To Marry a Dragon

25. Don't Shoot the Messenger

Ferrante woke drenched in sweat, like he had a summer fever, and with a sharp pain in the left side of his chest. It wasn't something he had confessed to Professor Rubenius, but the more he shifted to his dragon form, the more rapturous the experience became. He craved having wings, the heavy pounding of a strained heart and the elation of being. The bards made the desires of flesh sound that way, the growing hunger and the visceral satisfaction.

His dragon and romantic fantasies mixed while he slept, to embarrassing conclusions, among which he much preferred shifting in his sleep. It was never a full form, thankfully. Mostly just the wings sprouting, sometimes his neck elongating to serpentine... but this time it wasn't it.

Elvira's voice still echoed in his ears, sending his heart galloping. She called him. As clear as he could hear himself breathe, he heard her voice calling out his name.

It will pass... it will pass... The pressure in his chest eased, but his stomach caved in instead. He wanted to see her so badly. And not just see... more.

The longing chased him out of the dorms, barefoot, to the public fountain in the courtyard. He wasn't the first resident to dip his head into it, he wouldn't be the last. Water, chilled by the night, streamed down his hair and face in thick rivulets, falling back into the marble bowl.

Once the dripping slowed down, he slumped on one of twin benches, next to a forgotten book, staring. Water poured out of a spout set in the middle of a marble rosette. It fell into the bowl. The hidden mechanism kept the bowl from overflowing... a simple thing, flowing water, yet mesmerizing.

As it flowed on, imagination flew him to Castle Rastelli. He was a dragon circling high over the gray and black castle before folding his wings and plunging down. Down through the moist clouds until the frigid lake-water engulfed him, broiling off his sides. He came up in the shower of crystalline droplets.

Free.

Untouched.

Forgotten.

Never kiss a woman. Then the curse would die with you. But I want to kiss her.

He had argued about this with himself already, endlessly, before throwing his heart open to Elvira. Why did the doubts resurface this morning? He was done with this debate, done! He had decided to risk everything to win her love the day he revealed his dragon form to her.

The crunching footfalls rushed toward him. He opened the eyes he didn't remember closing to see Lukrezia on the gravel path between the evenly spaced, symmetrically planted on both sides poplars.

"Ferrante, the summons! This afternoon!" she cried.

Her face glowed purple with excitement. If he were still sleeping, she would have been pounding on his chamber's doors. The shining yellow eyes drifted over his undershirt, bare feet, damp hair and untended beard and squinted in calculation. "You must make yourself presentable."

"I will," Ferrante promised, and he did.

***

By the time Ferrante entered the too familiar amphitheatre, he nearly scrubbed his skin off in the public bath, ignoring the stares the scales attracted. A barber attacked his beard, while he suffered sitting on the tiled floor. He had already scoured even the tiniest piece of his armour till it shone like the sun on the idle days of waiting.

His dashing looks weren't lost on the audience. The gnomes appreciated tidiness, even if they found him rather ungainly, brutish and ugly.

However, the moment Tybalt showed up in the aisle, leaving an adjoining classroom taken over by the Guild for preparations and breaks, all eyes turned to him.