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When the princess was first brought to the castle, the dragon thought she was very young and pretty to be cursed.
Her auburn hair glittered with gold in the sunlight and her smile was radiant as she waved her parents goodbye, one hand clutched to her chest and one waving her handkerchief carefully, just like she’d been taught.
But the dragon saw the fear in her eyes and the tremble to her lip, and thought about how the world liked to burden children with things they could not possibly carry, and then tell them that their load was light.
The dragon knew that feeling well, with her own family having been slain by knights and having been taken from her mother very young and raised for the last several years in captivity.
The dragon remembered her mother still, and wondered if she had ever come to look for her lost child. If she had cared, or even tried.
The princess’ face bore the lines of the same grief of wondering whether a parent had ever loved them enough to want to save them, and as she watched her parent’s carriage vanish over the horizon, the dragon saw the dawning realisation that perhaps, after everything, there was a difference between doing what you were told and doing what was right. And that perhaps parents did not always do what was right.
As the sun went down that evening, when the stars began to scatter across the sky and the tower was whipped by the wind, the princess shivered to herself and wondered aloud whether it would be a long time til she was freed.
The dragon, ears sharp, thought of her radiant smile and shining hair and said “no time at all. Rest your head, dream well, and do not worry”.
**
Over the next few days, the princess explored the tower carefully, her footsteps light and unsure and curious. The dragon slept in the lowest chamber amongst stone and earth, with little else to occupy the time, but an ear was still kept out for the patter of a child’s feet.
It was not very long until the princess came to sit next to the dragon, knees scuffed and hands dirty, manners forgotten and face filled with curiosity.
The way of curious children does not align with manners, especially when there is no-one there to remind them about elbows on tables and shoes on feet.
The dragon stirred slowly, trying not to startle the visitor - but the visitor was not swayed.
“Are you a boy dragon or a girl dragon?” came a reverent whisper, and the dragon opened a single, golden, slitted pupil eye.
“What do you think I am?”
The princess smiled shyly.
“I think you’re very pretty.”
The dragon contemplated whether being friends with the tower’s prisoner was against the rules, and then realised she had never cared for rules.
“I’m a girl dragon.”
The princess smiled, looking over the brilliant ruby scales of the dragon in awe and brushing a hand over the dragon’s leathery wings.
“I wish I had wings like yours, then I could fly away from here.”
The dragon looked at the wistful expression on a face too young to understand wistful thoughts, and she sighed.
“I have wings, and I cannot fly away from here. We are both prisoners.”
The dragon tapped the iron circlet restraining her to the rock the castle was built on, her claw resounding with a loud ‘tink’ against the metal.
The princess sighed, pressing her forehead against the dragon’s side.
“If I had wings and claws like you, I’d free you and we could fly away together. Then we’d both be free.”
For a moment the princess brightened; her face told the dragon she was thinking of clear blue skies and strong wings with wind beneath them and land that stretched on forever.
Then the thought of the curse crossed her mind.
“Do you think I was cursed because I did something wrong? Am… am I a bad person?”
The dragon thought of her gentle voice, her lack of fear at the dragon’s appearance and her wish to free them both, and her golden eyes softened.
“Not at all.”
With a gentle snuffle into the girl’s hair, the dragon murmured a goodnight.
“Rest your head, dream well, and do not worry.”
**
Years passed.
The princess grew up in the castle, with only the dragon for company, and the endless stone hallways and what little reading material there was to entertain her. They had run out of riddles years ago; they had spoken at length about anything and everything that came to mind. The princess stayed by the dragon’s side more and more, until the only time she left at all was to sleep in the bed placed in the tower.
And even then, often she preferred the warm press of scales in the dirt than the clean sheets in the cold tower.
Many suitors came for the princess over this time - but none of them were her true love.
At first, the dragon was weeding out the truly bad - the selfish, the greedy, the lustful, the wrathful.
Then she found that there was no-one she deemed “right” for the girl who sat in the tower, her hands gentle but hard and her eyes joyful yet steely and her voice crystalline but harsh. Gentle and sweet with thorns that weren’t meant to wound but to protect.
