Between the lines is written in fire. Natalie Yacobson

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СКАЧАТЬ just joking, Your Majesty.» Dandy smiled radiantly, showing his sharp fangs.

      How quickly he was sobered by the veiled threat! Rosamunda hadn’t heard him say «Your Majesty» politely in a long time. It was worth frightening Dandy, and he became kind, even tried to sing dithyrambs to her beauty. But comparing her hair to black fire, her eyebrows to tar, and her lips to rose petals was unoriginal and quite ridiculous.

      «Stop sucking up!» Rosamunda cut him off.

      Dandy almost dropped the bottle, which he had almost finished. The rest of the wine spilled over the hay on the stable floor.

      «All right, I’ll be honest with you, as a counselor should be,» Dandy grimaced, twitched his pointy ears and zigzagged his tail. «Your kingdom is on the verge of destruction.»

      «Did the shimmering pixies bring us misfortune?» Rosamunda remembered the spinning wheel and the mysterious chants of the magical creatures. «I’ve heard that fairies, though beautiful, can be evil and bring misfortune upon the heads of people who dare to venture into their habitats.»

      Dandy shrugged his narrow shoulders. «There are also good fairies, but very rarely. Mostly they are gamblers, swindlers and lechers. They try to seduce you to get something out of you, or they use cheating techniques mixed with magic. I’ve suffered so much with these fairies! And pixies are like annoying insects. If you leave a bottle of wine open, they’ll swoop down to rob me of my drink.»

      Rosamunda watched as he took the cork out of the wine barrel and drank almost all of its contents. How much wine could fit in Dandy’s body? The barrel was almost twice the size of Dandy’s.

      «I’m not a drunkard, it’s just an extreme situation,» Dandy excused himself, noticing that the queen was looking at him with great judgment. «Who wouldn’t be frightened into a nervous breakdown by a dragon raid? And when I have a nervous breakdown, I drink without counting bottles.»

      «Actually, the dragon raided my land, not yours. I’m the one having a nervous breakdown, but I haven’t had a drop of booze all day.»

      «I can only applaud your fortitude. You are the queen for a reason, not me,» Dandy saluted her with a newly uncorked bottle. A man would have been so intoxicated that he would have fallen under the carriage, but Dandy had not lost his temper. His mind was not drunk at all, and he had a sly grin on his cunning face, which made him look like a demon.

      «Many crevices, caves, and tracts lead to the Underworld,» he said. «And there it is easy to hide from the dragon’s flames.»

      «But I’m not likely to slip down there. As you can see, I’m bigger than you.»

      «It’s not a question of size. It’s whether the lords of the Underworld will accept you. There’s already a queen there. The sight of your beauty will make her think you’ve come to take her husband away from her. Even underground, they’ve heard how easily you break hearts.»

      «I haven’t broken any, except yours,» said Rosamunda. «You are the most annoying of all my admirers. You’re the one who’s attracted to the counselor’s position, not me.»

      «But the dragon was seduced by you! Dragons love a pretty girl!»

      «Don’t talk to me about dragons anymore. Since this morning, I’ve become very afraid of them. I had a prosperous kingdom and one dragon swooped in and my country was reduced by a quarter. What happens if he strikes again? In two or three of his raids, I’d have no country at all.»

      «You shouldn’t have woken him up!» Dandy said in a philosopher’s tone.

      «But it was you who persuaded me to go to the mountains.»

      «I didn’t know the dragon would react so violently to your presence.»

      «What will happen now?»

      «Now he will demand tribute! Or better yet, to sacrifice you to him. Dragons always demand beautiful maidens of noble birth. They have excellent taste in both treasure and maidens. You can’t give them something second-rate. Especially this one! Fool, you could have cope with him.»

      He calls his queen a fool! He’s got a nerve! Rosamunda wanted to throw at him the first thing that came to hand, which was a heavy harness.

      «I was joking,» Dandy jumped out of the carriage and into the stall. «It is about your foolishness, not about the dragon. He will surely come to demand tribute now, or worse, send someone.»

      «Who would a dragon send?»

      «It’s best not to scare you beforehand. I’d better get out of here. No advisor can survive long with a queen like you.»

      What benefits did he want from her? She can’t be a dragon ruler! And she doesn’t need an advisor to lead her into the jaws of a predator. She should just dive back into the underground crevices. Without him, no one’s going to mess with her head anymore. But she might not be able to get rid of the awakened dragon now.

      «Before you disappear, do your wine and escort my knights to the dragon’s lair,» Rosamunda commanded in a firm tone.

      The Dandy stammered.

      «What will you give me for it?»

      «I’ll give you a few more barrels of wine.»

      «I can get them myself.»

      «And I can have the cellar locked from you.»

      The freelancer scratched behind his pointy ear.

      «It is all right! I’ll whisper to the head of the party where to go and slip away.»

      He fulfilled his promise, deftly jumping on the shoulder of the most valiant knight. He didn’t even realize at first from whom the advice came, but obediently followed Dandy’s instructions. And Rosamunda’s ministers, who saw off the detachment with their eyes, looked in vain among the knights for that foolish guide whom the queen had promised to find.

      An ultimatum

      The knights did not return. But some junk dealer had brought back their scorched armor and helmets, and at the same time one roasted corpse, on which the letters of a message from the dragon had been burned as if on paper.

      «The fire-breathing beast caught me on the mountain road and promised to pardon me if I delivered the message to the queen,» said the junk dealer, who was about to be executed as a sorcerer for aiding the dragon.

      He was eventually pardoned but kept under surveillance. The corpse, covered with inscriptions, was not shown to the queen, lest she faint. For some reason, everyone thought that her female heart would break at the sight of a dragon mutilating the most handsome of her knights.

      «They only do that out of jealousy!» The maids of honor were murmuring, covering their sly smiles with fans. «What if our queen has really fallen in love with a dragon?»

      Rosamunda understood the meaning of their gossip as soon as they brought her the verbatim message read on the corpse’s skin. The dragon demands that the queen be given to him. Not as a sacrifice, but as a wife.

      «It’s СКАЧАТЬ