comes to the mad rules of this twisted alien world. “You saved me on the very first day. Should have just told me then. Would have made this all so much easier.”
“The dragon must be slain,” he growls. “This is my curse to bear. This is why no princess will have me. Because I am the dragon who must be destroyed. To save Ever After, you must take Dragonslayer, and you must use it on me. Drive it deep inside me, and let it drain me of my essence. Then take my blood, and…”
I frown, as well one might when a magical dragon king one has fallen in love with requests to be killed.
“Absolutely fucking not,” I say. “Don’t be fucking stupid.”
Not the most empathetic of responses maybe, but I was expecting celebration. I was not expecting to be asked to commit ritual murder.
“It must be done, Emmaline.”
When he speaks, the entire castle rumbles because he is trapped in it, and he is part of it. I wonder if this was always how things were going to end. I wonder if it didn’t matter if Balthazar banished me or not, if that was a distraction from the fact that on the night we tried to wed, Charming was forced into his dragon form, and I was given this sword.
My eyes are beginning to fill up with tears, as I realize that I am trapped in this tale almost as much as the poor bastards in the Far Far Away were trapped in theirs. My control over events is much more limited than I like to imagine. I am something worse than fate’s pawn. I am a vehicle for a series of events that desire completion, and they will have it no matter how hard I fight.
“But what about our Happily Ever After?” I try not to cry the question.
“We don’t get one. If you do not kill me, the curse cannot be broken. That is the nature of the magic. That is the way things are.”
I think about that for a long second. I think about the curse, and the darkness that seems to follow us, and I absolutely fail to see how any of this might be improved by me killing the king. This is Balthazar speaking from beyond the grave. This is the weight of expectation and tradition. This isn’t… this doesn’t have to be real.
It suddenly occurs to me that the curse, in and of itself, and even the darkness, doesn’t really matter. Not to me, anyway. I’ve been cursed since I got here, and it hasn’t stopped me from falling in love. The moments I saw the cursed realm and not the fairytale bullshit were the moments I was the closest to Charming. It was when I was at the height of my pleasure. The curse, it seems to me, is kind of hot.
“I will close my eyes,” Charming says. “And you must plunge…”
“Shut up.”
His great green dragon eyes fly open in irritation. “Excuse me, princess?”
He sounds as though he would like very much to thrash me for that, but he is still stuck Alice in Wonderland style in the castle and that gives me a certain freedom of speech which I plan to take full advantage of and pay for later.
“I’m not going to kill you, you idiot. Balthazar might have been right about that part. I’m going to wait for you to feel better. You won’t be a dragon forever. You’re always changing. Dragon sometimes, not a dragon other times. That’s how you are. That’s just you. And hey, maybe that’s, you know, fine.”
Charming puffs a little smoke from his nostrils in a way that I hope means he is considering what I’m saying.
“You’re lucky this isn’t a Far Far Away story, because people would be so mad you didn’t just tell me you were a dragon at the beginning and save all this drama,” I tell him. I do draw the sword, but not to slay him. Instead, I use it to poke at the air and emphasize the very good points I am making.