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  www.evernightpublishing.com

  Copyright© 2016 Doris O’Connor

  ISBN: 978-1-77233-711-2

  Cover Artist: Jay Aheer

  Editor: Karyn White

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  DEDICATION

  Rhonda, this is for you. Enjoy your dragon story.

  THE DRAGON IN THE STONE

  Naughty Fairy Tales

  Doris O’Connor

  Copyright © 2016

  Prologue

  Ancient Britain

  Prince Atlan’s Wedding Feast

  The doors to the great hall swung open with so much force they bounced off the castle walls. A castle that had withstood countless attacks, yet that very stone turned to dust under the wrath of Lord Drorgan. His presence was most unwelcome at the wedding of her beloved brother, the heir to the throne.

  Perched as she was under the table to retrieve the goblet of wine she had dropped moments earlier, Princess Lasiandra didn’t need her governess’s warning hand on her shoulder to stay put. The air seemed sucked out of her lungs, out of the very room. The music stopped as abruptly as those doors signaled their protector’s—or as Lasiandra called him their menace’s—presence.

  All she could see from her vantage point and through the crack where the tablecloths didn’t quite meet the ground were the lord’s boots. Dust marred the fine black leather, handcrafted to mold to muscular calves, and carrying his unmistakable crest. A sleeping dragon curled on its side.

  Never wake the dragon.

  Everyone in their kingdom was taught that simple, terrifying diktat from the cradle, and Princess Lasiandra had been no different. Just like her brother, however, she had grown to resent that statement. She couldn’t fight like Atlan did, wasn’t allowed to openly flaunt convention like her brother had done when he’d refused to invite Lord Drorgan to his wedding, but she had other means.

  Ancient power and wisdom flowed through her veins, and standing at the cusp of impending womanhood as she was, she had never felt stronger or less stable.

  “Lord Drorgan, what a pleasure to see you.”

  Her father’s voice trembled slightly, and a gasp went through the parting crowd as those menacing boots advanced toward the raised platform that held her father’s throne.

  “I would be inclined to believe you, had I received an invite to this … wedding.”

  That voice alone seemed to send the fear of God into the assembled crowd, because ladies shrieked and a stampede of feet kicked up the dust off the stone floor, as the assembled guests rapidly sought their escape. Not that they got very far. With a flick of his hand, the huge doors flung shut, taking off the arm of one of the fleeing men in the process. The limb slid to the floor, leaving a smear of blood behind. Its previous owner’s high pitched wail of pain made the fine hair on Lasiandra’s exposed arms stand to attention, and she hastily swallowed the bile collecting in the back of her throat, when she saw the dark pool of liquid appear from under the door. The severed arm twitched, the hands flexing in a pathetic show of previous life, seemingly pointing toward the man—no, the monster—who had caused this.

  The restraining hand on her shoulder drew blood as Lasiandra tried to pull away, but heedless of the pain, she yanked free and struggled to her feet, just in time to see the imposing figure of Lord Drorgan throw back his head and laugh. It wasn’t a merry sound, but an evil one, as dark magic surrounded them all, and threatened to pull Lasiandra, too, over to the other side.

  Straightening, she swallowed hard, fear for her brother churning her insides. Her beautiful, golden haired brother, who stepped in front of his bride and his father, sword drawn to defend what was his.

  “That’s because you weren’t invited, Drorgan. You are not welcome at my wedding, and this kingdom does not need your protection. We never did.”

  Brave, yet foolish words, which would get Atlan killed as surely as night followed day, unless Lasiandra did something.

  Drorgan laughed again, running a hand over his harsh features, and Lasiandra stopped in her tracks, when his piercing blue gaze settled on her. His brows drew together in a frown, and heat licked at her skin, under the sheer force of his gaze. The flames of his dragon lit up his eyes, pulling her under his spell. It took all of Lasiandra’s own powers to break free, to stop the probing into her mind, into her very soul. Dragons held powerful magic, and this one was the most powerful of them all. Men and women alike bent to his will, and if the stories were to be believed he ruined whoever he touched, his heart as black as the night sky and utterly incapable of compassion, let alone love.

  “Who have we here? Such a fine young maiden, you’ve been holding out on me, King Atta.”

  Before her father, who seemed to have aged ten years since Drorgan’s arrival, could say anything, Atlan intervened.

  “My sister is none of your concern. Besides, she is just a child. Even one as depraved as you would not force himself on children.”

  A murmur went through the crowd at the inherent insult in those words. King Atta winced and shook his head at Atlan, not that her hotheaded brother paid his sovereign father any heed.

  Drorgan smiled, showing an even set of teeth, and a brief flare of amusement replaced the fire licking at his blue spheres.

  “Depraved, you say?” He inclined his head in a mock bow and flicked a speck of dust of his dark tunic. Dressed all in black as he was, he made an imposing figure, from the impossible width of his shoulders, the bulging biceps, down to the slim hips, shapely ass, and tree trunk thighs, which he now spread aside, while crossing his arms over his wide chest.

