Free The Princess' Dragon Lord by Mandy Rosko Page B

nail.
“Guess they weren't in a hurry to let bygones be bygones.”
    He looked at her strangely. “If you mean to
forgive me, no, they were not.”
    It bothered her how Azoth didn't sound the
least bit bitter over that part. He'd been here for a thousand
years, yet he spoke about her former family's unwillingness to see
the truth as a mere matter of fact. Something to be stated without
really getting emotional over.
    There was no way in hell Azoth, that formerly
shy young man, bitter over his circumstances while still falling in
love with his new fiancée, could have purposely done the things he
said he did.
    “What happened in the fae court, after I
left?” Diana said.
    Azoth had already peeled away a long strip of
the pink fruit with a long dagger. The rest of the skin came off
easily after that, as if the spotted white insides were shrugging
off a jacket. It looked kind of like cookies and cream ice cream.
He dumped the fruit into a small wooden bowl and licked his
fingers.
    “I know only what I have been told, but your
servant, Nyx, was implicated in your death. He was found guilty of
adding a potion to my chalice. I know not what that potion was to
this day, but it was what blinded me with rage until I
transformed,”
    He didn't go on.
    He saw her still picking at her fruit, and
took the softly spiked pink oval out of her hands, and in a smooth
motion, cut it in half for her and gave her both pieces.
    “Thanks,” she said, looking down at the
fruit.
    Azoth handed her the rough metal spoon he'd
been using and nodded.
    She thumbed the utensil, still not eating.
“Do you know what happened to him?”
    Azoth looked at her sharply, then back down
at the fruit he ate with his fingers. “I know not, but if I was
flogged and imprisoned while being a lord and a king's son, I can
only imagine what would have befallen a servant.”
    Images of Azoth's ugly scars came to the
forefront of Diana's mind, and her spirit sank. No doubt Nyx would
have been killed, but it wouldn't have been an execution by lethal
injection. They would have tortured him first, made him want to
die, then killed him.
    “Does this upset you?” Azoth asked.
    She just kept on staring down at her white
and black speckled fruit, thinking about Nyx and his face when he
proposed to her, and then when she denied him.
    She looked back up at Azoth finally. He had a
faraway look to his sad eyes, as though he were in deep
thought.
    “I'm not sad for him because I'm in love with
him,” she assured him. “It's just...we were friends, you know? And
I'm still not even positive he had anything to do with what
happened.”
    Azoth raised a brow at her, then cleared his
throat and shifted closer.
    It made her nervous. His body language as a
whole spoke volumes. He'd learned something just now, and it wasn't
going to be pretty to hear.
    Azoth gingerly touched her arm. “Diana, sakkra , he confessed to the crime.”
    She sucked in a sharp breath. “Are you
sure?”
    He nodded. “When the fae who has had me
drugged, using my body as a vessel to destroy all I hold dear, has
been captured and confessed, one of my brothers made sure to
deliver the news to me. It was then that my family began to
petition to Mab to allow my release from this place, seeing as the
true culprit had been seen to.”
    “And when she said no, the dragons went to
war?”
    He nodded. “As far as I understand, yes,
though I do not know who was the first to draw a blade. I never saw
any of my brothers, or my father, after the day I was informed of
the servant's confession.”
    Because they'd all fought and died, leaving
Azoth alone in this place, his only company the dragon, equally in
pain and equally a prisoner.
    Diana cleared her throat of the swelling that
had begun to build up.
    “Do you need water?”
    She shook her head. “No, I'm okay. Weren't
you shouting at Nyx?” She added.
    He cocked his head at her.
    “I heard you yelling at him. I think it was
the first time I had a seizure. You