To Marry a Dragon

16. Allegory of the Cave

Cerne studied Raul's dreamy face and nodded. "No, he isn't a human, Elvira. He's a branch from a different tree."

"Yes?" Elvira prompted.

"He is an elf who worshiped starlight."

Elvira didn't gasp, because it was a confirmation rather than a revelation.

The amputated ear, the enchanting songs. Raul was guilty of more than banditry. The elves exiled the worst criminals to the ground even after they had stopped parking their flying fortresses over the diminished cities since the fall of the Ordovan Empire. The exiles usually sought solitude and didn't reveal the trespasses they had committed. For the most part, they disappeared into the growing wilderness to live as hermits. The stories sometimes told of them helping travelers, but often called them heretics who put the cold glitter of the stars before the life-giving light.

"Does he know?" Elvira slanted her eyes at Sigvart.

"Well," Cerne unpinned Elvira's braid, collecting the amber tipped pins into the palm of her hand as she worked. Then drew the comb through the freed hair in patient, hypnotic motions. "If I understand this properly, human love includes shedding clothes at some point."

Elvira felt her cheeks burning because her imagination now ventured beyond the innocent lip-lock. "I s-suppose so."

"I can feel pain in the stumps of Raul's wings. His lover wouldn't miss them."

Elvira shivered. "Wings? I thought those were fairy tales."

"You've seen birds, right?"

"Right."

Her eyes left Raul, left Sigvart, and drifted toward the fire. The light pulsed before her, Raul sang tirelessly, but she was exhausted. The words of sunset prayer came as a quiet brook, tuning out the sounds, smells and sights of the bandits' hideout. Then the sleep swirled down as a mercy upon her troubled soul.

***

Sigvart woke her, his rosy cheeks now pale and drawn. "You win. Raul sent Sal the Ferret to a friendly priest on Gallicia side to prepare your stupid wedding ceremony."

"Then you..." she searched for a word. Said yes? Agreed? None of it fit with his defiant facial expression. "Why?"

He scoffed at her struggles. "Don't question your luck."

She grabbed his hand. "I am sorry. Truly sorry. I will never bother you again afterward."

He winced, freeing his fingers as if her grip pained him. "Stop before you add anything about your magnificent Ferrante. I hate that man with a passion of a thousand burning suns."

"I am sure you'd change your mind if you met him," she lied. If the two men found themselves in the same room, Ferrante would charge Sigvart with his sword drawn, but it was a polite thing to say.

Sigvart groaned and kept his distance for the rest of the day, not an easy feat in the closed space of a cave. She didn't keep tabs on him, but she thought he fled to the forest while Cerne and every woman in the band scavenged through the lot to put together a wedding outfit.

A skirt from a bottom of a chest, a shawl that was used to tie together dusty goblets, a bodice.... she didn't know where that came from, and didn't want to ask. There were seams to take in, tears to mend, a few jewels to sew on, and nobody tried to console her.

That's because I am the villain here, not an unfortunate virgin, pressed into giving herself to a dragon to save her country... Instead I want to lay with a dragon. Her old duenna's voice sounded in her head, "If it's not a bandit, it's a dragon! Feh, Your Highness, that's in poor taste." Oh, bother!