Looking up hollow-eyed, the dragon nodded, and then burst into a fresh round of tears as Cinnia disappeared.
“Where have you been?” Dillon asked his wife as she reappeared in their bedchamber. “I awoke and you were gone. Then I heard you call out to me.”
Cinnia told him what had happened. “I suppose I awoke when Nidhug did because I am so aligned with the Great Dragon. Oh, Dillon, she is more than distraught. She is heartbroken beyond measure. I do not know if she can survive this tragedy. It was such a vicious thing for Ahura Mazda to do. I’m glad she killed him though I never thought her capable of such a terrible act. What can we do to ease her sorrow?”
“It’s a bit early to be calling upon me, Nephew,” Cirillo of the Forest Faeries said as he stepped into their bedchamber. “Oh,” he chortled looking about him. “Am I to join you? I never considered, Dillon, that you might share the beauteous Cinnia with me.” He leered mischievously at them.
“I am not sharing my wife, you lecher,” Dillon said, grinning. Then he grew serious. “Nidhug has suffered a horrific tragedy. Tell him,” he said to Cinnia.
Cinnia once again related the tale to the faerie prince.
Cirillo grew pale with shock as she spoke. When she had finished he said but five words. “I will go to her!” He stepped out onto the balcony of their bedchamber, and as they watched in amazement the handsome faerie man turned himself into the exquisite sky-blue and gold dragon. Unfolding his silver and gold wings he rose up into the morning skies, and in the blink of an eye was gone from their sight.
As he reached the mountains of Belia and hovered above her nursery cave he saw her crumpled and weeping before the entrance. She was almost gray with her misery, and Cirillo’s cold faerie heart almost broke to see her so. Setting himself down, he walked over to her, and touched her gently with his paw. “Nidhug,” he said. “I am here.”
The dragon looked up at him with sorrowful eyes. “Cirillo! Oh, Cirillo, my heart is destroyed. My child! My child is gone.” And she wept afresh.
He gathered her up, and held her close. “I cannot bear to see you like this, my love,” he told her. “I cannot change what has been done to you, Nidhug, but perhaps I can make it better for you.”
“How?” She sniffled, nestling against the blue and gold scales of his chest.
“You are required by the magic world of which you are a part to replenish your kind,” he said. “I will give you a child if you will let me,” Cirillo told her.
“But faeries only give children to those they truly love,” Nidhug said softly.
“And I love you,” he told her. “Oh, one day I will wed with some pretty faerie girl, and to please my mother love her enough to have an heir for the Forest Kingdom. But you are she to whom my cold faerie heart truly belongs. Will always belong. I would sire your child, and when that egg hatches, I will indeed be father to it. Together we will create a Great Dragon such as Belmair has never seen!”
Nidhug began to cry again. But this time her tears were tears of happiness. Theirs was a love that should not be. Yet it was. A faerie prince and a Great Dragon of Belmair. And together they would create her heir.
“Come,” she said, and she led him within her cave where as they mated passionately their roars of joy thundered throughout the mountains of Belia, bringing the rains that washed away all evidence of the murder done.
Nidhug laid her new egg, setting it into a fresh nest of willow and swansdown that Cirillo had fashioned for it. He blessed the egg and, this time, added a protection spell. This egg would remain safe and hatch in its time.
As the glorious sunset spread its myriad of reds, oranges, golds, purples and greens across the Belmairan skies, Nidhug and her faerie mate stood watching, filled with happiness. Above them the great star that was called Hetar rose to blaze across the night skies, settling between Belmair’s silver and gold twin moons. Their world had begun a new era. Dillon and Cinnia would rule in peace for a thousand or more years to come. And there would always be a Great Dragon of Belmair to guide them and their descendants.
Bertrice Small
