Dragon Wizard Read Online Free

my own inclination was to blame myself for any disaster even though it was difficult to imagine exactly how I could be responsible for this one. As my mind emerged from the painful black fog, I tried to answer the angry person . . .
    . . . and realized
I
was the one shouting.
    Huh?
    Sensation returned to me, and I could feel and hear myself shouting the words. The right side of my rib cage ached where Brock had tackled me, and the ache turned into a dagger in my side when I sucked in the breath to shout again. I smelled smoke and felt dirt in my eyes, and my eyes blinked all by themselves. I stood above the body of Prince Daemonlas, my hands balled into fists in his cape to either side of the bloodstained brooch. I had lifted him up to shout in his unmoving face, and I shook him to emphasize each word.
    Fine, I just blacked out and went insane there for a moment.
    I tried to remember what had pushed me over the edge like this, and suddenly everything in me screamed,
Lucille!
    That was the cue for me to spin around and look for her and see what happened.
    But I couldn’t move.
    That wasn’t exactly right.
    I still looked down at the dead elf, I still shook him, and I still demanded to know what it was he’d done.
    And that
still
wasn’t right.
    It wasn’t
me
doing any of these things, even though I stared into the elf’s dead eyes, felt the blood-tacky fur of his cape sticking to my fists, and felt the hoarse tickle in the back of my throat as I screamed . . .
    I had no control over
any
of it.
    Worse, I smelled smoke and heard pained groans all around me. The dead Prince Daemonlas was the last thing I wanted to focus my attention on.
    â€œHe’s dead, Your Highness.” I felt a gentle hand on my shoulder and someone else turned my head to look up at Mary, the first of my handmaids-slash-bodyguards to have attacked Daemonlas. She had her other arm in a makeshift sling, clutched against her scorched leather armor. Bruised swelling marred the left side of her face. Past her, in the peripheral vision of eyes that refused to move for me, I could see signs of chaos, broken tables, wounded diplomats, and the great windows open on a purple twilight sky . . .
    And no sign of Lucille.
    â€œCan we track the dragon?” I heard myself say.
    â€œSir Forsythe dived out the window after her—him—”
    â€œIs Brock . . .”
    The way I heard my voice trail off frightened me.
What happened to Brock?
    â€œBad, but looks worse than it is.”
    Someone shook my head without me and my voice lowered to be near inaudible. “Why did he have to . . .”
    â€œYour Highness?” Mary said, “If he didn’t, you’d be dead right now.”
    I watched as my hand rubbed my lowered face by its own volition. “How many people have to hurt themselves saving me?” I heard my voice whisper.
    My own brain still spun, disoriented, recovering from the blackout. It sank in. I felt myself breathe, I could see and hear and smell . . .
    But it wasn’t my body anymore.
    I felt my foot kick something that felt suspiciously like an elf corpse. My mouth snapped, “Why?”
    Then I spun around, looking at the wreckage of the banquet,
our
banquet, and understood what had happened.
    Lucille was home.
    Then what am
I
doing here?
    I heard my voice ask Mary, “Why would Frank do this?”
    Why would I . . .
    â€œIt wasn’t Frank, your Highness.” Mary pointed at the ex-elf. “It was this guy. Wasn’t it?”
    â€œYes, yes.” My head turned to look at the wreckageand my arm swung out in a gesture encompassing the broken and charred tables and a distressing number of bodies. “His spell pushed me out of my body. But the dragon did all this.”
    â€œYou don’t know
that
was Frank.”
    No, you don’t,
I thought.
    â€œWho was it then? And, more importantly, if it