---

Naturally, the prince arrived with his sword drawn, banner raised, and honour blazing from every pore.

There’s a princess locked in a tower and beset by a fire-breathing dragon. You must save her!

And this was how he chose to do it. By being an idiot.

I supposed it never occurred to him that said fire-breathing dragon had keen eyesight capable of spotting a shiny moving object from leagues away—I could only assume blinding one’s enemies was the justification for that ridiculously over-polished armour—or hear the thunder of hooves on cracked stone as they approached. Sure, there might be a moat of bubbling lava and a teetering rope bridge, but he was the Chosen One, was he not? He was smarter, faster, more devastatingly good-looking and simply better. He would succeed where every other that came before him had pathetically, spectacularly failed.

Watching from my balcony, I sighed as a single puff of fire reduced the prince to ash. He didn’t even see it coming.

Moments later, wind besieged the tower. The canvas flew off its easel and clattered to the ground along with the paintbrush in my hand.

I glared at the enormous indigo dragon hovering a few feet away from the edge of the balustrade. “Do you have any idea how long I’ve been working on that?”

The blasted creature had the gall to snort—that was, the dragon version of a snort.

“And you couldn’t have spared the horse?” Poor animal had been charred to nothing along with its rider.

Another snort.

“One of these days, I just might leave, you know,” I threatened, though my heart pounded faster at the answering challenge in the dragon’s gaze. Still, I persisted. “Leave you all alone in this bloody tower in the middle of nowhere with no one and nothing but your infuriating company.”

Light flashed. Brighter than the now-sizzling armour soaking into the stone on the other side of the moat. Brighter even than the sun shining down upon us.

Before I could so much as twitch, arms—warm, almost unbearably hot arms—wove around my waist. Smoke tickled my nose, the gentle kind born of a roaring fire on a cold winter’s night, and I resisted the instinct to lean back.

“You won’t leave.”

That voice. I heard it awake, sleeping, and dreaming.

I swallowed, but I maintained the annoyance in my tone. “I just might if you keep destroying my paintings.”

His low chuckle reverberated through my flesh, my bones, my everything. In the periphery of my vision, he snapped his fingers. The canvas shot back onto the easel.

“This painting?” he asked.

It was blank, of course, as all of them were. I had a pile of them stacked in the corner of my bedroom for when a prince came charging across the scorched grassland with his sword drawn and banner raised, large enough that the canvas—and I—would be visible from a distance. Just to give him something to charge toward, to make his effort worth a single moment before he died.

I could be nice like that.

“Yes, this painting,” I replied, though the stubborn, feigned irritation was swiftly fading.

“My love.”

A calloused hand brushed the side of my jaw, prompting me to face him. When our eyes met, brown against deep, roiling indigo, I didn’t stifle the hitch in my breath.

He was so beautiful. The most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, no matter what he said about my own beauty eclipsing his.

“You won’t leave,” he repeated, softer yet inexplicably firmer.

“I could.”

“You could,” he agreed, “but you won’t.”

“Feeling confident about that, hm?”

A slow, electrifying smile tugged on the corners of his mouth. “Utterly so.”

“What if one of those princes locates his brain and manages to take me away?”

Dangerous, to be teasing him like this. Provoking a dragon who could tear a person in half with a mere swipe of his claws was probably not the wisest decision. Nor was falling in love with one, but here we were.

“What if he sneaks in while you’re off hunting?” I went on, rewarded with a fierce growl. A little more… “Or ensnares you in a net? Or brings another dragon as a distraction—”

Lips collided with my own, and I didn’t hide my triumphant smirk. My hands slid up the front of his tunic, latching onto the hair at the base of his neck.

He kissed me like he hadn’t for years instead of minutes, like we were lovers ripped apart by greater forces and only temporarily reunited. He kissed me like he couldn’t lose me, couldn’t fathom the idea of a world where we weren’t together. He kissed me like he loved me, because he did.

When we withdrew, chests heaving, his indigo eyes were more dragon than human. A reminder, and a promise.

“Let him try.”