Guarded by the Dragon

by Sofia Stone

  She hadn’t believed Amelia at first. In her defense, it was a ludicrous assertion. Amelia had had to secure numerous permissions and exceptions to bring her into the country in the first place. Fortunately, being a crown princess was useful when navigating those kinds of situations.

  Sabine had known Zavinia was a secretive nation, but she hadn’t known why. The little country had only been a blip on her radar, notable only for having produced her best friend’s father.

  When Amelia told her over a course of airplane peanuts and ginger ale, Sabine had interpreted it as a joke. A prank at her expense. Even though that wasn’t Amelia’s style, it had been easier to accept that than to accept the idea that some people could turn into legendary animals and also that that fact was totally secret from the rest of the world.

  And then Amelia had said she could do it too.

  “Okay, Ames,” Sabine remembered saying sarcastically, before popping another honey-roasted peanut into her mouth and rolling her eyes.

  Because they were on a plane, Amelia hadn’t been able to demonstrate. Then, when they were out in the countryside in Amelia’s secondary palace—a secondary palace! Sabine tried to wrap her mind around it and failed—she hadn’t been able to perform the transformation.

  Amelia had tried and tried and tried, her face growing redder as she concentrated. In retrospect, Sabine felt bad for her. It couldn’t be easy to promise something magical and fail to deliver. But at the time, it had all seemed like a joke that dragged on so long it wasn’t funny anymore.

  “I’m still working on it,” Amelia had hissed insistently, arms akimbo. “I can do it sometimes.”

  She did eventually manage it one morning before the sun had finished rising. She’d woken Sabine up by tapping her window with a sharp ebony talon.

  Throwing open the sash, Sabine had caught her first glimpse of a real, live dragon.

  At first, it seemed like a dream. When it became apparent that she was awake, she’d wanted to take a picture. Maybe ten million pictures.

  Well, Sabine was a photographer. It was only natural.

  The pictures didn’t come out: as it turned out, magical creatures had some kind of inborn defense against recording devices. She had no idea how that worked, given that dragons had apparently been around for thousands of years—long before the advent of modern technology—but it did. Every photo was an unidentifiable blur. She hadn’t taken such poor-quality pictures since she was five years old.

  And so Sabine was forced to believe in dragons and magic.

  “I know you know,” panted Amelia. She sped up again and now they were racing through the palace, flying past various guards and servants and garnering some interesting looks.

  Sabine knew she should be annoyed, but she would have laughed if she had any breath in her lungs. For a moment, she felt like a little girl again, giddy and euphoric.

  “Be kind to an old woman,” gasped Amelia’s mother, Julia, who was holding her side like she had a stitch.

  “We’re almost there!” insisted Amelia, and then they burst out a pair of very large doors into the open air.

  Julia was sucking in air as fast as she could with her hands on her knees, almost doubled over. But when Sabine’s eyes adjusted to the light outdoors, she saw him, and then she couldn’t look anywhere else.

  He was . . . Sabine didn’t know exactly what to call him. A creature, for certain. Magical and majestic and utterly unlike anything she’d ever seen.

  His lion’s coat gleamed like burnished bronze in the last of the day’s golden sunlight. The rest of him was more difficult to comprehend. He had the head of an eagle, with a sharp beak, and the wings of one too. Right now, they were fully extended, making him look as though he were about to take off in flight. And when the creature swished his tail, Sabine thought she saw the fangs of a snake flashing in the sun.

  Every inch of him was glorious.

  She didn’t know how she knew it was a he, but she knew it just as she knew her own hair was black and her eyes green. There was just something indescribably, indefinably, unmistakably masculine about him.

  “What the hell is that?!” Julia had stood up and finally taken stock of her surroundings.

  Sabine was almost offended on his behalf.

  “That is a griffin,” said Amelia with supreme satisfaction. “Isn’t he cool?”

  Cool wasn’t exactly the word Sabine would use. He was so much more than that.

  The air around the griffin shimmered like heat rising off asphalt—thick enough to blur her vision. When she blinked, the griffin was gone . . . and a man was standing in his place.

  He was tall, as tall as Gabriel, and with broad shoulders that tapered into a lean waist. A smattering of freckles dotted his cheeks, which were ruddy from flying, and his strawberry-blond hair curled impishly, touchably.

  His eyes met hers, and even from yards away she could tell his eyes were the lightest, clearest blue she’d ever seen, and his gaze pierced her to the core.

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