Dragon and the Princess

Also by Jo Beverley

Available from New American Library

Regency

The Rogue’s World

Lady Beware

To Rescue a Rogue

The Rogue’s Return

Skylark

St. Raven

Hazard

“The Demon’s Mistress” in
In Praise of Younger Men

The Devil’s Heiress

The Dragon’s Bride

Three Heroes
(Omnibus Edition)

The Malloren World

Seduction in Silk

An Unlikely Countess

The Secret Duke

The Secret Wedding

A Lady’s Secret

A Most Unsuitable Man

Winter Fire

Devilish

Secrets of the Night

Something Wicked

My Lady Notorious

Medieval Romances

Lord of Midnight

Dark Champion

Lord of My Heart

Other

Forbidden Magic

Lovers and Ladies
(Omnibus Edition)

Lord Wraybourne’s Betrothed

The Stanforth Secrets

The Stolen Bride

Emily and the Dark Angel

Anthologies

“The Trouble with Heroes” in

Irresistible Forces

The Dragon and the Princess

Jo Beverley

I
NTER
M
IX
B
OOKS
, N
EW
Y
ORK

INTERMIX BOOKS

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

THE DRAGON AND THE PRINCESS

An InterMix Book / published by arrangement with the author

PUBLISHING HISTORY

New American Library trade edition / March 2007

InterMix eBook edition / February 2014

Copyright © 2007 by Jo Beverley Publications, Inc.

Excerpt from
A Mummers’ Play
copyright © 1995 by Jo Beverley Publications, Inc.

Excerpt from
The Raven and the Rose
copyright © 2010 by Jo Beverley Publications, Inc.

Excerpt from
A Shocking Delight
copyright © 2014 by Jo Beverley Publications, Inc.

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eBook ISBN: 978-0698-15121-5

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Chapter 1

“Being the Sacrificial Virgin Princess of Saragond
stinks.
”

“I’m sure it does, highness.”

“Seven years. Seven interminable years!” Princess Rozlinda leaned forward on the Royal Mage’s table. “Not only have I been SVP longer than anyone before, today I
doubled
the previous record. And”—she swept on before the mage could speak—“Princess Rosabella’s term ended when she was sixteen. How old am I?”

“Nineteen, highness.” But Mistress Arcelsia’s aged eyes seemed to say,
Magic cannot solve this.

Rozlinda whirled away, her skirts brushing knickknacks, her veil snagging on something. She yanked it free, not caring if the silk ripped. Stupid, stupid thing!

Nineteen and she’d never flirted with a man, never danced with a man, never kissed a man. She hardly ever
spoke
to a man outside her family. She had eight elderly lady attendants whose sole purpose was to make sure the SVP stayed V.

The mage’s sanctum lay at the top of the highest tower of the White Castle of Saragond, and through the window, Rozlinda could see all the way to the Shield Mountains. “I feel like a bird in a cage. Look but don’t touch. See but never go.”

“Now, that’s not true, Princess. You can ride out any time you wish.”

A moving cage is still a cage.
But Rozlinda turned back, attempting a smile. None of this was Mistress Arcelsia’s fault, and a princess should make all around her comfortable. “Perhaps I will later.”

When she went riding, her knights escorted her. She’d still have her ladies to protect her from her knights, but they’d be there. Young, virile men in their silver armor and bright, heraldic tunics, so masterful on their prancing white horses.

Much good would it do her. Could anything be more cruel? The SVP Guard should be as wizened as her tutors and her ladies.

“Sit down, Princess. We’ll try scrying again. Perhaps you’ll see your future.”

“As I never see anything,” Rozlinda muttered under her breath, “that’s not encouraging.”

But she gathered her skirts and sat on the stool before the deep golden bowl. In her disgruntled mood, she sat on her trailing veil, dragging her conical headdress to one side. With a hiss, she rearranged herself and pushed the hennin straight so the silken bands beneath her chin weren’t choking her.

“I don’t see why being SVP means a person has to dress this way.”

“Tradition, Princess.”

Rozlinda looked at Mistress Arcelsia’s white robe and scarlet velvet cloak. “No one wears clothes like yours, either. Doesn’t it bother you?”

“Not at all, Princess. They are the outward sign of my position and skill, and very comfortable.”

“Mine are merely the outward sign of being the youngest fertile female of the blood, and they’re awful.”

“Princess, do try to put your mind into a state receptive of magic.”

“Fat lot of good it’s done so far,” Rozlinda mumbled, but only because the mage was drawing water for the scrying bowl and wouldn’t hear. They both knew Rozlinda didn’t have a scrap of magical ability, but they pretended.

Mages could do magic, or so they said. Rozlinda rubbed a finger on the rounded edge of the bowl. “Is there some magical way to bring on Izzy’s flowers?”

