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  “It wasn’t important,” Amelrik says, cutting him off before he can call me a whore again. “We’ll—I’ll—come back another time.” He moves to leave, like he can’t get out of here fast enough, which makes two of us.

  “Amelrik. Stay a moment. We have things to discuss.”

  Amelrik’s shoulders stiffen, like he already knows he doesn’t want to hear what the king has to say. “Virginia, maybe you should—”

  “I need this alliance with Oak clan to go through,” the king goes on, as if Amelrik hadn’t said anything. “To unite us against Elder clan. If Cedric won’t come… I’d hoped to marry you off to one of the Elder king’s daughters someday, after things had cooled down more between us.”

  “What?” Amelrik and I both say at the same time.

  A cold feeling of unease settles into my stomach. My muscles clench, and I hold my breath.

  “Your marriage would have united us with Elder clan, Cedric’s with Oak, making this whole valley ours. But things don’t always go according to plan. I thought you could wait a few more years, but…” He shakes his head. “No, this’ll be for the best.”

  “What will?” Amelrik keeps his head up while addressing him, but his voice shakes a little.

  “Your marriage to Rosalind. Your disabilities might make you unfit to rule, but you’re still my only child, and a prince of Hawthorne clan. She’ll have to be happy with that. We’ll need to renegotiate, but the Oak king wants this alliance as much as I do. I can smooth it over.”

  “Father, no. I can’t—”

  “You can and you will. I’ve watched you fawning over your little St. George whore—yes, whore,” he says, when Amelrik starts to protest. “Call her what she is. The whole clan’s had to watch you embarrassing yourself with her. A St. George! And after what happened with your mother.” He makes a disgusted sound that rattles a couple priceless-looking vases on a shelf. “I’ve turned a blind eye to it, because I thought you’d grow out of it.”

  “Grow out of it?! Virginia’s my… She’s not a phase!”

  “You’ve spent too much time with humans. What the Elder king had you do, infiltrating their cities… It was too much for you. You need to be with your own kind.”

  “Father.” Amelrik’s voice is definitely shaking now, and he squeezes my hand kind of hard, so that I’m not sure if he knows he’s doing it or not. “I’m not… I’m not like everybody else.”

  “Yes, well, your new bride will just have to get used to that.”

  Amelrik sucks in a breath. “That’s not what I meant.”

  His new bride? It feels like the floor’s just been pulled out from under me, and my blood runs cold. The king couldn’t have just said that.

  “The wedding’s happening in two weeks, and then our clans will be united, even if it has to be you standing at that altar.”

  The cold, sick feeling still sits heavy in my stomach by the time we get back to our room. I sit down on the bed, numb inside.

  He’s going to have to marry somebody else.

  And I feel so stupid, because, I mean, of course he is. Like his father said, he’s a prince. Even if he’s not the heir, and even if he can’t fully transform like the others, it doesn’t mean he’s going to be allowed to marry whoever he wants. Especially if who he wants happens to not only be human and a paladin, but also a St. George. It’s, like, the worst possible combination.

  Amelrik paces the room, rubbing his face with his hands. “He sent me away! He didn’t care about me for six years! And now he thinks he gets to decide the rest of my life?!”

  “You’re a prince.”

  “I don’t care.” He stops pacing and looks over at me. His green eyes are intense. “I’m not marrying her.”

  “Rosalind. The girl from Oak clan.” My chest feels heavy. I hate even saying it. I feel a hot stab of jealousy as I picture him marrying someone who speaks Vairlin and knows all the right things to do during festivals and dinner parties. Plus, she’s both a dragon and a princess—two things I’ll never be.

  “Virginia.” His voice is serious, like he knows what I’m thinking. “My father said all that with you there on purpose. He wants me to think there’s no future for us.”

  “Yeah, but he’s the king. If he says there’s no future for us, then—”

  “No.” He crosses the room and sits down next to me. His hand finds mine. “It was a threat, that’s all.”

  “Uh, were you in the same room as me? Because I’m pretty sure he was serious.” I’m pretty sure the king’s always serious.

  He takes a deep breath. “Everyone knows about me. About what I… am. The Oak king won’t go through with it. He made a deal for the heir. If his daughter marries me, she won’t rule. Neither will her children. They’ll call it off.”

  “What about the alliance? Will they cancel that, too? I mean, if they’re going to be that offended—”

  “Hawthorne clan will be okay. It’s never needed me before—my father’s always made that perfectly clear—and it doesn’t need me now.”

  But he’s been used as a political pawn before, even if it was also kind of for his own good. Then again, the king thinks this would be for his own good, so maybe it’s not so different. "Maybe Cedric will change his mind and show up.” And then none of this will matter. Oh, except for the part where his father called me a whore and said I was just a phase he was waiting for his son to grow out of.

  Amelrik scoffs in disbelief. “If he was going to, he’d be here by now.” He hesitates, then adds, “We could run.”

  “What?” A shock runs through me. I stare at him. “You can’t.”

  “Yes, I can.”

  “But you couldn’t come back.” Neither of us could. “You already thought you were never going to get to go home. I’m not going to be the reason you never see your family again. Or why you spend the rest of your life on the run.” If not from his father, then from all the paladins who still want him for his crimes against them.

