Tempting the Dragon

Chapter 7


A.N. - Ever have one of those moments where time has just seemed to have gotten away from you? I just did. I hadn't written much through January - March (it happens every year) and I suddenly looked to see when the last time I updated this story was and it was on Christmas Eve - and I thought 'almost 4 months!' with a sense of disbelief. So here it is, with my appologies. Thanks to Trumpet-Geek for Betaing for me.

Quick Summary: Witches are stealing young girls from the town Alys and Selendrile have settled in, first sending them dreams of true love to put them under a spell and then taking them in the middle of the night. Alys knows she's been having strange dreams, but they're of her dead best friend Risa instead of "love." She makes an enemy of Wolsey, and then he catches Selendrile kissing her. Finally, Alys has had a dream of Selendrile saying "I love you" and it frightens her.

Without further ado, I give you Selendrile:


The day after Alys found out about the possibility of witches stealing young, enamored girls from their bed was one of the busiest Alys had experienced in a long time. She had to round up all of her employees and promise them that they still had a job, even if she had fired their boss. She then had to give the ones who were assured the rest of the week off the choice of staying home as Wolsey had promised or coming back to work for twice their regular wages. She wasn't surprised when all the disputes were finalized to find that they were still woefully understaffed for the remainder of the week. She was surprised, however, to find Mrs. Smith back to her kitchen duties.

"You didn't have to come in," Alys said kindly as she ensured that the gamekeeper had delivered the hunt for supper's meal. It felt like the management of the household was crumbling around her ears, but she knew that once she got a hang of her new responsibilities and the unrest caused by Wolsey's parting shot were finished, that the every-day routine of the house would remain intact.

"Being at home and grieving is doing me no good," Mrs. Smith said. "I have to stay strong for my little girl."

Alys nodded her agreement, but she didn't share the same hope. Rose Smith was not coming back to her family.

That was the only point of the day Alys was able to dwell on the danger. She spent the rest of it watching as the servants only scrambled to work when she entered the room, and some of them didn't even pretend. She had been so sure she could manage on her own, but now she was starting to think that they needed to hire a replacement for their butler, and soon, before she went nuts from being trapped indoors all day.

"I'm exhausted," Alys said with a sigh, slipping into her chair at the dining room table moments before supper was laid out before them. Selendrile buttered a hot roll and handed it to her, but Alys merely looked at it, her eyes unable to focus.

"We can't get Wolsey back," he reminded her.

Alys pushed her plate aside, putting her head on the table and looked at Selendrile sideways. In that moment, she didn't care if she wasn't acting like a proper young lady. "I know," she mumbled, breaking off a piece of her roll and chewing on it.

"You do look tired," Selendrile observed, piling his plate with meat and other fatty products. "Bad dreams?" he asked lightly, though his attention focused on her response.

Alys blushed.

"Oh," he said meaningfully. "What was it about?"

Alys narrowed her eyes at him. He was fooling himself if he thought she would tell him, especially after he inferred it was about him.

"Don't worry," he told her, "the walls don't have ears at the moment. I have to find out what these dreams are of, or I won't be able to tell what the exact spell is."

"Risa," Alys told him, lifting her head off the table and grabbing some of the early spring greens from a bowl. They tasted like the weeds she was pretty sure they were. "She was teasing me."

"About?"

"You."

"What else?" Selendrile asked, his mouth stuffed with cooked rabbit.

"She's thinking about taking up basket weaving," Alys said impatiently. "That's it."

"You're lying to me," Selendrile said neutrally. "That wouldn't have made you blush."

"You're right," Alys told him boldly. "She also said you were hung like a bull."

Selendrile grinned, his eyes glinting as he held her gaze.

"And she wanted to find out if you could control your size while changing." Alys watched Selendrile closely, waiting for him to react. "Are you blushing?"

"Ah, no. I can't."

Alys nodded. "I also had a second dream."

Selendrile took a drink of wine, avoiding her eyes. Alys thought embarrassing herself like that might be worth it if she could bring him down with her.

"You said 'I love you' to me," she said in a rush, jolting to her feet in alarm as Selendrile choked on his drink. She hit him soundly on the back as he coughed. "Are you alright?" she asked.

"Fine," he said, waving her away. "It just went down wrong."

Alys slid back into her seat, trying to hide the slight smile on her lips by taking another bite of her cooling roll. Went down wrong, indeed, she thought, enjoying his discomfort. "I'm sure it means nothing," she assured him. "It probably isn't even something sent by magic. I just went to bed thinking about our last conversation and worrying about 'love dreams'. It was just my subconscious getting jumbled."

