“So.” He started toward me, his hands in the pockets of his black pants. “What do we do now?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you’ve managed to save the kingdom, defeat the evil queen, almost double the size of your realm, and save your mother. All while getting rid of the wizard who was plotting against you for over a year now. So? You want to go to a movie or something?”
“I thought our first date was supposed to be the Winter Formal?”
“It was.” He chuckled. “Then you got us kidnapped, and we ended up here.” He reached over and pulled me closer, lifting one of my hands in his and wrapping his other arm around my waist, moving back and forth. “But if you want to dance, I guess we can.”
“You don’t mind?”
“Not if I get to do this.” He leaned down and brushed his lips against mine, still swaying to an imaginary beat.
“You can always do that.” I laid my head against his chest.
“Unless your father is around, of course.”
I laughed. “We’ll have to work something out, since he’s taking your job and all. He’s my dad, after all.”
Winston raised an eyebrow and then smiled at me.
My dad. Yeah, I liked the sound of that.
“Hmm. I heard about that.” Winston let go of my hand and wrapped both arms around my waist while I wove my fingers together at his nape. “Your mother is taking back the throne and demoting you to Crown Princess and Heir Apparent?”
“That was the sacrifice I had to make. Giving up the throne. Not that it’s really mine anyway. After all, she’s the true Golden Rose. The throne belongs to her.”
“She wouldn’t have a throne without you.”
I pressed my cheek closer to the thrum of his heart. “Maybe not. But I’m ready to let her be in charge for a few more…decades? Yeah, decades sound good.”
“Okay.” He stepped back slightly, and I looked up at him. “If you’re sure.”
“I’m sure.”
“Good because now that you’re no longer queen, I’m going to take you flying a lot more often.”
“Hey, Winston?” I said, smiling up at him.
“Yeah?”
“I love you. No matter what happens.”
“Even if there are years of unending peace?”
“Especially if there are years of unending peace.”
“I love you, too.”
He leaned down to kiss me, and I let him cradle me in his arms, pulling me close. It wasn’t the Winter Formal in the high school gym, but it still wasn’t a bad place for happily ever after to start. Especially when your Prince Charming happens to be a dragon.
Acknowledgments
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—no one ever writes a book alone. There are so many people to thank, but the first has to be my lovely daughter Ainsley for asking me to write something that she would be able to read. Here is something for you to read. I hope it meets your expectations. Thank you as well to my editors at Entangled Teen, Libby Murphy and Danielle Rose Poiesz, as well as all the other hardworking editors, cover artists, publicists, and writers who make every single day that I work with Entangled Publishing a good one. Without all of you I’d still be doing a job I hated instead of one I love. And finally thank you to my family for putting up with the pixies, the dragons, the wizards, and the frozen pizzas that come with having a mother who spends her days writing stories and living inside her own head instead of doing more interesting things. I love all of you.
About the Author
Andria Buchanan is the pen name for Patricia Eimer, a small town girl who was blessed with a large tree in the backyard that was a perfect spot for reading on summer days. Mixed with too much imagination, it made her a bratty child, but fated her to become a storyteller. After a stint of “thinking practically” in her twenties she earned degrees in Business and Economics and worked for a software firm in southwestern Germany, but her passion has always been a good book.
She currently lives in Pittsburgh with her two wonderful kids and a husband that learned the gourmet art of frozen pizzas to give her more time to write. When she’s not writing she can be found fencing and arguing with her dogs about plot points. Most days the Beagle wins but the Dalmatian is in close second. She’s a distant third.
