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)
“What nonsense,” I add. “To think the dragon has to die. The dragon can’t die. What would happen to the story if it did? Every good story needs a dragon. Even ours, Charming.”
He snorts and puffs again.
“And who cares about the curse? I like the curse. It’s a feature, not a bug. So we have a lot of bones around. So what? That’s calcium, bitch!”
“Did you just call me a bitch?” Charming rumbles.
I am in flow, so I don’t stop to answer that because yes, I kind of absolutely did do that.
“So we have ravens instead of doves. So what? Ravens are awesome and doves are, well, lame. Very lame. And maybe everyone around here is an animal creature of some sort. Doesn’t mean they can’t lead fulfilling animal creature lives. Maybe the Ever After is different from Far Far Away because it doesn’t have to follow all those rules. Maybe that’s the real magic of this place.”
“Emmaline…”
I’m not listening to Charming. He’s hot and he’s the love of my life, but he is filled with fairytale propaganda and right now he doesn’t know what the hell is good for him.
“I’m going to smash these mirrors!” I declare.
“There’s no need to…”
“I’m going to smash them all up, and I don’t have to worry about curses or seven years of bad luck, because we’re already cursed! And our luck is already fucking awful! So who cares! We can do anything now, Charming! Anything we fucking want!”
I have rarely felt this cheerful. Charming and I were waiting for things to get better, become perfect, we were waiting for a Happily Ever After, but I think we’ve got something better. I think we’ve got a happy right fucking now. Assuming I can get him out of this gi-fucking-normous form and back into something a little more fuckable.
I turn and I swing my sword not at Charming, but at the nearest big, beautiful, ornate, stunning mirror. The tip of Dragonslayer contacts near the center of the frame and I watch as the thing shatters in front of me in a perfect concertina of wildly dangerous glass. Probably recyclable, though.
SMASH! CRASH! BASH! Tinkle tinkle tinkle…
I use Dragonslayer to destroy the mirrors one by one, while Charming protests that there’s no point doing that anyway because he’s feeling much better now, and…
Charming
My princess is a brat. A disobedient, willful, wayward wench. And she has more than a slight penchant for destruction. With every mirror that shatters, the room grows darker and the cursedness flows in a little thicker. She should be afraid of it, and afraid of me, but I truly think she does not care one whit for things as they should be.
Her words have not fallen on deaf ears, however. I believe she is correct in her assertions. The curse was a curse of darkness, it was my fate to be deprived of the perfect kingdom I grew up in, to see myself become the monster I feared, the one my father took such pride in having slain.
Now I wonder, did he ever truly slay the beast? Does any man? Or have all men, everywhere, learned to live with the beast that resides inside them. I know for a fact Emmaline is embracing her own wildness, because now she has broken every mirror, she is continuing to generally destroy all the pretty trappings of this royal hall.
With the mirrors gone, and my own sense of shame melting in the light of her radical acceptance, my dragon form is shrinking and slipping from me. I am no longer held in an oppressive cage of stone. Instead, I am free to move among the myriad of shards of glass to arrest my princess’ progress as she goes about entirely misusing the sword I once trained her to slay me with.
“Come here,” I say, grabbing her and swinging her off her feet, taking care to disarm her so she does not casually slay me by accident. “It’s time for the climax.”
Her eyes light up. “Really? I thought we already had the climax?!”
“There’s always time for another,” I smile down at her. “I owe you that at least.”
Her smile is broad and sexy, her expression one of pure anticipation. I do love how my human bride yearns to fuck and be fucked. Her carnal appetites are almost impossible to satiate. Then again, so are mine. We kiss deeply and passionately, while all around us the castle decays into the hellscape we left it. This is my aesthetic. This is my truth, and there is no changing it. Love has not transformed me. Instead, it has revealed me over, and over, and over again.
Luck shows his face far too late in the piece, my splintered shadow cast from me when the dragon took his place. I see him standing behind Emmaline as I kiss her, his arms folded over his chest, a satisfied expression on his shadowy face.