Azara woke up in total darkness. She couldn't remember what had happened to her. She felt a soft bed beneath her, silk sheets covering her, and she felt dizzy. Her hair was let down to its full length and it felt damp on the pillows beneath her.

Despite how disoriented she was, Azara was still able to focus enough presence in her hand to ignite a small flame with the snap of her fingers, which shed light on the room she was in.

The garment she wore wasn't the same one that she had been in before blacking out. Rather, it was a darkly colored dress, totally unsuited to her tastes. Still, it was a nice garment, made out of fine fabric and designed beautifully. The room was lavishly decorated, with curtains of silk and carpets form South Sukarram. On the opposite side of the room was an armored guard, sleeping in a chair that was in front of a vanity. After she shined her light on him for a moment, he woke with a start.

"Where am I?" she asked. "What happened to me?"

But the man did not respond. Instead, he left the room in a hurry. Azara sighed. She considered getting out of the bed, but her head still spun and she did not know where she was. Events were starting to come back to her, the discussion with her brother, and their fight, but who she had been knocked out was still unknown to her.

After a few moments of waiting, and observing the room some more, a man dressed battle garb walked into the room. At first, Azara did not recognize him, but when she did a small gasp escaped her lips. It was King Orvaar. For a moment she panicked, afraid that he had come in to kill her in some twisted ceremonial way - slaying a dragon as his ancestors did, while dressed for war. However, these fears vanished as she realized he was unarmed, and he walked across the room to the window to open the curtains. Light flooded in and Azara had to close her eyes against its strength for a moment. It was midday or afternoon outside, and the sun was strong.

"Even your kind flinches against her brilliant light, don't you?" the king said, before sitting down at a table near the window. He relaxed into the chair, entirely unlike he sat on his throne, and he seemed immensely weary. Azara was about to reply to him with a spiteful remark, but as she caught his eyes she felt pity. They were worse than Konrads. The king's soul mourned in a way she had seen very few times in her life, if ever.

"Why are you here?" Azara asked, confused.

"Is my son alright?" the king asked. He was genuine.

"First, you tell me where I am and what happened to me," Azara said. Her brow furrowed and she indignantly crossed her arms. The idea that the king was truly worried about Valerius didn't make her any less pleased that he was trying to ask her questions before giving answers about her situation, and it also didn't make her any less annoyed with the idea that the king was worried about Valerius. If he had been worried about Valerius, he should have seen the current problem coming a long time ago.

The king sighed. "Akahtar got out of hand. I imagine he is related to you since the two of you look quite similar, or perhaps I am wrong and all of your kind look this way while hiding as you do. You are incredible creatures, and look just as impressive in your human forms as you do in your celestially blessed bodies."

His flattery caught Azara and for a moment she nearly took pleasure in it, but then remembered that she could not accept kind words from the man. Then the contents of her conversation with Akahtar came back to Azara, as well las their fight. The king not only knew she was a dragon, but he had been in dealings with one for some time. She took a moment to consider these facts before speaking again. The king took this moment to say more.

"I had a doctor tend to you, and servants give you the treatment one of your statuses deserves. I know that I must repay you for allowing you to be assaulted in my own palace when you are a protected emissary, but I hope that you understand I have tried my best to accommodate you. Even these quarters are the most luxurious of this palace, better than my own, for they used to be where my queen lived. So I assure you, this is the best I can offer." he said. His tone was kind. This man was totally unlike the brutish king Azara had met months before. He was softer spoken, and less of a barbarian.

"Well, I can tell you that your son is probably fine. He's been planning a war and trying to slay a dragon that you've been negotiating with though, so he's had his plate full for the last few months, probably longer, I can assure you," she replied, sarcastic.

Orvaar sighed, and then shrugged. "Well, a father must worry. You know he is much like his mother, stubborn to the core and single-minded. In some ways, it is a wonderful personality for a leader. I can take some comfort knowing that if I die today, in the coming battle, then I will have a successor that may yet hold this country together. I was impressed when I learned he had recruited you to his side, I thought I was clever for having manipulated one of your kind to my side. Now he goes befriending one of you."

"Valerius does not know," Azar said, and her voice slipped as she said the sentence, expressing her sadness about the matter. "And you were never clever. Akahtar was manipulating you. He wants your entire line extinct, and to sow chaos in this country."

"I know," Orvaar replied, "I knew he was up to no good, the day he appeared and told me the truth about what he was. It was on threats that he bartered with me, and I realize now that many of his demands were to cause unrest in the country. However, he benefited me in other ways. Having a dragon that can put down small rebellions, wipe out an entire town without anyone being the wiser, was quite helpful. Some of his advice, even, was good. He could see the hearts of men, and tell me their secrets. I assume you have that same gift?"

Azara nodded.

"Then you must know, I am not taking pleasure in the coming battle. I am sorry for it. My foolishness, my arrogance, the fact that I sent most of my force south - to meet what Akahtar had told me were Valerius' forces from Souster - but were actually out on some wild goose chase." The king shook his head and then stood. He looked out of the window, and Azara imagined that he was gazing out on the forces of both sides gathering for battle. "I have played right into his hands, and into yours as well I suppose, whatever your intentions truly are."

