Beggars Can't Be
Gareth & Avi
The Kingdom of Aeris
Gareth gripped the reins of Princess Cordelia's horse. She sat blindfolded in the saddle. The King seemed to think that would make things easier—whether for her or for him, Gareth couldn't say.
Cordelia sniffled.
"You'll be fine," King Leopold said dismissively. "It'll keep you in a tower somewhere for a while. Some prince will save you. If anything, this has helped your marriage prospects."
She sniffled again. Gareth's sword felt heavy on his hip.
They had no army, no knights, no Honor Guard. Just a single member of the King's Guard. The King had said there was no point wasting bodies on a dragon, from whom no one could protect him if it decided to turn. Gareth didn't know if he'd been brought because demonspawn was especially disposable, or if it was a deliberate cruelty.
"Here," the King said, pulling his horse up short. Gareth automatically moved to help him dismount, King Leopold stepping on his shoulder. Then he helped Cordelia, careful not to touch her more than necessary. He'd never been this close to her before. He kept his tail close to his legs.
She seemed small, and she was shaking. Her blonde ringlets were all neatly arranged under her circlet, the color of wheat. She smelled like rose water. She couldn't see him, blindfolded as she was, but he knew that her eyes were green.
Gareth would put up with a lot. He had put up with a lot. He had bruises and blood enough to speak to it. But his mind had rebelled against this since the King had first announced this, his willingness to sacrifice his only daughter. Had been rebelling, screaming somewhere inside him.
They were outside the city, and they had horses. A dragon would as likely kill them all as not. He could. He could. There was no one to hear his thoughts, but he still didn't think it. He couldn't think it. If he didn't think it, he couldn't talk himself out of it.
He had a chance.
King Leopold was squinting at the sky. "It had better not be late."
Gareth slid his sword out of its scabbard, and slid it into the King.
It was easier than he had thought it would be. The tip of his sword had emerged through his ribs. Blood bloomed along his robes. The King made a sound like he was drowning. Gareth pulled his sword back, and the body fell.
It should have been harder.
The reality of what he'd done hit him all at once. He felt panicked, he felt free. It was happening, this was happening. He'd done it.
He grabbed Cordelia by the hand again. "We have to go," he said, trying to sound authoritative and not at all frightened.
She frowned. "What?"
"The dragon isn't here yet, if we hurry we can make it to the forest."
Cordelia pulled off her blindfold. She saw her father's corpse, and she screamed.
"We need to go," Gareth insisted, but this wasn't going the way he thought it would. She hated her father. Everyone hated her father. He wouldn't have known it to see the look on her face.
"What have you done?" she demanded.
"Princess—"
"What have you done?"
He heard the beating of wings, and he felt the blood leave his face. He turned in time to see a dragon just beginning to land, larger and grander than he'd thought. Scales white and shimmering, black horns and broad wings.
"I fucked up. I fucked up. I really fucked up." He accepted it the way he accepted that he was about to die, he was very surely about to die. This, in retrospect, was inevitable. The horses fled into the empty field.
"You killed him!" the Princess screamed, not deterred by the dragon.
There were hoofbeats down the road. Gareth turned his head, and could see immediately that Prince Ranulf had disobeyed his father. Prince Ranulf usually disobeyed his father. He had been speaking at length, since the dragon had first arrived, about how badly he wanted to slay a dragon. He would never do it, because he was a coward, but he was also an idiot.
If the King were alive, the Prince would have taken one look at the dragon, and pretended he only wanted to see it. Instead, Gareth was going to hang for regicide.
The dragon fixed a blue eye on Gareth, who moved to stand in front of the Princess, holding his sword ready with a shaky hand. That was the whole point of this, after all. That he'd save Cordelia. He'd rapidly lost control of the situation, and gave up on everything but this one small thing. It was the only thing he could bear to process.
The dragon looked at the sobbing Princess, and down the road at the approaching horses.
Then he lifted the King in his jaws, and started eating him.
Cordelia screamed and covered her ears with both hands, jamming her eyes shut tight. Gareth watched in horrified fascination. Leopold's bones crunched as they shattered between the dragon's teeth, and there were the wet sounds of chewed flesh and torn organs.
The horses stopped short, and their riders struggled to control them. The color had all left Ranulf's face, though he'd never had much to begin with. The spears his men held looked comically feeble. "What has happened here?" Ranulf demanded.