  Lasiandra noticed the man’s attributes with detached observance. No wonder the women fell at his feet, and much to her secret horror, her brother’s new wife seemed no exception. The daft woman’s cheeks turned crimson and her breathing sped up when Drorgan settled his gaze on her. Stepping out from behind Atlan’s back she seemed utterly unable to tear her eyes away from Drorgan’s groin, and some of Atlan’s fighting stance fled when he noticed his wife’s reaction to the other man.

  “I shall show you how depraved I can be, shall I, you insolent pup?” In the blink of an eye he moved, and when the dust settled he had Atlan’s wife in his arms, kissing her. Rather than fighting him off, the silly female clung to his tall frame as though she was a vine, or maybe that should be a hideous sea creature, all arms and legs, making slobbery noises that made Lasiandra want to gag. Grownups were so disgusting in their mating rituals.

  It had been bad enough coming across one of the stable boys rutting into one of the kitchen maids yesterday. The sight of his cock disappearing into the girl’s cunt in much the same way as her father’s stallion impregnated the mares…

  Lasiandra shook herself remembering that scene. To keep her powers she would have to remain untouched, which was just fine by her.

  Atlan’s face flushed with rage, and the hold on his sword grew white knuckled as he raised it ready to strike.

  “Get your filthy hands off my wife.” Atlan’s shout brought an end to the disgusting display, to a degree anyway. Drorgan lifted his head, his lips shiny from the kisses he’d shared with Atlan’s wife. The woman gasped when he ripped her bodice. Her breasts fell free, and Atlan ground his teeth in an audible crunch, seeing Dr
organ grasp each rosy nipple. He twisted the small points, eliciting a deep throated moan from Lasiandra’s new sister-in-law, which only served to enrage Atlan further. Gathering up her skirts, Lasiandra flew across the stone floor, and hands on her brother’s chest stopped him from advancing on a smirking Drorgan.

  “Don’t, Atlan. It’s what he wants. He’ll kill you.”

  “Listen to your little sister, boy. I have no wish to spill more blood today. I only came to claim what’s mine.” He yanked Atlan’s wife in front of him, and shoved her to the floor. Lasiandra winced as the woman’s knees made contact with the stones, and a gasp of pain escaped Bettina. It finally seemed to bring her to her senses, because she made a frantic grab for her ruined bodice and, wide-eyed, stared up at Atlan with tears streaming down her face.

  “No, please, I don’t … I’m so sorry. I don’t know what happened.” Crawling along the floor she wrapped her hands around Atlan’s boots, and Lasiandra’s heart clenched in sympathy. “Please, I love only you, Atlan, you know that.”

  Atlan grimaced as though it pained him to hear the words, and Bettina blanched when he shook her off him.

  “Get up off the floor, woman, and go tidy yourself up.”

  Drorgan laughed, and Lasiandra’s fingers itched to swipe that infuriating smirk off his face.

  “Yes, do run along. When you get fed up with this boy, you know where to find me, my pretty. That’s if he lives long enough to crawl between your legs once I am finished with teaching him a lesson for the insolence he’s shown me.”

  Atlan’s chest muscles jumped under her hands as her brother readied himself for a fight he would lose, and shaking her head in exasperation, Lasiandra looked up at him, all too aware of Drorgan’s menacing presence at her back. Atlan was tall, but Drorgan towered over him, nonetheless, and both men completely dwarfed her small frame of five foot. In a brief flash of gallows humor Lasiandra knew what a bug about to be squashed must feel like, before her governess’s chanting filled the air, and the very atmosphere in the room shifted. Tendrils of power wrapped themselves around her feet as her mentor’s strength flowed into her.

  Atlan pulled in a sharp breath and stepped away, while behind her Drorgan laughed. His dragon reared to life, its hot breath singeing her back, and when Lasiandra spun around she wasn’t at all surprised to look into the slit eyes of his dragon self.

  Puffs of smoke curled up and out of his ears, nails formed into menacing claws, and he grew bigger, more menacing, as the air shimmered around him.

  “Lord Drorgan, please. She’s just a child. If you need to take someone, then take me. Better still, take the witch. There is no room for magic in my kingdom.” When Drorgan swung his head round to look at King Atta, her father paled, dropped his head and mumbled, “Other than yours, my lord.”

  Atlan cursed under his breath, and while Lasiandra winced at the crude words she had to agree with the sentiment. She loved her father dearly, but his refusal to acknowledge the fact that magic could be used for good, could in fact be used to rid the lands of the curse of the dragons, had not only caused her mother’s untimely death in childbirth due to his refusal to call in the healers, but had also meant that Lasiandra had to keep her emerging powers hidden.

  Her governess was the only one who knew, had helped her to harness and come to terms with her gift as much as they dared to in secret. She was the closest thing to a mother Lasiandra had, and as everyone turned to stare at the elderly woman, while those nearest to her slowly stepped away, the thought of losing her burnt a hole in Lasiandra’s heart. Power surged through her, and not thinking of the consequences she stepped in front of a half shifted Drorgan.

  “No, you’ll not harm her or anyone else in this village. I won’t let you. These people, my people, are under my protection.” She glanced at her father, who shook his head in disbelief, and seeing the utterly shocked and wary expression on her brother’s face brought a lump of apprehension to her throat. An expression that was mirrored in the faces of the guests still in attendance.