  “I’d rather be on the run forever than not get to be with you. I already made my choice—I’m not marrying someone else. And if my father wants me to come home, I’ll just write him a letter saying I refuse like Cedric did!” He flops back onto the bed and sighs. “Cedric’s going to be in a lot of trouble when he gets home. Because one way or another, my father will find a way to drag him back.”

  Just probably not before he’s supposed to marry Rosalind. I lie down next to Amelrik, resting my head on his shoulder. “You want to be here. You know you do.”

  “Yeah, but I’d rather be with you.”

  “This is your home. And even though I’ve only been here for half a year, it feels more like home to me than the barracks ever did. But your father made it pretty clear how he feels about us. Even if Cedric does come back—”

  “When he comes back. It’ll buy us more time. We’re not making peace with Elder clan anytime soon. I can talk to my father.”

  “I don’t think you can.”

  “He was angry today, because of Cedric. If I catch him in a better mood—”

  “You heard what he said about me.” Plus, the king’s never in a better mood, or maybe I just bring out the worst in him.

  “He’s wrong. You’re not a…”

  “A whore? Yeah, I know. But I’ll always be a St. George. And you’ll always be a prince of Hawthorne clan. So what are we supposed to do about that?”

  3

  WARM DESPITE THE COLD

  Ten draclings sit in front of me in the library, all piled together on a rug. I mean, it’s a really big rug, though the draclings vary in size from, well, about as big as a large dog to more like a horse. All of them stare at me in fascination, hanging on my every word.

  “And then my sister Celeste used her magic just in time to bind the dragon to human form—”

  One of the draclings gasps and accidentally spews out a tiny flame. She clamps her hands over her mouth, her eyes wide with embarrassment.

  Luckily, I’m sitting far eno
ugh back that the flames didn’t get me.

  “And then what happened?” another one asks.

  “Well…” I hesitate, thinking maybe this wasn’t that great of a story to tell, after all. At least, not to anyone so young. “She threw him in jail. The end.” Actually, her and her team of paladins tied him to a tree in the woods and interrogated him, then stuck a sword through his heart and left him there to rot. But I think these guys might be too young to hear that.

  “Nuh-uh,” one of them says. He stretches his neck out authoritatively. “He escaped! Right, Miss Virginia?”

  I still think it’s kind of the greatest thing ever that they call me that. “Yeah! Of course! He tricked the guards, got out of his cell, and then fought his way to freedom. And lived happily ever after.”

  The one who accidentally spewed fire sighs dreamily.

  “Now tell us the one about that time she brought home that head from Elder clan!” This from one of the more boisterous of the group, a boy who only likes hearing my most gruesome stories.

  “Um…”

  “That’s enough for today!” the librarian says, coming over to our story group. She’s in dragon form, since the library’s big enough to accommodate full-size dragons, and draclings seem easier to wrangle when you can loom over them.

  “Awww,” the draclings all say at once.

  The librarian waits to make sure they start shuffling off, then moves closer to me. “You have a visitor,” she whispers.

  I look over and see Amelrik leaning against a shelf at the back of the room. I was so engrossed in my storytelling, I didn’t even see him come in.

  He crosses over to me, grinning. “So, the dragon escaped from his cell and lived happily ever after, huh?”

  “Well, it could have happened that way.”

  “But I’m betting it didn’t.”

  “Shouldn’t you be at the council meeting right now? I thought—”

  “I left.” He shrugs, like it’s no big deal, but he doesn’t look at me.

  “You what?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Did something happen? What about your father? Won’t he be mad?”

  “I just couldn’t…” He clenches his fists in frustration. “I couldn’t stay there anymore. It’s fine. Nobody wanted me there anyway.”

  “But—”

  “I ran into Osric in the hall. Odilia and everybody are going ice gliding on the lake.”

  I raise my eyebrows at him. “What’s ice gliding?”

  “Exactly what it sounds like.” He says that like it’s super obvious, even though I’ve never heard of it.

  “So, gliding on the ice? Isn’t that just ice skating?”

  “You swoop down out of the sky and use the momentum to slide you across. It’s… Well, it looks fun. I said we’d go.”

  “Neither of us can fly, though.” Which I know he already knows, but usually he doesn’t like to participate in that kind of stuff. Seeing the others having fun using their wings must be hard.

  “We can play in the snow. I don’t know—it’s nice out. I’m tired of being cooped up in here, going to boring council meetings and trying to do what my father wants. I just want to spend time with you.”

  “But you’ve never walked out of a council meeting before.” Even if they sound like the worst.

  “Odilia was right. It doesn’t suit me. And it should be Cedric sitting through those meetings, not me. I’m done taking his place. And besides, if my father’s going to treat me like a dracling, I might as well act like one.”

  “By shirking your duties and playing in the snow?”

  “Yep.”

  “Sounds good to me.” After all, his father’s already pissed, right? How much madder can he get?

  Even with all my winter gear on—a pair of mittens, two coats and a hat, plus the warmest pair of boots I’ve ever owned—it’s still freezing outside.