The dragon opened his mouth, and a battered ruby-studded crown fell into the grass. "I have eaten your king," he said, his voice like an earthquake. He shaped his words differently from any man, and sounded like no one but himself.
The King was dead. Gareth would hang. Ranulf would be king. Ranulf, Ranulf, worse even than Leopold. He found himself suddenly wishing, desperately, that the dragon would eat Ranulf. Anything but for Ranulf to be King.
"Why?" Ranulf asked, his voice cracking. "Why have you done this?"
"It was a challenge," Gareth said, the words escaping him just as quickly as the idea had entered his head. "He challenged the King's right to rule, and he accepted."
An obscure law from the days of warrior-kings that had never been stricken from the books. It simply wasn't relevant. Anyone who tried it would surely be killed long before they could ever present their challenge.
Gareth had been doing a lot of research on how to get rid of a king. Just... because.
"My father would never accept such a challenge," Ranulf said.
Gareth finally thought to sheathe his sword. "I—I was witness. I will swear to it."
"I insulted his honor," the dragon said, "and gave him no choice but to accept."
"Wait," said Sir Colin. "Are you suggesting that the dragon has a right to the throne?"
"He... he won the challenge," Gareth said lamely.
"I did," agreed the dragon.
"Isn't there a law that a dragon can't be king?" asked Sir Troy.
"Why would that be a law?" Sir Colin snapped, hitting him with the back of an armored hand. "Why would it ever occur to anyone that we would need a law for that? It's implied."
"Can't we make a law?"
"It's too late now."
"Sister," Ranulf said, speaking over his squabbling knights. Gareth looked at Cordelia, her tear-stained face. "Is this true?"
Cordelia looked at Gareth. He realized, in that instant, that she was afraid of him. She wasn't grateful for his attempted rescue, did not see that he was trying—in his way—to protect her from her brother. He felt acutely the color of his skin, the size of his shoulders, the sharpness of his teeth. That he had horns at all.
This was never going to have a happy ending for him, and looking at her, he couldn't imagine why he'd thought that it might.
"I—I was frightened," she said, her eyes darting between Gareth and her brother and the dragon that loomed above them all. "It all happened so fast, I don't—I don't know what happened."
The dragon flared his wings. "Do you dispute my claim?" he asked.
Ranulf turned green as he considered the implications of insulting a dragon. Of trying to hold a dragon to the law. Of trying to do anything in the face of a dragon now claiming a right the the throne of Aeris. "No," he said. "I was only... confirming."
Ranulf looked at Gareth with pure venom, and Gareth knew that he'd have Gareth killed just as soon as he saw his chance.
"We will need to consult with scholars, of course," Ranulf said. He, too, was stalling. "To be sure that everything is in order." He held out his hand. "Come, Cordelia."
Gareth nearly told her that she didn't have to go. That he would stay with her, if she wanted. But she ran to her brother as if he'd never hurt her, and his heart felt like a stone.
"And you, Gareth," he added. Gareth clenched his fists.
"You are a knight?" the dragon asked, and he realized the question was directed at him.
"No," he said flatly. "I am a member of the King's Guard."
"Ah," the dragon said. "Then, as I am your King, you must guard me." He seemed quite pleased with this.
Gareth stared at him.
"Yes," Ranulf sneered, "I suppose you should, shouldn't you?"
He thought this was a coup. He thought Gareth had planned this. He though Gareth had somehow met and conspired with a dragon to steal the throne.
It was a much more flattering interpretation of events than the reality, which was that he had panicked and still wasn't sure what was happening to his life.
Gareth watched the horses retreat, Princess Cordelia riding with her brother.
"What an interesting day," the dragon said.
Gareth doubled over, and heaved into the grass.
"Gross," he muttered, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He panted, trying to catch his breath.
"Why do you want me to be king?" the dragon wondered.
"I don't," Gareth admitted, hands on his knees. "No offense. I just—he was a bad king. Leopold. Ranulf is worse. I thought... I wanted to create a bureacratic problem. Give myself time to figure something out."
Why was he talking to the dragon.
"Could you not have challenged him?"
Gareth snorted. "They'd kill me. They only care about the law now because they can't kill you."
"I am very strong," the dragon agreed.
