I’ve awakened a couple of them and I’ve come across their gratitude as sharp thorns. We fought, and then we got along. Now we’re friends and allies.”
“Just don’t bring them here,” she sniffed the snowdrops with pleasure. The white flowers in a cocoon of large green leaves were tiny, but they had a marvelous fragrance.
“Put them in water and they’ll never wilt.”
“Are you sure?”
“I guarantee it!”
It was in his power, because the water obeyed him. As it turned out, in addition to water creatures heavenly creatures obeyed him too.
A dragon flew up to the archway. Moran carefully took the scroll from him, trying not to touch the scales. The dragon was wary of touching his hand as well. His hands, though wet, were partially covered with scales, as if he were the son of a dragon rather than a water dragon. Although fish have scales too, don’t they? Desdemona rose from her comfortable bed and walked to the window. The dragon was still hovering behind it. His mouth was hot. It almost burned her face. Now her skin would definitely turn red. How could Moran bear his proximity, he was a water dragon. Fire should be destructive to him, but the dragon listened to him.
“Get rid of him!”
“He’s going to fly away himself.”
Moran was right. The dragon turned and flew toward the horizon.
“You read his mind?”
“Why is it? He’s completed his mission and now he’s flying back.”
“Is it his task?”
“He is a messenger,” Moran unfolded a scroll mottled in orange letters. Are the letters glowing, or is she seeing double? Moran tried not to burn his fingers, holding only the ends of the scroll, untouched by the signatures.
“What is it?”
“It is a threat warning.”
“Who sent it?”
“It is the queen of Tioria.”
“You know the Queen of Tioria?”
“I knew her before she was queen. I even befriended her. It made my brothers laugh.”
“Don’t tell me about these murderers, or I’ll remember you didn’t stop them when they… drowned my brothers.”
“I can’t vouch for them. No one can vouch for them. Even my father can’t control them.”
“You mean the water king?”
Moran looked at her like a naive child. His almond-shaped eyes shimmered with mystery beneath golden lashes. How handsome he was! If only there weren’t tentacles under his robe. But not everyone could be perfect.
“Can the queen of Tioria control everything?”
“That’s not what she writes to me. And she’s no ordinary queen.”
“Then who is she?”
“She is a dragon goddess and a dragon herself.”
“She is a dragon woman.”
“I know her well.”
“What do you have in common with her?”
“What does fire have in common with water?”
“Then what do you want from her? Or does she want from you?”
Well, she’s already jealous. It’s wild jealousy.
She doesn’t think there’s anything to be jealous of, though. She had plenty of gifts and favors. Moran had recently sent her a bouquet of lilies and roses, laced with ribbons and pearls. If it wasn’t held together by charms, she didn’t know how. The gifts were many, but the most important was tenderness. No one had ever been gentle with her, and Moran had been. How can you call him a sea devil after that?
He’s sensitive. He sees all her anxieties without words. He loves only her. Though where else would a monster get a lady? Is it a miracle one agreed to him? It wasn’t. Everyone was after the king with wizard’s flaws. Desdemona made a lot of friends she didn’t even remember. It’s so easy to approach the king through her friendship.
“Do you like only me?”
Moran didn’t play the game.
“I once had a crush on the fire lady, but she didn’t like me. ‘We’re just friends,’ she kept saying. And I was expecting that one day I would see the deity everyone dreams of, and it would heal me. There is a goddess who is mightier than all and more beautiful than all. Once you see her, nothing else makes sense. Alais! I wanted to be her warrior and her chosen one. I thought that if I saw her, I would never think of Sephora again. I waited for her, watched the sun from the water, but she never came. And now you showed up, and I felt better.”
Is that what it is? One ethereal creature is reaching for another. No need for earthly ladies. But he found her.
They’re both wearing crowns. She is in a graceful feminine one, he is in a heavy masculine one. Both crowns are symbols of power, but somehow it feels like only he is the king here, and she is an impostor, wanting to wrest it from a highborn or even a magical lady.
Moran stood at the arched window, unafraid of falling out of it and crashing through the rocks. She knew by now that the octopus-like limbs braiding the window frame were not the tentacles of the monster beside him, but parts of his own body. But she didn’t care.
“I love you!” Desdemona hugged him from behind, running her bare feet over the slimy tails snaking beneath the royal robe.
Should she tell him how beautiful he is, or does he know it himself? He’s a monster, but she thinks he’s beautiful! Everything in the world turned upside down when a king from the sea came to rule the earthlings.
“Do you think I see you as a victim?” Moran felt her heart fluttering like a caged bird.
“I don’t know! Everyone has seen me as a sacrifice since I was chosen to serve the sea god. I heard that if the sacrifice with the chosen girl doesn’t take place, the sea will flood the whole country.”
“Let it drown!”
“You say that about your country?”
“I will flood it myself if you are chosen as the sacrifice.”
“But I thought you chose me to take me personally to the temple for sacrifice.”
She imagined the terrible celebration when a king personally gives his young wife to the sea god for a ritual to ensure the coastal kingdom’s peace and prosperity for many more years. Will she be beheaded with a sickle or cut open alive? Or drowned? Sometimes water is scarier than poison. Dodger had said it right. At the thought of drowning, the shimmering edge of the sea below sent a shiver of fear through her. Eerie images of the ritual came to mind. Desdemona clutched her eyes in horror.
“Tell me, the sea god’s victims become mermaids after he kills them.”
“Where did you get that idea?”
“I dreamed it,” she admitted honestly. No need to be hypocritical. It was as if Moran could see through her mind and was nervous, too.
“Dreams are as fine a line as water. A whole kingdom can hide beneath it.”
“How do you know?”
“So claims a lady who is no stranger to the realm of dreams and its rulers. She says that dreams are a witch’s labyrinth in which one can get lost and never return.”
“I imagine the temple of the sea god to be such a labyrinth.”
“Do not fear him. A queen shouldn’t be afraid of anything.”
But she didn’t feel like a queen.
Flowers