"Alys," Selendrile interrupted, gulping down wine. "Stop it. I understand what a dream means."

"Still," she said softly, "you look rather uncomfortable right now."

"I need some air," he told her, rising from the table. He brushed down the front of his shirt, glaring with distaste as his greasy fingers left a streak over the linen. He strode from the room quickly, his boots heavily treading against the stone floor. Alys watched him leave, her amusement fading to reveal a heavy heart. A moment later Selendrile stuck his head back through the door, his shining gold locks tumbling over his shoulder. "Are you coming?" he asked, holding out his hand for her to join him.

"Of course!" Alys exclaimed, rushing to her feet before he could change his mind. On her way out of the dining hall, she grabbed the shawl she had used earlier to inspect the ice room in the cellar. The air was cool and crisp, the only illumination were the stars twinkling graciously in the midnight black sky and the quarter moon. Alys inhaled the air of a spring night, feeling the strength of life as it struggled against the frosty temperatures. She was kept warm by the knowledge that it had been a long time since she and Selendrile explored the nighttime together.

"It's beautiful out," Alys breathed, stepping over a small, foot-shaped hole in the damp earth with ease. Selendrile shot her a curious look. She followed him down the hill and into the village, not even thinking to question him as he skirted the cottages to arrive at the edge of the forest. Alys grinned mischievously, hiking up the skirt to her dress so her legs were unencumbered. With a quick, challenging look to Selendrile, she bolted into the forest, her feet flying over the familiar forest floor as they did so many times before during the daylight hours when she needed to get away. She used her sensory memory instead of sight to lead her through and over familiar landmarks, surprised to find that she could distinguish a few larger shapes surprisingly well in the darkness of the trees. Alys ran as though the thing chasing her was not a dragon in human form, but really a demon intent on killing her, and Selendrile did nothing to disabuse her notion. He stayed a step behind her, though it was obvious that if he let himself run free he would have left her far in the distance.

Alys jumped over a sunken log, veering into a sharp right as she avoided a small, but dangerous decline which she had trouble navigating on her sunlit sojourns. She finally burst through the thicket of trees, the branches in the dark like grasping skeletal fingers and witches' bony and misshapen forms. Alys collapsed onto the soggy moss of her clearing beneath the largest tree, laughing breathlessly as she panted and stared up at Selendrile as he watched her closely. "Doesn't it feel good to be free?" she asked, rolling onto her back and watching him back.

If anything, he looked even more disturbed. "What was that?" he asked quietly.

Alys shivered in pleasure as the last of the adrenaline pumped through her brain, allowing her to drift for a moment between the high of energy and total exhaustion. "Fun," she said simply. "You remember what that is, don't you?"

"Don't," he warned. "You didn't falter once, though I know your limited human sight couldn't see the dangers."

Alys brushed his question off with a breezy laugh. "I'm familiar with the area. I come here almost every day. I could do it with my eyes closed."

Selendrile looked like he was about to argue, but instead he sat next to her and let his head loll back in relaxation, his long golden hair trailing along the clearing floor. "When all this is over, if you want to stay here I can set you up at the castle, or one of the village houses if you prefer."

Without looking at him, Alys placed her hand over his and squeezed his fingers reassuringly. "I don't want to stay," she promised. "Sometimes I think this clearing is the only good part about this place."

"I know you're adapting," he told her. "I can see it in the loyalty and protectiveness you have to the townsfolk. You're starting to believe that you're really their lady."

"So long as we're living here," she responded, "I am their lady. Isn't that what you've been trying to convince me of for months?"

"Yes," he responded quietly. "Would you have been happier with Sir Guy?"

Alys groaned. "Not this again," she accused him, rolling over onto her stomach and bracing herself on her elbows. Her fingers toyed with the hem of his white linen shirt. "Do you really need to hear me say that I don't think I can be happy anymore without you?"

"Maybe I should have left you a long time ago."

"You did," she reminded him softly. She sighed, not because of their conversation, but out of exhaustion.

"Why don't you sleep," he suggested gently. "I'll sit here and make sure that nothing creeps out of the woods and abducts you." He smiled as though it was a joke, but they both knew that there was nothing closer to the truth.

"I'm not sleepy," she insisted, smothering a yawn. Despite her words, she stretched on the mossy ground, feeling the damp forest floor yield beneath her body. Alys curled her arm beneath her head, turning so she could look at him lounging beside her. "I'm having trouble with the staff," she explained. "They won't listen to me like they did Wolsey. They know I'm nice and kind hearted, and they think I won't say anything about being taken advantage of."