"Why did you..." Everything. Anything. All of the things that the dragon had done since landing, since seeing the King dead on the ground and hearing Gareth's obvious lie.
"It was interesting," the dragon said. "I wanted to see what you would do. You seemed to have a plan."
"I didn't," Gareth admitted dully. "The... the plan was to rescue Cordelia. I'd kill the evil king and then she'd run away with me. I guess."
"It was a bad plan."
"Yeah." Gareth stood. "Why did you want the Princess?"
"I wanted to find a particular knight," the dragon said. "I thought that he might save a princess, if I stole one." He'd come to the edge of the city, and demanded audience with the King. When the King sent a messenger, he threw the messenger back. He was a powerful dragon, after all. He demanded a certain amount of respect.
"Oh." Gareth looked back toward the castle. "That's—sorry." He doubled over again, and retched bile.
"Gross," the dragon said.
"Yeah," Gareth coughed. "A hero, then? A hero knight?" The dragon nodded.
The King of Aeris had never done much, as far as Gareth had seen. He consulted with advisors, who told him about decisions, and then he pretended to make the decisions. He was mostly a figurehead, wasn't he? A king who did nothing would almost be better than a bad king.
"Being king—that would get his attention," Gareth suggested.
"Would it?"
"Everyone's heard of dragons kidnapping princesses," he said. "No one's ever heard of a dragon killing a king and ruling a kingdom." He swallowed. "All you'd really have to do is choose an heir, and then you can leave."
The dragon seemed to be thinking about it.
"Do you have a name?" Gareth asked. He didn't know how dragons worked.
The dragon sat taller. "I am the Scourge Above the Skies of Seven Kingdoms," he declared, "Demon of the Winter Winds." He paused. "I am the snow that falls from the mountain, destroying all in its path with a smothering embrace."
"Avalanche," Gareth said. "We have a word for that last bit. It's an avalanche."
"Avalanche," the dragon repeated with relish, standing and flaring his wing. "A fine name," he said, preening.
"It loses something in translation," Gareth admitted.
The dragon sat back down. "Does it?"
"Might want to stick with the other ones."
"Hm." Avalanche lowered his head, and darted his enormous tongue at Gareth. "You are bleeding," he observed.
"Yeah," Gareth said. "That's normal."
"Is it?"
He rubbed his hand over his face. "No. I just say that." This was stupid. Everything about this was stupid. If he had any sense at all, he'd leave this kingdom and tell this dragon to do whatever struck his fancy.
His whole life was in the castle. He'd grown up in it. He knew all the servants and all the members of the court. He knew who Ranulf would most target for his misfortune.
"I need to get back to the castle," Gareth said.
"My castle," Avalanche said.
Gareth was deeply uneasy about how quickly the dragon was catching on to the idea of being a king. He hadn't really thought it would go along with this at all, if he was honest. Dragons surely had better things to do than being kings in castles too small for them? They could fly.
"Yes," Gareth said, because even if he'd been so far friendly with the dragon, it felt like he shouldn't push his luck. "I'll just—maybe you can come back. Tomorrow." He picked the chewed crown up from the grass. There was blood in the divots bitten into the gold. "You... you really just have to declare an heir." He tucked the crown into the bag on his hip. "You might not like being king."
Avalanche reached out, and wrapped his claws around Gareth's waist. Gareth automatically started trying to push them away and free himself, but the dragon's wings were already beating. They took off, and Gareth might have vomited if he hadn't already cleared himself out. He stopped flailing and started clinging to the claws instead. Avalanche's hold on him put pressure on his bruised ribs, scraped at his scabs. Everything hurt, and he couldn't appreciate the view for the certainty that he would be dropped to break on the ground.
When Avalanche landed in the garden, Gareth collapsed immediately to the ground. The dragon contemplated the hedges. "I do not like these," he decided.
"Great," Gareth said, facedown in the manicured grass.
There was a great rush of flame, and Gareth looked up to see that Avalanche had burnt some of the hedges. They weren't dry enough to burn well.
"I do not like this, either," Avalanche decided, scratching his claws through the carefully seeded lawn.
"Don't burn it," Gareth said. Avalanche continued to rake like he was plowing. Gareth staggered to his feet. "I need... I need to go to my room."
