The Dragon Returned the Princess: E0008-draft-85a13e
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- 1. On the third day after Princess Evie was taken by the dragon, the entire royal city prepared a grand rescue. But at dusk, the black dragon personally set her down at the city gate and handed the guards a return form: Princess negotiates too aggressively. Lair has been occupied. Evie was just about to protest when a line of writing appeared on the back of the form: Someone in the palace will kill you tonight.
- 2. Evie stopped protesting. Instead, she snatched the return form, smiled sweetly at the guards, and climbed back onto the dragon’s claw. “Administrative error,” she announced. The dragon sighed smoke rings all the way back to the mountain lair. Inside, her stolen tea set, three knight helmets, and one confused goat were arranged like a princess’s salon. “Who wants me dead?” Evie demanded. The dragon lowered its horned head. “I don’t know the name. But the warning was paid for with a royal seal—and delivered by your fiancé’s falcon.”
- 3. By moonrise, the dragon folded its wings, tucked in its tail, and allowed Evie to drape it in velvet curtains, brass lanterns, and a crooked royal crest. From a distance, it almost looked like a carriage—if carriages breathed sparks and hated wheels. Evie rode inside its open jaws, hidden behind lace. They slipped through the service gate as palace cooks argued over soup. Then the dragon froze. In the courtyard stood Prince Calder, Evie’s fiancé, calmly feeding a white falcon beside a covered execution cart.
- 4. Evie slipped from the dragon’s jaws and crouched behind stacked flour barrels, one hand on her hidden sword. The dragon tried to look like a decorative hedge and failed quietly. Beside the execution cart, Prince Calder handed the falcon keeper a purse stamped with the royal seal. “At midnight,” Calder murmured, “the princess will be found beside the king’s poisoned cup. Grief will make me a very convincing ruler.” The falcon keeper bowed, but his bird shrieked and dropped a tiny ribbon at Evie’s feet—her own training-room ribbon, missing for weeks. Calder turned toward the sound.