"You're too opinionated for that," he agreed. "You need to establish the fact you're the boss. Start off strong and they'll respect you for it."

"I thought I did," she said simply. "I fired their last boss."

"You might not have liked him, but some of them did. Those who didn't still feared and respected him. Compared to that, you're like a vacation."

"Do you think I need to fire someone else?"

"Maybe you should think of something else."

Alys thought about it for a moment, and then smiled. "If I showed them my knives, they might respect me."

Selendrile snorted. "If you did that, they'd either fear you or laugh you out of your own house, and then you'd be forced to show them exactly what you can do with a blade. Then they'd definitely fear you."

"I don't want to be feared, and I don't want anyone to know that I have some skills beside needlework."

"You can't do needlework," Selendrile pointed out.

Alys grunted. "You know what I mean."

"If you wanted to start fresh, then why do you come out here to practice almost every day?"

Alys raised her eyebrows in surprise. "And let my techniques go rusty? I can't afford to do that, especially around you."

"You think you're in danger around me?" he asked with a sense of curiosity, shifting her so that her head was pillowed against his thigh.

"I'm always in danger," Alys pointed out, her fingers curling around the material of his shirt again. "It comes with the territory." She yawned, her toes curling as she stretched her tired limbs again. "I don't know what would have happened to me if you weren't around," she admitted.

"You would have married one of the boys in your village," he told her, his fingers toying with a lock of her hair. "You'd be pregnant with your second child."

"I would have died in childbirth with my first," she told him, on the cusp of sleep. "My father told me I'm shaped like my mother."

x.x.x

Alys awoke the next morning after a dreamless sleep to find herself curled against the dry silky scales of Selendrile's neck. She smiled in her sleep-state and nuzzled closer, causing a soft sigh to vibrate through his throat. The sun was beating down on the top of her head, but she couldn't bring herself to care about the wasting day when she had woken next to him in the first time in years like she had before they moved into the castle and assumed the mantle of someone else's life.

Finally, she rolled away from him, grinning as he protested in his sleep in the form of a dissatisfied grunt. She would have told him that she was needed at the castle or they would surely notice she was gone, but she knew there was no point trying to talk to him while he was sleeping. Any other noise foreign to the forest would trigger him awake and aware within moments, but he had acclimated himself to her presence. She was pretty sure it was a compliment. Anything short of kicking him and screaming 'fire' would have him deeply unaware of her for at least the next few hours.

"I'll be back later," she promised anyway, smiling fondly at his monstrous form taking up practically her entire clearing. Instead of running back to the castle, she headed towards the main road leading into town, bending to pick up flowers as she came to them. By the time she reached the Smiths' property, she had a large bundle in her arms.

"Good morning!" she called out to Farmer Smith as she walked by, pausing for a moment to make it seem as though she had nothing to hide. The last thing she needed was to have tongues wagging about her being out all night. "Aren't these flowers lovely?"

Smith took off his hat to pay respect to her presence.

"How are the crops coming this year?" she asked.

"Splendidly, ma'am," he responded. "We'll have a good supply of maize this year."

"That's excellent," Alys responded. "Did you plant those potatoes his lordship suggested?"

"Beggin' your pardon, my lady, but I've been a farmer for years and my father before me, and his father before him, and his father's father, and—"

"I get the point," Alys interrupted with amusement.

"And I ain't never heard of potaters."

Alys laughed, not correcting his pronunciation of the tuber. "I haven't either," she said with a wink. "But Selendrile seems to think they're some kind of miracle crop. Maybe someone can plant a few to appease him, for our table only, of course."

Smith inclined his hat again. "Of course, my lady."

"Thank you Smith," Alys called out, already walking away with her bouquet of flowers and a slight shake of her head. Selendrile should know better than to try to influence tenants so set in their ways they didn't even remember who started their habits. What was the old saying? You could lead a horse to water but you couldn't make it drink. Well, you could lead a farmer to new crops, but you couldn't make him plant them.

Well, technically she could, especially since Wolsey was no longer around to contradict any orders she gave, but they wouldn't be happy about it.

Alys approached the house from the front, pausing every now and then to call out to one of the tenants and ask after their families. By the time she got to the front doors to the castle, the sun was high and hot in the sky.

"Good morning Catherine," Alys said with a sunny smile, handing the maid her bouquet of flowers. "Could you arrange these and put them in my room? It's such a lovely day, isn't it? Oh! And some for the dining hall, as well, please." Catherine began to walk towards the kitchens.