Avalanche considered the doors into the castle, all much too small for him. "You must stay," he decided, "and guard your king."
"That's—that isn't what the King's Guard is."
"Is it not?"
"That's the Honor Guard. The Honor Guard protects the King. The King's Guard belongs to the King. We give him our lives to do with as he pleases. We do the dishonorable things."
The dragon considered this, sitting himself down in the grass. "Your life is mine," he said finally.
Gareth found that he did not like it when a dragon said that. He did not like how he seemed to be turning the idea over in his head. He had not liked belonging to a man, and he did not want to belong to a dragon. He pulled the blood-spattered crown from his bag, and set it in the grass. He didn't want to carry it. Someone else could retrieve it, the Prince or one of his Honor Guard. "Yes, Your Majesty," Gareth said, though there had not yet been a coronation.
"You must stay," he said this time, "because I will it to be so."
Gareth rubbed at his eyes. "You can't just—you—you're drawing too much attention to me. People will think—please don't do this to me."
The hedges were still smoldering.
Avalanche looked carefully around the garden, and at all the parts of the castle he could see. He finally spotted a maid peering down from a balcony. "You," he said. "I am your new King."
"What?" She looked down over the railing. "Gareth?"
"He issued a challenge," he said wearily. "King Leopold is dead. I saw it."
"Clouds above."
"Yes," Avalanche said. "I order you to bring to me many servants."
The maid looked horrified.
"She thinks you're going to eat them," Gareth muttered.
"I will not eat you," the dragon reassured her, "if you are well-behaved."
The maid was not reassured.
"I will need to be served," the dragon explained patiently. "I am in the garden. The servants will need to come to the garden. I would like to meet them."
"It's... it's fine, Lily," Gareth called up to her. "It seems fine. I—I don't think you want to be in there." Better to be out here with the dragon than in there with the Prince, surely. It was working out better for Gareth, so far.
Lily still looked uncertain, but she was willing to trust Gareth. She bobbed a curtsy toward Avalanche. "I will spread word, my lord," she said.
"Good girl," the dragon said. He turned his attention back to Gareth. "Now you will not be special," he said, "because there will be many servants."
"Thanks," Gareth said. His head was starting to throb. "That's... that's great. This is... great."
"Yes," the dragon agreed, flexing his wings. "This will be fun."
Cordelia sniffled.
"You'll be fine," King Leopold said dismissively. "It'll keep you in a tower somewhere for a while. Some prince will save you. If anything, this has helped your marriage prospects."
She sniffled again. Gareth's sword felt heavy on his hip.
They had no army, no knights, no Honor Guard. Just a single member of the King's Guard. The King had said there was no point wasting bodies on a dragon, from whom no one could protect him if it decided to turn. Gareth didn't know if he'd been brought because demonspawn was especially disposable, or if it was a deliberate cruelty.
"Here," the King said, pulling his horse up short. Gareth automatically moved to help him dismount, King Leopold stepping on his shoulder. Then he helped Cordelia, careful not to touch her more than necessary. He'd never been this close to her before. He kept his tail close to his legs.
She seemed small, and she was shaking. Her blonde ringlets were all neatly arranged under her circlet, the color of wheat. She smelled like rose water. She couldn't see him, blindfolded as she was, but he knew that her eyes were green.
Gareth would put up with a lot. He had put up with a lot. He had bruises and blood enough to speak to it. But his mind had rebelled against this since the King had first announced this, his willingness to sacrifice his only daughter. Had been rebelling, screaming somewhere inside him.
They were outside the city, and they had horses. A dragon would as likely kill them all as not. He could. He could. There was no one to hear his thoughts, but he still didn't think it. He couldn't think it. If he didn't think it, he couldn't talk himself out of it.
He had a chance.
King Leopold was squinting at the sky. "It had better not be late."
Gareth slid his sword out of its scabbard, and slid it into the King.
It was easier than he had thought it would be. The tip of his sword had emerged through his ribs. Blood bloomed along his robes. The King made a sound like he was drowning. Gareth pulled his sword back, and the body fell.
It should have been harder.
The reality of what he'd done hit him all at once. He felt panicked, he felt free. It was happening, this was happening. He'd done it.
He grabbed Cordelia by the hand again. "We have to go," he said, trying to sound authoritative and not at all frightened.
She frowned. "What?"
