I am Dragon (Dragon Fires Rising Book 2) by Marc Secchia (famous ebook reader TXT) 📕

Staggering to his feet as he threw off the hands that tried to restrain him, the man pointed dramatically at Azania. He slurred, “Her. That’s the one! What’s a black toad doing here? Hop back home, toad!”

The Princess froze.

Chapter 19: Ocean’s Calling

DRAGON’S PAWS CLENCHED SO painfully, he ripped up several flagstones. Never had he so badly wanted to smash a man out of existence, but somehow in the pounding, migraine-like fury that raged inside of his skull, he realised that there were others present. Innocents, in a manner of speaking.

That drunkard; that racist fool!

Lord Ivarn began to roar in fury, but Ishana snapped, “No, Ivarn. Allow me!”

Clenching her fists, the large woman marched through the guests like a Dragoness pressing through ocean waves. As she approached her brother, she snarled, “I’ve had enough. Quite enough! You’ve been an embarrassment to the family for years, you blowsy old sot!”

“Ishana …” The man’s eyes tried to focus. “Why, if it isn’t my flabby, overblown little –”

Crack!

The Lady was a big woman, solidly built through the beam and in the shoulders. She hit him open-handed, with the full force of her body behind the buffet – much as Azania had learned to punch from Juggernaut, Dragon realised with belated, fire-cooling delight. She hit him so hard, his neck snapped about and he twirled twice in the air before falling insensible to the ground.

His head even bounced, as if the very ground had shuddered to feel the touch of such a man.

Dragon wanted to wash out his ears. Black toad? Blergh! The full import of the insult had only just begun to burn through his mind.

Ishana dusted her hands balefully. “That’s quite enough of that.” Her gaze openly threatened the others of that group – her relatives, most probably. “While we’re having a day of dusting off skeletons, any other racists in my family want to raise their voices? Because I’m in a mood, I warn you!”

Silence.

“I will have you behave with the uttermost decorum in my house, toward my honoured guests – do we understand one another?”

Her relatives nodded like a flock of parakeets caught featherless and embarrassed.

Or, legless?

She said, “Servants, could you kindly lock my brother in an empty storage cellar? I believe we will keep him there for as long as it takes him to dry out. Princess Azania … words fail me.”

His Princess bobbed her head, still speechless.

With a polite nod, Dragon said, “My Lady Ishana, you were magnificent. Thank you for giving an apology of surpassing eloquence.”

“The least I could do,” she replied.

The girl turned into his paw, shaking as she pressed her forehead against his leg. What a heart’s cramp! Dragon drew his wing about her, more to shelter her from the stares than by way of comfort. A tiny body shook against him. He could only imagine the nausea and humiliation, consuming every iota of self-worth that ever had built up inside of her. That fool had torn her apart with a few repulsive words.

However, a minute or two after the servants had carried off the unfortunate man, the Princess in his right paw wriggled. She wiped her eyes, shook out her curls and dried her palms upon her trousers.

Up came that chin. “Shall we, Dragon?”

“Always.”

He shook his muzzle, buzzing with disbelief. Broken and back in the course of a couple of minutes.

What kind of power was that?

Still, the Princess confounded him when she crept out of the chambers she had been given in the middle of the night and came to join him and Chalice beneath the giant walnut tree, saying only that she felt unsafe in the house. She curled up in the crook of his neck.

Waking at first light, Dragon found his Princess already wakeful, and pensive.

He touched her shoulder. “Fly with me?”

“Flyaway Princess? You know me so well. I should appreciate that very much.”

“Up on my neck. Hold on.”

She whooped as they swooped from the cliffs, picking up speed at a ridiculous rate. The Princess chortled as he straightened over the glittering waves and beat his wings to take them shooting away from the white cliffs, until they were but a thin line above the blue. Taramis peeked over the rim, unbearably white with a vast halo of crimson spreading in a semicircle above, like a vast eye gazing warmly upon his world.

“Dragon, am I wrong to let something like that … get to me?”

“We can’t predict what will spear deepest,” he replied, gaining height. “My brothers used to call me the brown slug. Plus all the jokes about being fireless. I remember every last one.”

“Black toad. Where do people come up with these things?”

Headshake.

Leaning close to his neck, out where blue described the entire world, she whispered, “Am I wrong or ugly inside to have enjoyed that slap so much? I can still feel the echoes this morning.”

“No. That was the sound of justice.”

“I feel guilty.”

“No need, but I understand what it is to have all these ugly, mixed-up feelings toward my brothers and sire and dam because of how they treated me. I thought I was the one in the wrong – I still do, in some ways. It hurts to swallow all that, all the time. Maybe if I was stronger I could keep swallowing it all my life, but the truth is, I’m not that Dragon. It had to stop. Enough was enough. Same with that drunken fool, you can’t just let someone go on hurting a family all their lives.”

Azania nodded. “What’s that strange patch out there? The lighter patch – wing that way a minute please, Dragon?”

Ten minutes later, they hovered over a patch of Sea Serpents. Not big ones, but these azure