"Oh!" Alys exclaimed again. "Catherine, would you also please inform the staff that I would like to see them lined up for inspection by the time I get back downstairs?"

Alys turned away with a grin still on her face and headed up to her rooms for a quick freshening up. She splashed her face with water and rearranged her hair, but left the dress on. It wasn't odd for her to wear the same clothing two days in a row, but it was strange if she changed partway through the day for no reason whatsoever. Humming a tune, she spun around on her toes and came face-to-face with a huge vase of flowers. Behind the arrangement, Catherine was observing her with an odd expression on her face.

"Did you sleep well last night?" the maid asked.

"Very," Alys affirmed, taking a whiff of the flowers. Her sleep was actually what had put her in such a good mood. "Don't these smell delightful?" Alys smelled the flowers again, looking sideways as she realized Catherine was still hovering beside her. "Was there something else?"

The servant looked uncertain. "No."

"Good," Alys said. "Is the staff ready for their inspection?"

"I let them know to pass on the word."

"Great," Alys said with a smile, this one more cunning than the whimsical ones. "Run along and tell them I'll be down in five minutes. I want them lined up the way Wolsey used to do it, with head of staff first, followed by everyone beneath them. I want to see as much of the household as possible."

Catherine bobbled a curtsey and left. Alys sat in her favorite chair, looking at the vibrant hues in her flowers as she waited for her people to assemble and mentally rehearsed what she wanted to say. Judging her time was up, Alys stood from her chair and went downstairs, keeping her head held high as she moved down each step. The waiting staff had their eyes glued to her, judging her every move and curiously wondering why they were being gathered and disrupting the flow of work.

"Good morning," Alys said, addressing them from an elevated status of a few stairs up, deliberately making sure they all had a good view of her and had to look up in order to see her. It was symbolic of her position to them, as well as a good strategy for giving a speech. "As you are aware, I fired my steward. I realize that some of you may have liked Wolsey just as well as some of you hated him. The man had many faults, including the one which lead to his dismissal, but I will not deny that he ran a good household. I thought about finding a replacement for him, or simply taking over his duties myself, but I have realized that the best possible way to organize such an event without losing efficiency in the process is to simply promote from within."

There was a general murmur among the crowd. Alys clapped her hands to regain attention.

"This is not an odd practice. What possibly could defy conventions is the way I plan to do so. I will be evaluating each head of household over the next week to see if I like any of them for the job. I may not. I will also be evaluating them to see if they should continue on in their position or if I should replace them. I would like to see initiative from all members of the staff, as this is your chance to prove yourself regardless of your current spot on the staff."

As the staff stared at her with varying degrees of hostility, Alys tried to take note of those who also looked interested in her plan or openly ambitious. They were the ones to watch, either because they would prove their worth or attempt to trick her into believing they were hard workers when really they were just pretending for the week. Alys knew that she was opening an entire tournament of internal power struggle games, and she smiled softly to herself as she watched plans unfold in each of their minds. "I'd like the current heads of each part of the household to step forward," Alys commanded, watching as the first person in each row took a step towards her. "The rest of you may go back to your duties."

Hours later, Alys had finished interviewing her current leaders, finding out the specifics of each job of every person on staff and creating a detailed list. She hadn't finished the process yet, but her hand was stained with ink and her quill worn down to a nub. She had accidentally-on-purpose mentioned to one of the servants – one who she knew was a notorious gossip – that she had spies watching and reporting who was working and who was not. It wasn't the truth, but she figured by the end of the week half of them would be snitching on each other anyway. Now, though, it enabled her to slip away without everyone falling back into the lax routine the household had been going through since Wolsey left.

This time she didn't run through the trees as she approached the clearing in the forest. She was careful not to make a sound with each step, moderating her breathing to a low tempo which was imperceptible even to her own ears. She liked to think that she was silently moving through the forest, but with Selendrile's sharp ears it was unlikely that he would miss her approach. Alys was hyper-aware of her surroundings, the shadows within the trees falling in familiar patterns and shifting in the mid-day breeze. Her ears picked up a whisper on the wind before her eyes noticed the shape moving through the tree branches above her head as they were reflected by the shade on the forest floor. Another slightly-off shuffle reached her ears and she tensed, reaching down for the knife strapped inside her soft kid boots and spinning in one sharp movement to face whatever was coming at her from above.

