Dragon Heart

Chapter 13

It looked as if Nicholas's body was coming apart. His skin was ripping and something foreign crawled underneath the skin of his back. Cassandra, still weak from her stab wound covered her mouth in a gasp. "Oh no!" the guttural sound escaped her throat. Olympia threw an arm around the girl in comfort, not knowing what else she could do.

The creature crawling around in Nicholas's back ripped out of his skin and flew away. As the creature flew towards the moon it became bigger and bigger until it formed into a large green dragon. Cassandra ran to Nicholas whose back stitched itself together right before Olympia's eyes.

"Please be okay." She whispered.

Olympia turned her attention away from Cassandra and Nicholas and focused it on the dragon. He did a nose dive and dipped towards the earth as he stepped onto the ground his scales became flesh and his mane turned into hair. A flesh and blood man stood before her.

"Olympia, you broke the curse, my love." The man said.

"It can't be..." She said but one look into the man's jade eyes and she knew the truth. He was her dragon. Olympia ran into the man's arms and planted a kiss on his mouth.

"That's sweeter than I ever imagined," he whispered into her hair. "Even without the soy sauce." He smiled.

"That's not weird at all." Nicholas said holding out his hand to shake. "I'm sorry I killed you."

"I'm not." Prince Andrew said taking the man's hand and giving it a firm shake.

"You're not?" Prince Nicholas said confused.

"I let you kill my dragon form." Andrew answered. "When I saw you in the woods everything made sense. I could tell that you bore the mark of a witch's curse. Dragons can sense that. I also knew you were a prince of the East. Which meant that I was honor bound to help break the curse."

"You were honor bound to let him kill you?" Cassandra asked.

"It was a pact between the four nations." Andrew continued to explain. "If any member of the ruling family had a witch's curse placed on them, all of the kingdoms would do everything in their power to help break the curse. It is why each kingdom took turns providing a maiden for me."

"Oh, I thought it was so that you didn't breathe fire on the rest of us." Nicholas said. "I really must do a better job of studying history." 

"Olympia too." Andrew said. "That first week she kept making recipes for how I should eat her. She once told me to smear peanut butter and jelly on her because she thought it would be tasty."

Nicholas laughed. "How ever did he resist eating you, Princess?" He winked.

"I soon realized that you needed my heart." Andrew continued. "I freely allowed you to defeat me because I needed to give Olympia my heart, literally."

Olympia squeezed Andrew's hand, just glad that his heart made its way to her.

"I knew that you would make the right choice with my heart." Andrew said. "You wanted revenge but learned to forgive instead breaking two curses and defeating a witch in the process."

Olympia smiled and stood on her tip toes so she could kiss Prince Andrew on the chin. "I'd do anything for my dragon."

"I hoped you'd say that." Andrew said picking her up in his arms and jumping into the air. A set of wings appeared and he grew scales. The dragon put the princess on his back and she leaned into his neck.

"You can switch forms whenever you want?" She asked.

"Yes. Being a dragon isn't all that bad." He said. "For instance, I can take you wherever you want to go."

"I want to go home, to our tower where I plan on living happily ever after." She whispered into the dragon's ear.

The End