Rather Die Than Doubt

Chapter 1 The Stranger

The smell of unfamiliar human on the air pulls me from sleep just before dawn.

I blink awake, my eyes hyper-focusing on the shapes of the room around me in the dusky light.

The chest of drawers with homemade board games and playing cards stacked on top, the armoire spilling out with loose fabrics waiting to be made into usable clothing, the threadbare arm chairs by the darkened fire place.

Two books on the mantel. And on the left wall of the room, equal distance from the door and the window, the large four-poster bed where Cherry sleeps.

Her chest rises and falls evenly, her strawberry blonde hair spilling across the pillows.

There's no one in the room but us.

Straining my ears, I listen, waiting to hear footsteps coming up the tower stairs, or the sounds of harsh breathing.

Nothing.

I lift my nose and sniff.

The smell is still there, fainter than it was before. Unfamiliar. Human. Male.

But of course it's male.

The wind picks up outside, gusting into the room through the window above my cot.

There's never been any glass in the frame, and since one of the shutters fell off at the beginning of the summer, we've mostly left it uncovered.

When the cold returns, we'll have to repair the shutter somehow, but that's a problem for another day.

With the wind, the smell of human male swirls thickly into the room once more.

Whoever he is, he's outside. He hasn't made it into the castle yet, and probably not even up the mountain, if the up-drafting wind is bringing me his scent.

Sighing as quietly as possible, I climb to my feet, flicking the thin bedsheet onto the cot behind me.

I creep across the room, eyeing Cherry as I pass.

The blankets are down around her waist, face peaceful despite the muggy heat of the room.

Hopefully, if I do this quietly, she won't even wake.

She won't have to know he was here.

It always distresses her, when the men come.

I don't know if it's their presence that upsets her, or if it's what I have to do to them.

I've never asked. I don't want to know if she thinks I'm a monster.

I am a monster, but most of the time we pretend I'm not.

I ease the door open and flit down the hall on silent feet.

The staircase only goes one level down, the rest of the steps falling away in disrepair.

It's possible for a person to make it up those stairs, if they're careful and they bring rope, but I never bother with that.

On the level below our sleeping quarters, I slip out of the dark stairwell and into brighter light.

Almost the entire wall is gone here, the main room opening up into the sky.

I grab the hem of my nightgown and pull it over my head, tossing it aside.

And then I'm running.

I sprint for the edge of the floor and I fling myself into the open sky, shifting in a flash.

There's no pain of transformation, no effort.

Just a pushing sensation, as larger form bursts from smaller, and then I have wings and teeth and claws.

My vision sharpens, my eyes able to focus with perfect clarity on the ruins hundreds of feet below, the trees rising around the broken walls, the old moat that circles the castle, worn by time and the flow of water into a depthless chasm.

I beat my wings, coasting as I scan the grounds.

There's no sign of the human yet.

Banking slightly, I circle the castle, the gothic ruins of what must have once been a mighty and beautiful palace.

Now it's chunks of broken rock with only a few towers and structures still standing.

All around is rubble and greenery, the natural world fighting to take back this place from the marks of human industry.

On the far side of the castle from our tower lies what used to be the entrance to the palace.

The entryway still stands, with three walls and most of a roof, but the place where the front wall used to be gapes wide and open, with twisted trees and tangled vines and wild flower filling the land before it, creeping into the hall itself, the once pristine marble floor now covered in a layer of dirt and grass.

Spanning the chasm that separates our castle home from the rest of the world is a rickety rope bridge, which many a questing knight has tried and failed to cross.

Many have crossed it, too, but most of them didn't make it further than that.

I soar out over the chasm, raptor eyes taking in the movement of the water far, far below, the shapes of jagged rocks breaking through the surface in places.

I'm across the chasm just as quickly, skimming closer to the ground, the tips of my taloned feet almost grazing the purple blooms of wildflowers.

I circle a few times, looking down where the ground slopes away below.

It's a steep climb up the mountainside to reach our ruined fortress above, and for years I thought that climb alone would be enough to protect us.

I thought no one would dare to come here looking for the princess.

I was wrong.

I was thirteen when the king charged me with my sacred duty, to take the princess here, and here guard her with my life.

It would be an odd task for a thirteen year old girl, under normal circumstances.

But I have never been normal. For as long as I can remember, I've had my other form.

My dragon form, the people in my village called it, cringing away in horror.

But I thought of it as my winged form, my form of freedom and wonder.

Then the king's men came calling, and I was taken to the palace.