"The dragon isn't here yet, if we hurry we can make it to the forest."
Cordelia pulled off her blindfold. She saw her father's corpse, and she screamed.
"We need to go," Gareth insisted, but this wasn't going the way he thought it would. She hated her father. Everyone hated her father. He wouldn't have known it to see the look on her face.
"What have you done?" she demanded.
"Princess—"
"What have you done?"
He heard the beating of wings, and he felt the blood leave his face. He turned in time to see a dragon just beginning to land, larger and grander than he'd thought. Scales white and shimmering, black horns and broad wings.
"I fucked up. I fucked up. I really fucked up." He accepted it the way he accepted that he was about to die, he was very surely about to die. This, in retrospect, was inevitable. The horses fled into the empty field.
"You killed him!" the Princess screamed, not deterred by the dragon.
There were hoofbeats down the road. Gareth turned his head, and could see immediately that Prince Ranulf had disobeyed his father. Prince Ranulf usually disobeyed his father. He had been speaking at length, since the dragon had first arrived, about how badly he wanted to slay a dragon. He would never do it, because he was a coward, but he was also an idiot.
If the King were alive, the Prince would have taken one look at the dragon, and pretended he only wanted to see it. Instead, Gareth was going to hang for regicide.
The dragon fixed a blue eye on Gareth, who moved to stand in front of the Princess, holding his sword ready with a shaky hand. That was the whole point of this, after all. That he'd save Cordelia. He'd rapidly lost control of the situation, and gave up on everything but this one small thing. It was the only thing he could bear to process.
The dragon looked at the sobbing Princess, and down the road at the approaching horses.
Then he lifted the King in his jaws, and started eating him.
Cordelia screamed and covered her ears with both hands, jamming her eyes shut tight. Gareth watched in horrified fascination. Leopold's bones crunched as they shattered between the dragon's teeth, and there were the wet sounds of chewed flesh and torn organs.
The horses stopped short, and their riders struggled to control them. The color had all left Ranulf's face, though he'd never had much to begin with. The spears his men held looked comically feeble. "What has happened here?" Ranulf demanded.
The dragon opened his mouth, and a battered ruby-studded crown fell into the grass. "I have eaten your king," he said, his voice like an earthquake. He shaped his words differently from any man, and sounded like no one but himself.
The King was dead. Gareth would hang. Ranulf would be king. Ranulf, Ranulf, worse even than Leopold. He found himself suddenly wishing, desperately, that the dragon would eat Ranulf. Anything but for Ranulf to be King.
"Why?" Ranulf asked, his voice cracking. "Why have you done this?"
"It was a challenge," Gareth said, the words escaping him just as quickly as the idea had entered his head. "He challenged the King's right to rule, and he accepted."
An obscure law from the days of warrior-kings that had never been stricken from the books. It simply wasn't relevant. Anyone who tried it would surely be killed long before they could ever present their challenge.
Gareth had been doing a lot of research on how to get rid of a king. Just... because.
"My father would never accept such a challenge," Ranulf said.
Gareth finally thought to sheathe his sword. "I—I was witness. I will swear to it."
"I insulted his honor," the dragon said, "and gave him no choice but to accept."
"Wait," said Sir Colin. "Are you suggesting that the dragon has a right to the throne?"
"He... he won the challenge," Gareth said lamely.
"I did," agreed the dragon.
"Isn't there a law that a dragon can't be king?" asked Sir Troy.
"Why would that be a law?" Sir Colin snapped, hitting him with the back of an armored hand. "Why would it ever occur to anyone that we would need a law for that? It's implied."
"Can't we make a law?"
"It's too late now."
"Sister," Ranulf said, speaking over his squabbling knights. Gareth looked at Cordelia, her tear-stained face. "Is this true?"
Cordelia looked at Gareth. He realized, in that instant, that she was afraid of him. She wasn't grateful for his attempted rescue, did not see that he was trying—in his way—to protect her from her brother. He felt acutely the color of his skin, the size of his shoulders, the sharpness of his teeth. That he had horns at all.
This was never going to have a happy ending for him, and looking at her, he couldn't imagine why he'd thought that it might.
"I—I was frightened," she said, her eyes darting between Gareth and her brother and the dragon that loomed above them all. "It all happened so fast, I don't—I don't know what happened."
