She watched intently as the knight approached the castle. He appeared wary, but confident. She scowled. They came regularly, each one as smug as the one before. She grew tired of the charade, but a promise was made. Her closest friend--her only friend, really--asked her long ago to secure her away, to ensure none would control her life, that not even her family could decide watch direction she would take.
She loved her princess so. There was little she wouldn’t do should the princess ask. So when the princess asked to be taken away, to a place far away where none would look, she happily obliged. The castle they found was far from anything, long abandoned by anyone would care, a relic from a long forgotten war.
Still, they came to their doorstep. Many a knight found themselves daunted by the steep climb, unable to cross the moat, stopped by the unscalable walls. Still, they came.
Her princess asked for protection from the knights that sought her. She sought an army, but none would help a woman on her own, hiding from the kings and knights that sought her princess.
Instead, she sought a witch, a practitioner of power who would understand her plight. The witch offered her the strength to turn away any knight. She gladly accepted.
Man after man died by her decision, as she protected her princess from any who would seize her. Still, they came. There was no faltering; no matter how many she killed, no matter how much terror she caused in the hearts from all those who were once near, still they came. They each wore the same look. They knew to fear, but they still did not fear as they should.
Like many before him, he climbed the cliffs and forded the moat. He forced his way through the gate, and avoided the traps in the hall. She knew not how each learned how all the knights had learned such about her castle, but they did and she had not the hands to change them any longer.
As many before, he entered the chamber where gatherings were once held, staring at dais which still held an old throne, no longer in use. Unlike many of the most recent knights had, he waited at the entrance to the chamber, behind the vast doors. He knew the princess was in the tower as all who came before him did. She knew they intended to force her princess away, to bring the princess to a life unwanted. Yet this one knew what awaited him in the chamber, and waited.
She leapt down, spreading her vast wings to slow her descent, landing heavily below, crunching the familiar stone beneath her claws.
He smiled from his helm, his visor still open, showing his boyish face.
“Dragon,” he spoke, as if in greeting. He drew a long, thin sword from his hip, a large shield from his back.
“Good knight,” she replied. She snorted as the end, wisp of smoke coming from her snout that had become too familiar in the last year.
“I had heard you could speak,” he said, surprising her once again. “Must we fight? Surely you must grow tired of this.”
“I have my duty.”
“As do I. I must allow the princess to leave this place.”
She laughed. A lick of flame stretched towards the knight, but did not reach him. “You know not what the princess wants. Do not assume, good knight.”
He frowned, looking concerned. Then the look turned sad, and he closed his visor, raised his shield and stepped forward.
She lowered her head to be even with the doorway and let loose with a heavy breath. Flames enveloped the knight; afraid he might have ducked behind the doorway, she kept her head low, engulfing the hallway beyond in heat and light.
When she had no more breath to let out, she was very surprised to see the night directly in front of her mouth, shield held steadily in front of him.
She tried to pull her face back, but was too slow. The sword flashed out, tearing a part of her jaw asunder. She yowled in pain, rearing back. None before had managed to strike her so; they either died from claw or flame, or their swords bounced harmlessly off her thick scales. None had dared to attack the inside of her mouth.
Fear and dread filled her mind; this was not the same as the others.
She turned her head, to look down at where the knight was, but he was no longer there. She tried to close her loosely hanging jaw, but could not; it seemed the knight had done something that caused it to not function normally. She lifted a clawed hand to force it shut.
A white hot fire erupted from inside her head. Too late, she realized he was inside her mouth, waiting for the opportunity to reach her soft palate.
She howled, and fell to her side. The hot pain continued as the sword her tore apart from the inside. The fight had left her; she was in too much pain, and now she realized that she was dying.
The knight came forth from within, lifting her jaw from the ground with his shield, and walked around to her eye. He opened his visor once more.
“It is not I that misunderstood. I fear you may--”
Her body convulsed. She felt a new pain, one that she had felt only once before, when the witch gave her new form. She was returning to that form she once had, a year before she had spent so much time as a monster, a life she could barely remember.
“A woman,” he spoke, shocked as she appeared before her as she once were, naked and dying, her head almost destroyed and bleeding out from a gaping wound in her neck. “A curse, a trick most foul.”
She found herself looking at the boy, unable to turn away. He looked at her in pity. “I am sorry. If I had known, perhaps--”
Suddenly, the princess entered her view, leaping at the knight who dropped sword and shield to ensure that the princess did not fall. To her surprise, the princess laughed in the knights arm, happy to be received so gallantly.
“I knew, for many years,” the princess said, “that the only knight I would love, would be the one who would save me from a dragon.”
She lay dying, her life blood draining, her head feeling as if it were cleaved in two. Yet she knew no pain greater than the knowledge of this moment. This was her princess, the one she was born to, had served lovingly all her life. She had sacrificed all, her home, her family, her very body and soul for the protection and favor she had been asked.
Now her final sacrifice had been made. Her heart broke.
She tried to yell, to scream, to tell of the betrayal, to warn the knight of the evil that she now knew to lurk in the princess’s heart. Her mouth would not obey her. Her throat would not pass the air to form the words.
Her sight faded. She heard them, as if from a distance, moving about. The last sounds she heard, words echoing within the last remnants of her consciousness, whispered softly in her ear. The last words her princess would speak to her:
“That’s enough, Sophie. You may rest now.”
Sophie. That was her name, wasn’t it? It had been so long.
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