"I don't have any," Azara replied. "I am truly just a messenger. Whether it was for my mother, for a message form Gunvar and Valerius to my mother, or from Valerius to you. I came here originally to speak and barter, and that is all I am still here for."

"Foolishness. Even the messenger must be on a side eventually. Even you must choose what you stand for at some point, what you are going to do about a situation. you all the more heart this responsibility, due to the power you possess. In that sense, we are not so different. I am a king, you have the power to topple kingdoms." he said.

Then a servant knocked on the door and entered, bringing with him a platter of food. The king took a cup from it, a plate with bread, cheese, and a sweet muffin on it, and brought it over to Azara.

"Please, let me serve you." he said, "as yet more apology for the way you were treated in my court. First interrupted in your meeting with me by my son, and then assaulted here under my watch."

Azara scowled at the food. "You lament what is happening now, but you are a fool for letting it occur. If you had just treated your wife and son with the dignity and respect that you are giving me now, none of this would have happened. I will not take that poison. I know the old tales, and how the ancient Ursulans would poison my kind before fighting us, to weaken us."

The king looked down at the food, his eyes expressing shock. Then he took the small loaf of bread upon the platter and broke it into several pieces, before eating two pieces. Then, he motioned to a servant, who brought a bottle of grape wine and a cup. The servant poured wine into the cup, and the king drank from it, before offering all of the food to Azara again.

"I assure you, this is not poisoned food. I do have the ancient and secret recipes of my line, which were poisons to kill your kind, but I assure you this food contains none of those. If they were, their power alone would have killed me now." he said. he then looked her in the eye. "Search my soul with those celestial eyes, and I assure you that you will find no lie in me."

She looked, and he was speaking the truth as far as she could tell.

"Then why?" she asked, as she took the food and began to nibble on it. It had been some time since she had eaten, and it was nourishing. She did not partake of the wine though. Her body was more tolerant of alcohol than many people, but it would not do for her to drink any while dizzy as she was. "Why let it come to this?"

The king frowned and walked away from her. He returned to watching out of the window, and began running one hand through his beard before speaking again. "I may be a king, and acting as the soul of my country is my duty. Squashing rebellions ruthlessly, keeping law and order, and dealing harshly with emissaries from lands that desire to gain from our misfortune - but...my son is single-minded, and I did not want to fight him. I hoped that by letting him be that he would become less angry at me and less ambitious with time, but also like his mother he is persistent."

"You seem to speak fondly of her," Azara commented. The words had left her lips before she thought them through, but what was done was done, and luckily the king did not become angered by the words. Indeed, she was coming to realize he was not the easily angered man she had thought him to be. Instead, he was a gentle giant, and the way he acted upon the throne was a ruse. Or rather, the way he thought a king of Ursulam should act.

"She always hated this city," he said, forlorn. "She thought it was ugly, run-down, and unfit to be a capital. She would say that every single day after going into the gardens. Bothersome. You can't even see the city from the gardens. This window gives a good view of it though."

Azara didn't know what to make of the comment, except that she agreed with the late queen's opinion, and decided it was time to change the conversation topic to something more important.

"So what will you do with me, now that we are on the eve of battle?" she said. "I am a danger to you, am I not?"

"Of course you are. A very great danger. However, you are not a danger I can do anything about. Whichever side you choose, or if you do nothing, there is little that I can do about it. I could have killed you while you were unconscious, but I fear that this would have more quickly turned Akahtar's wrath against me, and leaving you alive at least left me with another being as powerful as he, and possibly opposed to him given that he attacked you." the king said, musing upon the issue. "So I shall do nothing with you, except let you do as you please. I can do nothing else, on this day of battle."

Azara thought the words over, and as she did so, the king took a swig from the cup of wine she had refused.

"I am surprised that you refused the wine. Akahtar loves the stuff, and indulges in it," he said, curious.

"I still feel dizzy, and so partaking in alcohol now would not be wise. Besides, wine made from grapes has never been to my tastes, but mead that burns the throat and strong spirits are more to my liking. I have no idea where my brother would have obtained a liking for wine."

"Your Ursulan is fluent, and you love our drink." the man replied, and he smiled. "You may have misjudged our politics and our king, but you are more like one of our people than many, many emissaries which I have met. Perhaps your sympathies with Valerius and the many angry peasants are justified, and I have been to harsh a king. However, it is too late for that, and I must do my duty in battle."

Azara shrugged. "I was born here, and raised by one of your kind - though many of the people in this land would not consider her that."

The king nodded and then sighed. "Yes, just as they did not hold my queen in that regard either. Well then, I must go. The battle shall begin soon. Whatever you do, I only ask that you not bring chaos to this country, whether I should die or my son meets his fate this day. From what you called Akahtar, I judge that we both must deal with family in this fateful hour. It is a terrible thing, isn't it?"

The question was meant to be both broad and rhetorical, and the king did not wait for an answer as he walked out of the room.