dress, Rose looked amazingly and somehow unnaturally. She was too beautiful to be alive, she seemed to be the original of the dark niche. It was simply the details that I did not notice: very long eyelashes, a pearl thread on the neck, and a wreath of roses in her hair.
Inaccessible Rose was here in the castle, although it seemed impossible before. I swore to myself that I would never part with her, as if fate would not be angry against us.
«Did you hurt?» She stepped closer, trying to consider the same bloody spots as on the taffeta and on my clothes.
«No,» I amazed, no one was worried about my health. «Blood is not mine.»
«And whose blood is it?»
«It’s just a find, a gift of fate, you can even say a military trophy. It is a pity to throw it out, so I take it with me.»
«Do you know how to play on it?» Rose wanted to touch the strings, but changed her mind.
«If I’ll want I can play,» this meant that magic would allow me to all that I wish. «I do not want, the passion for the music remained in the distant past.»
«In the distant past?» asked Rose with suspicion. She briefly peered into my face, trying to look for at least one wrinkle, but it was vain searches. She never dared to ask such an ordinary for people question «how old you are,» because she was afraid to hear the truth. I lost myself the count, it was too much happened since I was free from the peculiar training class of the prince. I remembered only the date of my birth and the fact that my life was cut off at twenty two years, but it was so long ago. So much has changed since then, and I remained the same. Perhaps Rose awaits the same thing, to remain like now and never change. She learns about it when she will be brave when she can understand without fear that only a full magician can go out unharmed from this fortress.
«Someone hated this thing much,» Rose pointed to scratches at the violin.
I grinned, remembering that Vincent had all the foundations for such hatred. He hated Debora, and did not hide it. He experienced hostility to all things that reminded him of her. How did these flaws appear on the instrument? Most likely Vincent wanted to destroy the subject that was so dear to Debora. Only it is easier to use claws against the violin than to heal the already applied scars on the skin. After examining Vincent, I could say that even a small revenge for him was preferable to inaction, but for some reason I wanted to check how it really was. I put my nails in the stripes of the deepest scratches and spent from the side to the side. I covered eyelids to focus. Back. In the past. What can I find there? Night. Forest. Shrill wolf’s howl. Frost. Crisp snow under the feet. I sit in a hunting house and converse with the king, whom I saved in the morning, I look at his wounded hand. The bite of the wolf turned out to be very painful, the bandages were impregnated with blood. Is it worth thinking about how many people greeted these gray predators? Then I did not think about it, and Vincent had to. At this very time, he pressed his back to the tree trunk and tried to remove a large angry wolf from himself with help of a torch.
Such a struggle resembled more flirting. Trying to defend, Vincent only teased the wolf. The torch went out, and in his hands remained only a violin, which he willingly substituted under the claws of the beast. When the crumpled instrument was already lying in the snow, Vincent of course remembered with which spell he could pacify the beast. Damage has already been not corrected. Such situations, probably, repeated more than once before that night, when Vincent, who first tested jealousy, without regret, gave me his trophy.
I have already decided that this is a funny episode, of course not for the victim, but for the observer, but suddenly I saw something blurry and unclear what looked through the turbid glass. Blurred paints merged into a bizarre combination of black with white spots. The strange picture, voiced by deaf clapping, as if a flock of the pigeons once broke off and rushed into flight. For some reason, I thought that if I tried to look deeper, I would see something scary or at least unpleasant, so I hastily removed my fingers from the smooth surface.
«You do not want to leave this castle?» I turned to Rose. «There are many oddities around, but I managed to make sure you are brave. Tell me, one bloody rag can not scare you? In addition to frightening, there must be at least something that you like. Is it truth?»
«Well… I like you,» Rosa hid her hands behind her back, as if she felt that the ring prevents us to speak on equal terms. Nobody, besides her, could be able to put me in a dead end so often. So this time I froze from amazement. Is it possible to be in the rank of the idol in her eyes? She managed to see the wonderful elevated creation there where others saw the cruel and inexorable enemy.
Perhaps I would consider the beauty as a crazy or a pretender if she said it, knowing that I was a dragon, but she did not know, and I was hoping that she would not know as long as possible. I did not care about the opinion of Rothbart, who considered me as reckless and ungrateful rake, as well as the opinions of people who have nicknamed the dragon, the worst of evils, but the contempt of Rose could burn me much more than I myself had burned my victims. How it so came out, I myself did not know. Until now, no one managed to capture me. And she managed.
Recently, I did nothing and enchantingly watched Rose, and it was not shifted with manuscripts from the dead point. Someone, for sure, would be wondering why I having a lot of power, needed new spells, since I was already able to conquer the overwhelming part of the world, but I have always sought more, even if this desire could burn me yourself.
Anyone would have stopped at the achieved. I was in the castle, where the basements were clogged with treasures, where the turbulent force performed all my orders. There were many books on the shelves. Odil would envy me. Rose called them «black books» and stayed away from them. I was sure, she had already managed to hear a seductive whisper from the books, the very whisper, that had repeatedly worried me at the first stage of my learning. I got used to disembodied interlocutors, and then learned to use them for my own purposes. Conversations with them for a beginner were informative. But it was strange, probably, to be alone in the library and suddenly hear someone’s disembodied voice. It was trying to draw you into a conversation, laughs, joking, teased with suspicious suggestions. Rose immediately should have understood that the sounds did not come from a living being. Even a person with a very good hearing was difficult to believe that the books suddenly gained voices, but Rose believed.
Personally, I without fear touched any of the books. It was not even necessary to go to the library, it was worth only to wish, and the desired book itself turned out to be in front of me on the table and revealed on the required page. So now I looked at one of the volumes without much interest. The pages turned over themselves. A sideline observer could seem that the wind turned them.
Rose gradually began to get used to the fact that the most ordinary problems here were solved in some incomprehensible way. All, ranging from cooking and ending with cleaning and heating of the rooms, happened by itself. Rose did not see if I began to burn the fireplace or I lit the candles, but, nevertheless, it was warm in the castle, and the lighting has never been excessive or too weak.
Color illustration flashed in unusually bright kaleidoscope. Fancy ominous symbols alternated with simple letters, and those and others were the same for me easily understandable. It was worth learning foreign languages, whether an ancient one or a dialect of a neighboring country and it became for me as my own. Therefore, I guessed I felt everywhere at home. It was not difficult to me to speak in foreign languages, on the contrary, the sound of foreign language words was strangely pleasant. At least some variety.
Rose,
