Page 2 of The Diamond Dragon Prince
The trouble was, I didn’t really remember what had happened. None of us did. Selle informed us that everyone’s memory of the event had been magically altered after the fact. That included Father’s memory, but something of those events must have stuck with him. He was now obsessed with sorceresses and witches.
It was a good thing that everyone in the castle thought he was losing his mind a little and that they didn’t believe sorceresses or magic was real.
“I’ll sniff it out eventually, mark my words,” he went on. “And then I’ll make your lives even more miserable than they already are. You will not be fed tomorrow!” he declared, then turned to stomp out of the room.
The guards left with him, banging the door shut so loudly that it knocked one of the pictures on the nearby wall askew.
“And stay out!” I shouted, as if we’d kicked them out.
Obi snorted with laughter, but the four of us were too traumatized by Father’s visit to laugh about it the way we’d laughed when the visits had begun, when Tovey went missing.
“He’s just going to get worse and worse,” Misha sighed, still holding my hand. “How long can we hold out before everything becomes intolerable?”
“I can hold out as long as he can,” I said, chin tilted up. “So can you. All of us are stronger than he is by far.”
“Stronger, yes,” Obi said, looking tired. “But being strong is exhausting.”
We all took a moment to breathe and release the tension that Father’s visit had brought. Our room was a mess, so we wandered to our own parts of the room to begin cleaning up.
“I would leave this place forever and pledge myself to my dragon mate if I wasn’t so worried for the people of our kingdom,” Rumi said with a sigh as he picked up the clothes the guards had flung out of his wardrobe.
“Sometimes I wish that another savior would come along to make everything alright so that we could move to the magical kingdom, like I know we are fated to do,” Misha said sadly.
I hummed, pretending to agree, but I wasn’t so sure. I didn’t like the idea of someone else being the champion when I was perfectly capable of saving people myself. I might have been an omega, but I was strong and brave.
“Enough of this,” Rumi said after only five minutes of cleaning. He’d just pulled thebedcovers back over his bed, but then he leaned down and pushed the bed aside, revealing the magical door. “Time hardly moves in this world at all when we’re in the magical world. I feel like dancing now and cleaning this place up later.”
We all made sounds of agreement and threw our things aside, heading to Rumi’s bed and the door. It had been a long, exhausting day in our world, and I was more than ready to dance the night away, hopefully in the arms of a certain alpha I already knew was mine.
The magical door opened easily for Rumi, and the golden staircase that descended down from it took us quickly into the nighttime forest of the magical kingdom. I loved everything about the magical world, everything I’d discovered about it so far. I loved how the sky was a deep purple at night, dotted with stars like diamonds. I loved how fragrant the trees and grass were. I loved that the trees seemed to be hung and dripping with jewels of every description.
Most of all, I loved the feeling that blossomed in my heart as we approached the lake and its pavilion. It wasn’t just the beauty of the decorations or the sweet strains of music. It wasn’t even the knowledge that there were tables of the most delicious food inside that would satisfy me after being given only bread and water all day in our bedchamber. It was the knowledge that we all now had friends in this magical world and that they were waiting to greet us with open arms.
It was also the knowledge that my fated mate was part of this world and that he might very well be a part of the festivities that night.
“You’re here!” Selle greeted us as the four of us crossed over the magical bridge of grass that formed specifically for us to cross over the lake and into the pavilion. “Everynight, I worry that something has happened to you and that the four of you will be lost to us forever.”
“Never,” I said, stepping over to my brother and closing my arms around him, and the egg he wore in a sling against his belly, in a manly hug. “If something happened and Rumi’s door disappeared, I would move heaven and earth to find a different way to come back here.”
Selle laughed as he hugged me back. My shoulder bumped his glasses askew as we separated. Even though Selle’s dragon had the ability to correct his vision so that he didn’t need glasses, it only ever stayed fixed for a day or two at a time, so Selle had gone back to wearing gold-rimmed glasses.
“I’m certain there are all sorts of ways to open magical portals into our old world,” Tovey said as he hugged us all in greeting as well. He had his eggs with him, but since his had grown to the size of the balls we kicked around in our Papa’s garden sometimes, he wore them in a pack strapped to his back instead of against his stomach.
“Oh! There are!” Selle said, brimming with excitement. “I forgot to tell you the other day,” he said to Tovey. “Billi gave me the most amazing gift last week.” He started rummaging in the small satchel slung over one of his shoulders.
“Billi is the one you think is a unicorn?” Obi asked, eyes bright with excitement.
“Heisa unicorn,” Selle said, taking a large, glass disk just slightly bigger than his hand out of the satchel. “He transformed for me a couple weeks ago to prove it. And he had the magic to make this for me.”
We all crowded around as Selle held out the disk to show us.
“What is it?” Misha asked, blinking curiously.
“It’s a scrying glass,” Selle said. “Well, something like that.”
“Good gracious, is that our bedchamber?” Obi exclaimed, shifting to squeeze up against Selle’s side as he looked into the glass.
“It’s a window into our room,” Rumi said with a delighted laugh.