  The frozen lake sparkles in the sunlight. Odilia, Osric, Godwin, and a few of their friends all take turns flying up into the air, then swooping down and landing on the ice. They pull their wings in at the last second to gain more speed and then go sliding across the lake.

  Godwin and Osric have both crashed into big piles of snow on the banks more than once, but I’m pretty sure they’re doing it on purpose. Odilia goes for speed and precision, practicing until she can make it all the way from one end of the lake to the other.

  I think I can live without propelling myself as hard as I can into snowbanks, but it does still look like fun. It makes me kind of wish I could fly, too, and I can’t imagine how Amelrik must feel, having had to watch this kind of thing all his life and not be able to be a part of it.

  But if it’s bothering him, he doesn’t let it show. He grabs a forked twig and shoves it into the snow dragon we’re making, right where the mouth is. It sticks out like a tongue. The snow dragon’s shaped a lot like a snowman, except we added a long snout and some ridges going down its back.

  “Perfect,” Amelrik says, standing back to admire our work. The stick tongue’s apparently too much for the snow dragon, though, because it falls off, taking half the snout with it.

  “And the judges decide… three point five.”

  “Out of what?”

  “Ten.”

  “Ten? Come on—it was better than that. And you helped make it. Aren’t you kind of biased to be a judge?”

  “Yeah, just think what a non-biased judge would have scored it. Probably a two, at best.”

  He laughs and tosses a handful of snow at me.

  I shriek as the cold hits my face. But, like, in a totally dignified way that definitely does not echo across the lake and make all the dragons stop what they’re doing to turn and look at me. I can’t let him get away with that, so I duck down and grab my own handful of snow, ready to throw it at him, but he catches me off guard, slipping his arms around me and kissing me.

  He’s warm, and the kiss is soft and slow. The kind that makes you forget you were about to pummel someone with a snowball because you’re too busy turning to mush.

  “Not fair,” I murmur.

  “Neither was your rating. I guess we’re even.”

  But when he moves to step back, I grab onto his shirt, not letting him get away. I kiss him again, our bodies pressed together, warm despite the cold. Well, somewhat warm. My back’s still kind of freezing. “There,” I tell him. “Now we’re even.”

  A chill wind blows past as Odilia lands not far from us. She changes into human form and marches over, her bare feet buried in the snow. “I didn’t need to see that.” She makes a disgusted face.

  “Then don’t watch,” Amelrik says.

  She ignores him and tuts at our botched snow dragon. “Not your best work.”

  Amelrik grins. “I’m out of practice, that’s all.” He turns to me. “We used to do this all the time when we were younger. Well, in the winter. And it was mostly me and Cedric.”

  “Only until our parents finally let us go gliding. Except then my mother tried to tell me it was too dangerous, but she let Cedric do it, and I’m a way better glider than he ever was. But the two of you used to make much better snow dragons than this.” She smiles at the memory. “And you used to have the most epic snowball fights.”

  But I bet they didn’t end like this one did. Not that it was really much of a fight. After all, he only got one attack in before I let him win.

  Amelrik sighs. “He told my father he’s not coming home.”

  “My brother’s an idiot.”

  “Your brother doesn’t want to marry some girl he barely knows from Oak clan.”

  “He’s still an idiot. And he knows Rosalind. We stayed with them a few summers ago, and we had the best time together. Well, me and Rosalind did.”

  “What did Cedric think?”

  “I don’t know. We all got along okay. At least, I thought so.”

  “But,” I add, “that doesn’t mean he wants to marry her.” If I was him, I wouldn’t want to come hom
e, either. I mean, I really need him to, so the king doesn’t try to make Amelrik marry this girl instead and ruin all our plans of being together forever and everything. But I can’t exactly blame him for not wanting to.

  Odilia bites her lip. “He really said he’s not coming? Everyone’s been planning this wedding for months. It’s a huge deal. And speaking of weddings.” She gets this really smug, know-it-all look on her face and raises an eyebrow at us. “Are congratulations in order, or did you chicken out? That seems more likely, since if you’d actually asked Uncle Ulrich for permission for the two of you to get married, he would have torn you limb from limb.”

  Amelrik scowls. “I was going to.”

  “Ha! I knew it!”

  “You don’t have to gloat. And I didn’t chicken out—it just wasn’t the right time. He was mad that Cedric’s not coming home.”

  “And he called me a whore,” I add. “More than once.”

  Odilia has the decency to stop grinning. “That’s unfortunate. But not exactly a surprise. I mean, did you really think he’d approve?”

  “I—” Amelrik hesitates. “I don’t know what I thought.”

  “It’s worse than that,” I tell Odilia. Maybe if the king had just said we could never get married, I could have lived with that. I mean, it would have sucked, and he’d still be telling us what to do, which I’m not crazy about, but things are good right now. Well, except for the fact that everyone thinks I’m Amelrik’s human concubine and not the girl he’s in love with. But we could have worked around that. Somehow.

  “At least he didn’t murder either of you,” Odilia says. “I call that a win.”

  Amelrik gestures to himself. “He said if Cedric’s not back before the wedding, I’ll have to marry her.”