No-one was right for the dragon’s princess.
Gradually, the princess’ light began to fade. She began to lose hope. She ran out of room to keep a count of the days in tally marks on her walls, and what little reading material she’d been given had long since run dry.
The only thing that kept either the princess or the dragon happy was their time together.
There was a bittersweet understanding between the two of them; an understanding that they’d been abandoned by those who were meant to love them, the understanding that they were both trapped, and the understanding that the only thing they truly had was each other.
It was a bright spark in a tapestry of grey.
But one day, just before dawn, a suitor appeared, and he was sneaky. He managed to avoid the dragon’s watchful eye, slip over the castle’s defences, and clamber up the stairs to the princess’ tower, on a warmer night where she had unfortunately stayed in her bed.
It was her screams that alerted the dragon.
The knight had pulled the princess from her bed, tossed her over his shoulder, and sprinted back down the stairs with her - therefore removing the need to slay the dragon at all.
This would not stand.
With a snarl of fire and claws of iron, the dragon galloped after the knight, hatred in her eyes, her ears filled with the cries of her princess.
As though he carried little more than a sack of potatoes, the knight tossed the princess to the side, drawing a blade and turning to face the dragon.
He was dead before a single word could escape his throat.
Fire cascaded around him, claws raked across his flesh - and he was no more.
In a panic, the dragon turned towards the corner, where she heard the princess let out a stifled sob as she carefully picked herself up and brushed herself down.
Her knees were scraped, and one elbow was bloody. Where there had been a broken stone in the wall of the tower, her cheek had been cut.
The dragon had never felt more enraged; it was as though someone had sullied the most precious thing that she had ever owned. And in a way, perhaps that was true. Other dragons guarded hoards of gold and jewels and precious things.
The princess was more precious to her than anything.
Slowly, delicately, she stepped across to the princess, using the very tip of a claw to brush a tear from her cheek.
“Don’t cry, dearest. He was not the one.”
The princess growled in frustration, throwing herself on the dragon’s front and batting at her with her fists helplessly.
“None of them are, and none of them will be!”
The dragon smiled softly, turning to press her head to the princess’ side.
“I know it feels hopeless. But someone will come to see you as I do one day, in all of your beauty and richness.”
The princess looked down at her monstrous form - the one that overtook her in the night, as per the curse - and she sighed.
“I really don’t think they will. No-one knows me like you; no-one loves me like you.”
Slowly, as though she had only just realised something, the princess turned to face the golden, steady gaze of the dragon.
“…and no-one loves you like I do.”
Golden gaze met blue-hazel, and slowly, gently, the princess moved her hands to smooth over the silky scales on the dragon’s snout - before carefully, delicately, leaving a gentle peck on her warm nose.
And the room suddenly blazed with light.
The princess had changed form every night since she had come to live in the castle; it had become routine.
This transformation was the most spectacular of all.
Golden light beamed from the form of the princess, which rapidly grew and changed, limbs twisting to take on a new form, wings sprouting, and a tail lengthening.
And when it finished, there stood a gorgeous emerald green dragon, a little smaller than the dragon herself, blue-hazel eyes shimmering in excitement and a little bit of fear.
“Well? Am I beautiful?”
The dragon grinned, not even bothering to hide her wicked sharp teeth.
“The most beautiful I have ever seen.”
The princess smiled back with her own now needle sharp teeth - and then her gaze narrowed upon the manacle around the dragon’s neck, keeping her pinned to the castle.
One quick slash of claw and the chain was shattered.
The princess pressed her cheek to the dragons, their scales brushing together with a gentle clickclickclick , and then she turned to face the open window, through which a new day was dawning brightly.
She turned back to her love, breathless excitement all over her new features.
“Are you coming?”
“Anywhere you lead.”
In tandem they leapt, wind filling wings, hollers of joy leaving throats, the land stretching out below them like a patchwork quilt.
And soaring away into the endless blue sky, there were two dragons - one ruby red, and the other emerald green.
They were free.