Mistress Arcelsia turned so sharply water sloshed. “No, there isn’t, and it wouldn’t be right. You know better than to tamper with fate.”

“I’d suspect she was concealing the bleeding if she wasn’t so desperate to be SVP.”

“Princess Izzagonda would never do such a wicked thing. After last time.”

Last time, when the ceremony had gone awry.

Mistress Arcelsia poured the water into the bowl. “I’m sure she’ll flower before the dragon comes. She’s thirteen, after all.”

“I’m not afraid of the sacrifice. I’m just tired of the Princess Way. Another year seems unbearable.”

“The fates have their reasons.”

“The reason,” Rozlinda said forcefully, “is that the royal family is having fewer and fewer girls, and no one seems to be doing anything about it.”

“There is nothing to be done—”

“Then hasn’t it occurred to anyone that we’re
doomed?
”

The royal family of Saragond existed solely because their female blood had a mystical power to appease a dragon—the blood of a princess who had flowered but remained a virgin, that was. They married only within their line so that the blood would remain strong.

“Well?” Rozlinda demanded.

Mistress Arcelsia walked behind her. “Clear your mind for magic, Princess. Perhaps you’ll receive wisdom.” She put her hand on Rozlinda’s neck and pushed, so Rozlinda had to look into the depths of the golden bowl. “What do you see?”

Rozlinda sighed and concentrated. She had no magic, but she’d been trained all her life to respect ritual and tradition, and daily magical exercises were part of that. Part of the Princess Way, which was all to do with saving the world when the dragon came. If only it would come today.

“Clear the mind, Princess!”

Rozlinda squinted, trying to see images in the scant play of light on still water. She puffed a breath to stir the surface.

Snakes? Ribbons? A jelly pudding?

“Nothing, Princess?”

Mistress Arcelsia’s assumption that as usual there would be nothing snapped Rozlinda’s patience. “I see water. A river, I mean, not the bowl. A deep one.” Might as well be dramatic. “There’s a storm coming. Lightning. A golden fish leaps out.”

“A golden fish! An excellent omen.”

She suspected that Mistress Arcelsia knew she was lying, but carried on, anyway. “A man catches the fish. In a big, black net.”

“Alarming, Princess. What sort of man?”

“A . . .” Rozlinda’s imagination faltered. A knight, a prince, a brute? But then she gasped.

She saw a man!

She blinked, but this was no ripple image. It was as if the round bowl had become a window through which she saw a strangely dressed, pale-haired man. He was standing by a river or lake, but in sunlight.

“Describe the man, Princess.” Mistress Arcelsia’s bored voice seemed from another world, and perhaps it was. Rozlinda was finally having a vision!

“The picture’s changed. Now I see a sunlit scene. Countryside. Water. And a different man.”

“Tell me more.” A sharp tone showed that the mage knew the difference.

Rozlinda strained to catch every detail.

“He’s not from around here. Long, pale hair but dark skin. Not like the dark of Cradel. A sort of bronzish gold. His clothes are strange, too. A sleeveless leather jerkin such as a farm worker might wear, but cut tight. And no shirt underneath.”

Rozlinda had to swallow. That leather was almost like a second skin and left his brown, muscular arms open to her inspection.

“And?” the mage prompted.

Rozlinda dragged her eyes away from more manly perfection than she’d seen as an adult. She grew hotter. The jerkin went down to his thighs, but his legs were covered by garments as formfitting as her own silk stocking.

“Princess?”

“Green hose, brown boots.”

How inadequate. How deceptive. But she felt that if she truly described this man he might be snatched away like a forbidden treat.

It was as if he were drifting toward her, or she toward him. Details became clearer. His arms weren’t totally bare. “Metal bands around his arms, upper and lower. They look like gold. Can’t be. He’s no prince. You can’t see this, Mistress?”

“No, it’s your vision. Blond hair, you said?”

Rozlinda concentrated again. “Not really blond. More white.”

“Old?”

“No, not at all. It’s . . . this is a strange word for hair, but it’s bone colored.”

“I see.”

“You do?” Rozlinda tried to sit up, but Mistress Arcelsia pushed her down.

“Tell me more. Tell me everything.”

Something urgent in the mage’s tone both excited and scared Rozlinda. It had been so long since anything different had happened to her that she didn’t know how to react.

“Pale hair. Loose down the back but in thin plaits at the front. Glinting, as if woven with shiny wire.”

“Is he alone?”

“Yes. No! He just looked to his side and spoke to someone, but I can’t see who. And it would have to be someone in the water. Or in a boat. The water rippled. Perhaps someone’s swimming. He’s picking up a bag and hanging it from his shoulder. A scruffy bag. Definitely not a wealthy man. A thief, do you think? Is this some warning about thievery? He’s walking toward me.”

Rozlinda tried to shrink back, but the mage’s hand was firm on her neck. This was a vision, she reminded herself. A prognostication or an omen. Important.

