Chapter Eight #2
“Right...a myth.” She sighed. “It seems I keep using that word in my visions. I even had one where I told Marjorie my story was a crowned dragon myth. In fact, I'd just typed those words out as a potential title before...”
When she trailed off again, I narrowed my eyes, sensing how unsettled she was. “What is it?”
“After the title, I kept typing the same words over and over before Taro and Azura snapped me out of it.” She met my gaze thoughtfully.
“Almost as if I were having a conversation with Marjorie across time, I was writing, send him to me. Send them. Him. And the crown. My crowned dragon myth. Yours is a wolven dragon tale...and mine is a crowned dragon myth.”
“I recall that,” I murmured, trying to place where I’d heard those words before, only to feel my tattoo of a crown tingle and grow warm. “I was on the ship, awaiting Marjorie and Blaze’s return after they confronted Skarde’s brother, the false king and our former enemy.”
Her eyebrows snapped together. “What do you mean you recall that?”
“I heard you in my mind saying those words,” I realized, touching my tattoo, troubled. “Then this appeared.”
“And you look upset about that,” she noted.
Though I hesitated to tell her, she would likely sense it in my thoughts anyway.
“As I mentioned before, the ethereal crown appeared upon my head when the Viking blade vanished, trying to evade the darkness,” I said.
“What I didn’t reveal at the time was that both you and I, or perhaps our inner beasts, telepathically warned Marjorie and Blaze not to kill Skarde, for fear of killing us too. ”
“Right, because we’re tethered somehow.”
“Yet the question is, were you referring to Marjorie sending Skarde and me to you, considering you’re drawn to him as well?
” I wondered, doing my best to keep my jealousy at bay, as it served no purpose.
“Or, given your history with both sides of me, were you referring to my various personalities?” I shrugged.
“Or were you referring to all three of us?”
“No, not Skarde.” Despite shaking her head no, Katana didn't sound as certain as she could have. “I have no history with him, even via dreams.”
“Not that you know of,” I said, bluntly.
The truth was, anything was possible. “I think we would be remiss not to consider the possibility, whether the darkness possessed him to begin with or not.” After taking several much-needed swigs of ale at the thought, I focused on the other notable thing she had said.
“And then there is your title, as you call it, Her Crowned Dragon Myth.”
“There is that,” she agreed softly, taking a few sips of mead as if she needed them, too, before gazing at the fire.
“I think the title’s been percolating in my mind for some time, along with the story, but I can’t remember what it’s about.
Yet I have a feeling I’m beginning to...
as if I’m living the words I might have written. ”
“Whilst Skarde wears a crown as proxy king for now,” I said, “he is no dragon, so that rules him out as the crowned dragon, leaving only me...and my other half.”
“There’s only one crowned dragon,” she murmured, her gaze not fixed this time but certain when she looked at me, her dragon eyes flaring with distress. “And his story is nothing more than a myth.”
I narrowed my eyes at her implication, trying not to show how troubled her words made me. Not so much the myth part, but the other.
“I will not become the Liege of the Keep,” I said, assuming the possibility was a myth.
“That’s right,” she said, “assuming it’s at all prophetic.”
Which I could tell she felt it was.
“Yet this myth belongs to only one dragon.” My dragon eyes flared as well at the thought of it. “Meaning either my darker half or me...not both of us.”
“It seems that way,” she whispered, the pain in her gaze palpable now as her dragon eyes simmered down. “Sometimes my visions are difficult to decipher.”
The idea of losing myself to my darker side, or worse yet, her ending up his in the end, didn’t sit well at all. The only comfort I could take in any of it was that it didn’t sound like he would ever rule the Keep.
“I recall you speaking of your visions in our dreams,” I said, drinking more ale. “ I remember you mentioning how often they were right, however rare they were.”
“And how well they were deciphered,” she repeated. “Like riddles, they don’t always say exactly what they mean.”
While I was tempted to ask her what outcome she was hoping for, I already knew the answer, whether I liked it or not.
She wanted both sides of me.
“Did he tell you what I told you, I wonder?” I asked softly before I could stop myself. Yet I wanted to know because I recalled what I’d said to her in our dreams. Beneath her cherry blossom tree. Sitting on a throne that would likely never be mine. “Has my darker side claimed to love you as I do?”
“No,” she said just as softly, seeming wounded even though she didn’t show it. I felt it. “But then he’s not really the sentimental type, is he?”
“No, he’s not.” Grateful I at least had that first with her, I took her hand and gave her what I knew my other side never would.
“I know it seems soon, but I do love you, Katana. Somewhere, amongst our dreams, I said it and meant it.” Though I didn’t want to ask, I needed to know the answer.
“Is it enough, though? Am I, this side of me, enough?”