She didn't get her weapon up in time, and he effortlessly knocked it from her hand as they both tumbled into the brush. She was up immediately, crouching on all fours as she took in his wild golden hair as he spun on her, lashing out with his foot. Alys rolled away, springing to her feet with her knife firmly clenched in her fist.

"You've gotten rusty," he observed, going in low and tackling her to the ground again. He used the weapon against her, having the advantage because he knew she wouldn't use it on him and would avoid cutting either of them at any cost.

Alys kicked out at him, scrambling to get his weight off her legs. "I've had no one to practice with," she reminded him, finally twisting them both over so she could press the blunt edge of her blade against his neck. He allowed her to do so with no effort to stop the action, taking away her sense of triumph for besting him. She observed him for a moment, the blade flashing in the midday sun as his eyes glinted with mockery and amusement. "You're a bastard sometimes," she seethed, hitting him squarely on the chest with the palm of her hand as she stumbled to her feet and shook out her dress.

"Come on, admit it," he responded smoothly, staring up at her from the forest floor. "You like a bit of rough and tumble every now and then."

Laughter burbled out of Alys's mouth before she could moderate it. "You're going to have to try harder than that if you want to take me," she informed him, inhaling deeply as his eyes reflected a sense of challenge.

"Maybe later," he told her, jumping to his feet and stepping into the clearing. The moment his body bypassed the line of trees, he switched into dragon form and curled on the ground, watching her.

Alys shook her head as she headed over to the large tree in the center of the clearing and grabbed waterproofed leather bag from beneath the roots and hauled it out. She opened the flap, revealing her archery set and an old sword she had obtained from one of the outlaws who had tried to sack her home more than a year before. She tried to practice the art of both weapons as much as she could on her own, but Selendrile certainly was right: she was rusty. She needed a master to tutor her in new skills and to help keep the old ones sharp, and she knew that he wouldn't be able to fulfill that role, even if he did tend to pick up new abilities rather quickly.

For one thing, he couldn't even stay in human form for very long during the daylight. He wasn't fooling her with his sudden transformation back into a dragon. Selendrile usually didn't pass up the opportunity to attempt to outwit her unless he had to. She couldn't very well learn half the things she needed to in the dead of the night, with absolutely no light around to show her the subtle nuances. It just wasn't happening.

Also, Lady Alys had an image to protect.

With a quick look at Selendrile, she picked her archery set and stood so that her arrows wouldn't hit her companion. He hadn't left her enough room to practice her footwork with a sword. "I was reviewing the staff and their duties today," she told him, nocking an arrow. "The knot on the branch, four trees in," she said, not sure why she was verbalizing what she was aiming for. When her arrow nicked the bottom of it with a health snick before continuing flight, and a shot of pride flashed through her at her aim – even if it hadn't been one hundred percent perfect – she knew why it was she told him. She was showing off, and wanted to impress him.

"That weird colored bit of bark on the birch," she said next, observing the angles of her target and moving slightly to the left in order to compensate for the tree in her way. "I think the servants will probably be doing their work today, but as I was going over the duties of the gameskeeper, he told me that the castle has a sort of military reserves to defend it. Apparently the men in the town are supposed to be able to defend us if we're attacked." Alys shot her arrow. "And they haven't been trained in years. I was wondering if you thought it would be a good idea to have someone instruct them this summer, maybe after planting season is done and the crops are well on their way."

Selendrile cocked his head to the side, observing her with those strange eyes of his.

"What?" she asked defensively, letting her bow hit the ground.

Selendrile morphed back into a human, his eyes judgmental but his moth quirked into a smirk. "Do you plan to do it yourself?"

"No," Alys told him, taken back. "Of course not. Do you think they'd allow me to, anyway, especially after all the trouble I've gone through to be a delicate and helpless lady."

"If we teach the men to defend the castle, it's just advertising that the defenses are weak. It also says that we're preparing for someone to attack. Do we really want to give people ideas?" Selendrile shook his head. "Most girls think about marriage and babies at your age, but not you. No, you think about tactical maneuvers and warfare."

Alys narrowed her eyes at him. "I've been thinking enough about love these past few days! I'm sick of it. Do you really think that I'm going to stand idly by as witches attack my town and the girls in it? Do you think I like feeling helpless?"

"Do you think a few badly trained men with swords will protect you from magic?" He criticized. Alys glared at him and Selendrile sighed, conceding. "If it will make you feel like you're doing something productive, you may have your army."

"Thank you," she said, finally looking through the trees to see that her arrow had pierced through the discolored piece of bark.

©RelenaFanel.April11.2008

Please review. Also, does Alys make a better lady, warrior, or somewhere in between?