“Is there anything else about him that you haven’t told me, Princess?”

“He walks well.” Rozlinda became lost in the easy grace of that walk. Not a trudge, but a smooth swing, as if the whole world was his to walk over and he intended to do it.

As he drew closer, she noted more about his face. It was as handsome as the rest of him, with a square chin, high cheekbones, and chiseled symmetry, but the set of his mouth was grim and his startling pale amber eyes were cold.

And looking straight at her.

“Let me up!”

Mistress Arcelsia’s hand clamped her down. “More, Princess. Tell me everything!”

Panting with fright, Rozlinda looked anywhere but at those eyes. “Leather belt. Pouch. Knife. A buckle. It looks to be . . .”

“Be what?”

“Set with dragon-eye stones. It can’t be. Only princesses of the blood wear dragon eyes!”

Who was this man? What did this vision mean?

Deep inside, instinct answered:
Nothing good.

Then the man stopped again and opened his battered bag. He took something from it and fixed it to the front of his jerkin. When his hands moved away, the sun caught it, flaring red.

Rozlinda pushed back with all her strength and at last broke free. She swiveled to look at the mage. “He put on another dragon eye. One as big as my palm!”

“Ah,” said Mistress Arcelsia.

“Who is he? What does it mean? Is he . . . is he from
Dorn?
”

Dorn, the mysterious land beyond the Shield. The land from which the dragons swooped out to kill and consume. The land from which all dragon-eye stones came.

“Time will tell.” Mistress Arcelsia pulled Rozlinda off the stool and steered her to the door. “You are needed in the apothecary. Your sister is with child again, so mother stone must be prepared.”

Rozlinda found herself on the landing outside, her question un-answered, but she didn’t go back in. She didn’t want an answer. Instead, she wanted reassurance—to be told visions weren’t real, that the man wasn’t real, that he wasn’t from Dorn.

Mistress Arcelsia had seemed frightened. Did her vision portend war?

For seven years, ever since the disaster, Saragond had braced for war, expecting Dorn to exact revenge for the death of the dragon. Gradually, fear had changed to hope, but along with it came the conviction that the next time a dragon arrived everything must be done correctly to the last detail. That conviction, more than rules, had chained Rozlinda to the Princess Way.

Why would it all go wrong now?

For century upon century, every eight years a dragon had come, killed and eaten; then been appeased by the gift of a cupful of blood from the SVP.

Not long afterward, tribute arrived, clear sign that the peace would hold for another eight years—tribute of calming hralla, sweet-smelling versuli, mother stone, and dragon-eye jewels. They were pretty, but their greater value came from their power to prevent pregnancy in princesses of the blood. That was essential if the mother stone ran out between tributes, for without that no blood princess could bear a live child.

Aurora.

With child again. What a fool she was!

Rozlinda set off down the spiraling staircase, her patient ladies falling in behind. Aurora had been told not to get with child again yet—all the women of the blood had—because there was little mother stone left. Which was all Aurora’s fault.

It had been Aurora who’d killed the dragon. Or been responsible for it. That act had created the threat of war and, of course, meant no tribute. If her child died in her womb it would be entirely her own fault, but Rozlinda couldn’t wish that upon anyone.

She left the tower and hurried down the covered walkway to the apothecary. But then she paused to look at the pictures painted on the stone wall. They were so familiar that she normally hardly noticed them, but today they had new meaning.

The first paintings showed the myths of ancient history; the next, scenes from the War of the Twin Princes. The final scene of Prince Lorien and the remnants of his army fleeing toward the Shield Mountains seemed to roll into the first picture of the Dragon War, showing dragons flocking from those mountains into Saragond. There had been many centuries between the two, however.

All the pictures were faded by time, but the essentials were still clear.

Rozlinda studied the main picture of the Dragon War. The sky was full of dragons, many breathing fire on farms and villages while knights hurled spears and farmers threw stones. More effectively, a group of men operated one of the huge lancing machines that had already killed one dragon. It sprawled on the ground, glittering red, green, and gold, impaled.

Those machines had been rebuilt seven years ago, just in case.

The castle walls made up the left foreground of the picture. On them, the king directed defense. Machines mounted on the battlements shot lances at one great circling beast. Its horned head snarled fire at the defenders, a forked tongue clear, and one set of mighty claws held a struggling, screaming man.

What horrible beasts they were.

On the dragon’s back, a wild-eyed, howling dragon rider urged it on—a rider with long bone-colored hair who wore a huge red stone in the middle of his chest.

She had definitely just had a vision of a warrior of Dorn.

“Princess, what is it?” asked Lady Petrulla.

Rozlinda looked around, finding her anxious ladies and the sunlit garden beyond them as unreal as if they were the vision.

“You are required at the apothecary, I believe,” Lady Petrulla prompted.