The shiny, new palace, in the capital city—not the old ruin here atop the mountain.

It was there I met the princess, all smiling and pretty, a girl no more than eight years old, dressed in frilly dresses with a dainty coronet atop her head.

My charge. My responsibility above all things.

The king gave a new name to my dragon form that day: my protector form.

And protect the girl I have. For the first few years after coming here, I couldn't understand what the king had meant.

What I was supposed to be protecting her from.

There was no danger here except exposure and hunger, so I found the safest room for shelter, breathed fire into the hearth in winter, hunted and scavenged in the woods.

With my excellent senses and arsenal of natural weapons, some might even say our trials had been light.

It was many years later, when the princess was grown into a young woman of fourteen, that the first man came calling.

The king had demanded I allow no visitors and no trespassers, and I was so startled to see another human being after all that time of receiving none that I did nothing at first when he approached.

He had already crossed the bridge and found his way into the main part of the castle by the time I detected him, hearing the rasp of his metal armor against stone.

I flew down from our tower and followed my nose to his location, and was horrified to find him at the bottom of the tower stairs leading up to where Shireen lay sleeping.

I switched forms and dressed quickly in some of the spare clothes I kept stashed down there for such a need.

Then I approached the man and yelled out, demanded he stop at once and turn around.

Leave this place. He looked me over, seemed to take in my rough clothing and snarls of black hair that proclaimed me with certainty not to be the princess.

He seemed to miss, however, that slightly unearthly sense about me that had always warned humans that I was something wrong.

He dismissed me with a glance and started up the stairs.

I cried out in alarm, not knowing what I ought to do.

But I knew I must not let him reach the princess.

The king had been clear that no one was to see her, touch her, harm her, or get anywhere near close enough to doing anything like it.

I surged forward and grabbed the man by his armored gauntlet, wrenching him to a stop.

He seemed startled by my strength, but his lip curled back and he spat a foul name at me.

He asked me if I knew who he was, then proceeded to tell me that he was some knight of something or other who had fought many battles and killed men thrice my size for a fraction of the offense I was committing by touching him without permission.

He demanded to see the princess, called her by name, and I was filled with fear such as I had never known before.

Because the day had truly come, it seemed, where I must protect Shireen from a real threat.

I didn't know what the man wanted with her.

To kill her, capture her, use her. Whatever it was, I must not let it happen.

I told the man I would not let him near her.

He snarled at me, shoved me away, and drew the sword from his back.

He didn't attack me, but brandished the blade at me in threat and went to start up the stairs once more.

Heart pounding out a panicked beat that drowned all other sensations, I shifted in a flash, and in a flash the man was dead.

That was the day I gave my dragon form another name: my monster form.

My killer form. I had never used my teeth or claws on a human before, only on game animals that any hunter might bring down with ordinary tools.

For hours after, I vomited up blood—his blood.

I was too shaken to shift back into dragon form and fly up to check on Shireen.

But in time, I mastered myself, and for the next several years, I did the same thing again any time a man came close to our hiding place.

Somehow, it wasn't hidden anymore, and it seemed that every month brought a new challenger to our door, sometimes more than one.

I learned to sense them, smell them, hear them, in time to catch them further and further from the castle.

Sometimes, I would pluck them straight off the mountainside on their way up, but I didn't like the way it felt.

It was too easy, and they were too unsuspecting.

It made me feel more the monster than ever.

So I took to waiting on the far side of the chasm, where I am now, to meet them as soon as they made it up the mountain.

There I could roar and stomp and breathe flame, and many of them would just turn back or run away in fright at the sight of me up close.

Over time, our challengers became less and less, as—I assume—word of the horrific monster who guarded the princess spread.

In the past year, there have only been a handful of men brave enough to make the trek up the mountain.

And they must have been skeptics who didn't believe the stories of the dragon and thought to test it for themselves, because they took one look and me and fled.

Shireen is sixteen years old now, soon to be seventeen.

Almost a woman grown, and I don't know how much longer my duty to protect her in this secluded place is meant to last. The king gave me no time limit, no ending to anticipate.

I had once assumed it wouldn't be longer than a few months, maybe a year or two at most. Just until whatever danger he envisioned her to be in could be dealt with.

But it has been eight years, and there's been no word from the king.

Only hungry-eyed men from all walks of life, from honored knights to scruffy vagabonds, come with no intention of talking, and every intention of making off with a princess.

So we wait, and I protect Princess Shireen with everything I have.