The dragon flared his wings. "Do you dispute my claim?" he asked.
Ranulf turned green as he considered the implications of insulting a dragon. Of trying to hold a dragon to the law. Of trying to do anything in the face of a dragon now claiming a right the the throne of Aeris. "No," he said. "I was only... confirming."
Ranulf looked at Gareth with pure venom, and Gareth knew that he'd have Gareth killed just as soon as he saw his chance.
"We will need to consult with scholars, of course," Ranulf said. He, too, was stalling. "To be sure that everything is in order." He held out his hand. "Come, Cordelia."
Gareth nearly told her that she didn't have to go. That he would stay with her, if she wanted. But she ran to her brother as if he'd never hurt her, and his heart felt like a stone.
"And you, Gareth," he added. Gareth clenched his fists.
"You are a knight?" the dragon asked, and he realized the question was directed at him.
"No," he said flatly. "I am a member of the King's Guard."
"Ah," the dragon said. "Then, as I am your King, you must guard me." He seemed quite pleased with this.
Gareth stared at him.
"Yes," Ranulf sneered, "I suppose you should, shouldn't you?"
He thought this was a coup. He thought Gareth had planned this. He though Gareth had somehow met and conspired with a dragon to steal the throne.
It was a much more flattering interpretation of events than the reality, which was that he had panicked and still wasn't sure what was happening to his life.
Gareth watched the horses retreat, Princess Cordelia riding with her brother.
"What an interesting day," the dragon said.
Gareth doubled over, and heaved into the grass.
"Gross," he muttered, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He panted, trying to catch his breath.
"Why do you want me to be king?" the dragon wondered.
"I don't," Gareth admitted, hands on his knees. "No offense. I just—he was a bad king. Leopold. Ranulf is worse. I thought... I wanted to create a bureacratic problem. Give myself time to figure something out."
Why was he talking to the dragon.
"Could you not have challenged him?"
Gareth snorted. "They'd kill me. They only care about the law now because they can't kill you."
"I am very strong," the dragon agreed.
"Why did you..." Everything. Anything. All of the things that the dragon had done since landing, since seeing the King dead on the ground and hearing Gareth's obvious lie.
"It was interesting," the dragon said. "I wanted to see what you would do. You seemed to have a plan."
"I didn't," Gareth admitted dully. "The... the plan was to rescue Cordelia. I'd kill the evil king and then she'd run away with me. I guess."
"It was a bad plan."
"Yeah." Gareth stood. "Why did you want the Princess?"
"I wanted to find a particular knight," the dragon said. "I thought that he might save a princess, if I stole one." He'd come to the edge of the city, and demanded audience with the King. When the King sent a messenger, he threw the messenger back. He was a powerful dragon, after all. He demanded a certain amount of respect.
"Oh." Gareth looked back toward the castle. "That's—sorry." He doubled over again, and retched bile.
"Gross," the dragon said.
"Yeah," Gareth coughed. "A hero, then? A hero knight?" The dragon nodded.
The King of Aeris had never done much, as far as Gareth had seen. He consulted with advisors, who told him about decisions, and then he pretended to make the decisions. He was mostly a figurehead, wasn't he? A king who did nothing would almost be better than a bad king.
"Being king—that would get his attention," Gareth suggested.
"Would it?"
"Everyone's heard of dragons kidnapping princesses," he said. "No one's ever heard of a dragon killing a king and ruling a kingdom." He swallowed. "All you'd really have to do is choose an heir, and then you can leave."
The dragon seemed to be thinking about it.
"Do you have a name?" Gareth asked. He didn't know how dragons worked.
The dragon sat taller. "I am the Scourge Above the Skies of Seven Kingdoms," he declared, "Demon of the Winter Winds." He paused. "I am the snow that falls from the mountain, destroying all in its path with a smothering embrace."
"Avalanche," Gareth said. "We have a word for that last bit. It's an avalanche."
"Avalanche," the dragon repeated with relish, standing and flaring his wing. "A fine name," he said, preening.
"It loses something in translation," Gareth admitted.
The dragon sat back down. "Does it?"
"Might want to stick with the other ones."
"Hm." Avalanche lowered his head, and darted his enormous tongue at Gareth. "You are bleeding," he observed.
"Yeah," Gareth said. "That's normal."