  Drorgan, however, just threw his head back and laughed.

  “I’d like to see you try, little girl.” He reached out to her, and his amusement fled when she batted his hand away with a growl.

  His dragon hissed at her, and Atlan drew his sword again ready to defend her it seemed, as Drorgan shifted. Wings flapping and tail swishing, his actions threatened to bring the hall down around their ears, as the man transformed into his huge dragon. Fire breathed from his mouth, setting light to the tapestries along the walls, and bricks rained down on them as his spiked head knocked off the roof. Sunlight streamed in through the gaps, and Lasiandra froze as Atlan drove his sword right into the middle of Drorgan’s chest while shouting at her.

  “Move! For the love of God, run, Lasiandra.”

  Shoving her out of the way, he pulled his bloody sword out of the dragon’s scales and sliced across his neck. The sword bounced off and slid across the stone floor, and Lasiandra watched in mounting horror, as Atlan drew a dagger and threw himself at the dragon. With an almighty roar, Drorgan shook her brother off, and he would have stomped on him as he lay dazed on the floor, had Lasiandra not summoned the power, which surged with her anger, and blasted the monster with the blinding light emerging from her fingertips.

  The brief surprise that registered in Drorgan’s green, slit eyes would have been comical in other circumstances, but Lasiandra had no time to appreciate it, because Drorgan sent her brother flying through the air. He crashed into the opposite wall with a sickening crunch and slowly slid to the floor where he lay in a crumpled, unconscious heap.

  A renewed surge of anger shot through her, and stamping her foot, Lasiandra evoked an ancient curse she’d only just learned about.

  She was vaguely aware of her governess screaming her name, but she was focused on chanting the words that would curse this monstrous entity into stone forever more. All those loyal to him, too, so that no one could cause them harm anymore. All the dragons in the land, for that matter. Maniacal laughter reached her ears, and it was only when several of the guests turned to stone, that she realized that sound came from her.

  Out of the corner of her eyes, she could see Drorgan attempt to take flight, but his feet were already stone, cementing him to the ground.

  “No, Lasiandra, no, what have you done?”

  Her father’s hoarse voice reached her and sent the ice cold hand of impending doom crushing her windpipe. Hand outstretched, the index finger pointing accusingly at her, her father, too, was a statue.

  Lasiandra couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move as the full horror of her actions dawned on her. By implication she had condemned the whole kingdom to a similar fate as Drorgan. Not many had ever dared to stand against him, thus making them supportive of his actions, as the only other choice was death.

  As all around her the living turned to stone, she frantically searched for a solution to this problem of her making.

  “Give him a chance to redeem himself. For if anyone can love the beast…”

  “True love can break the curse.” Lasiandra hurried on to finish her governess’s mantra. “For the beast will be cursed into stone, to walk the earth in his monster form. Every generation he will get one chance to break the curse, to find the person who can see the heart of the man inside the beast, and to set everyone free, before death ends all. Penance needs to be made.”

  With an almighty roar Drorgan managed to lift off the ground bringing the rest of the roof crashing down around them, before he turned to stone completely. He sank from view to splash into the mighty river coursing past the bottom of the castle, and an eerie silence descended upon the world.

  Atlan’s groan as he came to eventually broke the stillness, and Lasiandra rushed over to him to help him up.

  “What in the name of all that is holy have you done, little sister?”

  Chapter One

  Twenty-five years ago

  Drorgan watched the last remaining rays of the sun dip behi
nd the horizon with growing impatience. After centuries of being confined to this stone in what once was a raging river, and had now formed into little more than a stream, set in marshland, he lived for the days the magic set him free.

  To be able to breathe, to eat, to take flight, and to just be himself, free of restraint for those precious twenty-four hours in the human realm meant everything. He’d very quickly learnt that humans were not his friends. In the early centuries he’d been hunted, barely escaped with his life, in fact, as the stories about him grew. Hunters sat in wait for him to emerge from the stone, and his body bore the scars to prove it.

  Cloaking himself the minute he emerged was the only way to go, and as time marched on, and dragons became mere legend the pressure on him eased. As humankind marched toward the twenty-first century, he was blown away by the advances he witnessed. He also spent less and less time in the human sphere, preferring to spend his time in his castle, and on his land. The only place to have escaped the original curse, hidden by the veils of time, after the witch’s frantic attempts to amend the curse, which had condemned her own father. The statues of the people were now mere stones, rocks, weathered and aged, and not recognizable for the humans they had once been. There was small comfort in that fact, and the irony of the curse having condemned her own family was not lost on Drorgan.

  At least his castle remained, even if it was frozen in time. Only there could he shift into human form, seek relief from the loneliness, and find brief respite in the arms and the body of a willing wench. Time moved slower in his alternate dimension, at roughly the rate of a full day to a human hour in this time.

  In theory that should have given him plenty of time to break the curse, but he was all too aware that the people under his care, the very ones he should have protected, had been cursed into this nonexistence of suspended animation with him.