"Is it?"
He rubbed his hand over his face. "No. I just say that." This was stupid. Everything about this was stupid. If he had any sense at all, he'd leave this kingdom and tell this dragon to do whatever struck his fancy.
His whole life was in the castle. He'd grown up in it. He knew all the servants and all the members of the court. He knew who Ranulf would most target for his misfortune.
"I need to get back to the castle," Gareth said.
"My castle," Avalanche said.
Gareth was deeply uneasy about how quickly the dragon was catching on to the idea of being a king. He hadn't really thought it would go along with this at all, if he was honest. Dragons surely had better things to do than being kings in castles too small for them? They could fly.
"Yes," Gareth said, because even if he'd been so far friendly with the dragon, it felt like he shouldn't push his luck. "I'll just—maybe you can come back. Tomorrow." He picked the chewed crown up from the grass. There was blood in the divots bitten into the gold. "You... you really just have to declare an heir." He tucked the crown into the bag on his hip. "You might not like being king."
Avalanche reached out, and wrapped his claws around Gareth's waist. Gareth automatically started trying to push them away and free himself, but the dragon's wings were already beating. They took off, and Gareth might have vomited if he hadn't already cleared himself out. He stopped flailing and started clinging to the claws instead. Avalanche's hold on him put pressure on his bruised ribs, scraped at his scabs. Everything hurt, and he couldn't appreciate the view for the certainty that he would be dropped to break on the ground.
When Avalanche landed in the garden, Gareth collapsed immediately to the ground. The dragon contemplated the hedges. "I do not like these," he decided.
"Great," Gareth said, facedown in the manicured grass.
There was a great rush of flame, and Gareth looked up to see that Avalanche had burnt some of the hedges. They weren't dry enough to burn well.
"I do not like this, either," Avalanche decided, scratching his claws through the carefully seeded lawn.
"Don't burn it," Gareth said. Avalanche continued to rake like he was plowing. Gareth staggered to his feet. "I need... I need to go to my room."
Avalanche considered the doors into the castle, all much too small for him. "You must stay," he decided, "and guard your king."
"That's—that isn't what the King's Guard is."
"Is it not?"
"That's the Honor Guard. The Honor Guard protects the King. The King's Guard belongs to the King. We give him our lives to do with as he pleases. We do the dishonorable things."
The dragon considered this, sitting himself down in the grass. "Your life is mine," he said finally.
Gareth found that he did not like it when a dragon said that. He did not like how he seemed to be turning the idea over in his head. He had not liked belonging to a man, and he did not want to belong to a dragon. He pulled the blood-spattered crown from his bag, and set it in the grass. He didn't want to carry it. Someone else could retrieve it, the Prince or one of his Honor Guard. "Yes, Your Majesty," Gareth said, though there had not yet been a coronation.
"You must stay," he said this time, "because I will it to be so."
Gareth rubbed at his eyes. "You can't just—you—you're drawing too much attention to me. People will think—please don't do this to me."
The hedges were still smoldering.
Avalanche looked carefully around the garden, and at all the parts of the castle he could see. He finally spotted a maid peering down from a balcony. "You," he said. "I am your new King."
"What?" She looked down over the railing. "Gareth?"
"He issued a challenge," he said wearily. "King Leopold is dead. I saw it."
"Clouds above."
"Yes," Avalanche said. "I order you to bring to me many servants."
The maid looked horrified.
"She thinks you're going to eat them," Gareth muttered.
"I will not eat you," the dragon reassured her, "if you are well-behaved."
The maid was not reassured.
"I will need to be served," the dragon explained patiently. "I am in the garden. The servants will need to come to the garden. I would like to meet them."
"It's... it's fine, Lily," Gareth called up to her. "It seems fine. I—I don't think you want to be in there." Better to be out here with the dragon than in there with the Prince, surely. It was working out better for Gareth, so far.
Lily still looked uncertain, but she was willing to trust Gareth. She bobbed a curtsy toward Avalanche. "I will spread word, my lord," she said.
"Good girl," the dragon said. He turned his attention back to Gareth. "Now you will not be special," he said, "because there will be many servants."
"Thanks," Gareth said. His head was starting to throb. "That's... that's great. This is... great."
"Yes," the dragon agreed, flexing his wings. "This will be fun."
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