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Dragonbound(49)

By:Chloë Tisdale

I glare at him and speak through clenched teeth. “Gee, Torrin, how nice of you.”
He disappears into the crowd, and I’m about to tell the new guy that there’s been a mistake, but he looks so excited to be here with me, like a puppy who just found out he’s going on a walk, that I don’t have the heart to just brush him off.
“Is it true?” he asks, once we’re moving in sync with each other. “Did you really sneak into Elder clan?”
“Yep. I had help, though.”
He grins, shaking his head a little. “That’s still really badass.” 
“Thanks,” I tell him, surprised that I actually mean it.
“I’m Devon, by the way. Devon Waters.”
“What, like the prince?” Even if I’d never met one before Lothar and Amelrik, I at least know the names of the royal family.
He clears his throat. “That’s me.”
I gape at him. “You’re serious?” And what’s with me and princes?
“I heard about what you did, and I wanted to meet you.”
I take a step back, so that his hands aren’t on my waist anymore and we’re not dancing. “I’m not really a paladin. I cast the binding spell once. So whatever you think I am, whatever my father told you—”
“Whoa. That’s not . . . I know you’re not a paladin. That’s what makes what you did so amazing.”
“I . . . I have to go.”
“Wait! I’m sorry if I said something to offend you. I just—”
“You didn’t. It’s not you.”
Or maybe it is him, because he’s cute and charming and actually interested in me for me, not because of my St. George blood. And there’s no reason why I shouldn’t spend the rest of the night getting to know him, except that it doesn’t feel right, and all of a sudden, I don’t know what I’m doing here. I don’t know why I’m letting anyone dance with me, or letting my friends and family try and push for me to meet someone new. All I know is that I can’t spend the rest of my life looking for the right person—not when I know I’ve already found him—and I can’t spend another minute here.
Devon’s still trying to ask me what’s wrong, but I abandon him on the dance floor and run out of the courtyard. The cool night air feels good, and I take a deep breath, relieved to finally be away from the party.
I don’t know if I’ll be able to find Hawthorne clan again, and going into dragon territory on my own is probably a really bad idea, and there’s a good chance I won’t even make it there, but . . .
But I can’t take this feeling, like something vital’s been ripped out of me. And I know that there’s no reason why it should work out between us. Maybe it can’t. Maybe my heart’s just going to get even more broken somewhere down the line, and it’ll be that much worse, because I got to be with him for a while. But I don’t care.
Because even if I can’t be with him forever, I can’t stay here and not know how things might have turned out. I might get lost along the way, or killed by a dragon, or I might make it there only to have Amelrik turn me away. But letting him go was the biggest mistake I’ve ever made, and I have to fix it, no matter what the risk.
I just have to stop by my room first and grab some supplies. And leave a note. Not that saying I’ve run off to go find my dragon boyfriend is going to reassure anyone that I’m okay, but still.
I dart around the corner, hurrying to my room before anyone thinks to come find me. I’m so busy going over the list in my head of everything I need to bring that I don’t look where I’m going and accidentally slam into someone. Though to be fair, I didn’t expect anyone else to be out here.
“Ow.” I put a hand to my forehead where it just banged into someone’s chin.
“Virginia?” The sound of Amelrik’s voice sends a shiver up my spine.
I’m almost afraid to move my hand and see if it’s really him. Because it can’t be him. He’s far away, and I just really, really want to see him, badly enough that I’d imagine he was here, and—
And suddenly his lips are on mine, and I have no doubts about whether it’s him or not. “What are you doing here?”“I couldn’t . . . I mean, I tried, but . . .” He swallows. “Were you going somewhere?”
I grin at him. “I was coming to find you.”
“How did you know I was here?”
“I didn’t. I was going to Hawthorne clan.”
He smiles and puts his arms around me. I thought I’d never get to do this again, to be this close to him, and the relief that washes over me brings tears to my eyes.
“I’m still a St. George,” I whisper.
“And I’m still the prince of Hawthorne clan.”
“So, nothing’s changed.”
“Except that I don’t know how I ever thought I could live without you. I love you, Virginia. More than anything.”
“But I don’t know how we’re going to make it work.” When I thought I was heading off to find him, figuring this out seemed like a distant problem. Now that he’s standing right here in front of me, it seems obvious that there’s still no solution.
“I’ll tell you how.”
I raise my eyebrows at him, skeptical, but hopeful, too.
He leans in close, his breath soft against my ear. “Like this,” he whispers, and then he licks the side of my face.
I shriek with laughter and surprise—I can’t help it—and punch him playfully in the shoulder. “That’s not a real answer!”
“Yes, it is. Less than a minute ago, you didn’t even know that dragon spit has the same mood-enhancing quality as human spit. Obviously, there are a lot of things you don’t know, so how can you be so sure that we won’t figure this out? Besides,” he adds, “now that I’ve got you back, I’m never letting you go.”
“That’s your plan?”
“It’s working so far. Good luck getting rid of me.”
I laugh. “I’m never getting rid of you.”
“Then I guess we’re stuck together.”
“That’s not a real answer, either, though.”
“Maybe not,” he says, leaning in to kiss me again, “but it’s a pretty good start.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I hate to admit this, but once upon a time, I didn’t love this book. I had the first six chapters or so, almost exactly as they appear here, and I thought they were terrible. Which seems crazy now, because I love them, and they’re probably some of the best chapters I’ve ever written. I read that first chapter now and am like, “How did I ever think this was crap???”
But I did. For a long time.
I don’t know if it was my thyroid being at an all-time low (this was before I’d found a website called stopthethyroidmadness), which made writing anything almost impossible, or if I really just wasn’t ready to write this story yet, but I put it aside, thinking there was very little chance I’d come back to it. Actually, I thought that several times, as I picked it up and set it aside again and again over the years. I couldn’t make it stick, but I couldn’t just let it go, either. 
Fast-forward to now, when I’ve still got a fair amount of health issues but am mostly on the mend. Well, okay, don’t fast-forward to now now, but early 2015, when I was trying to figure out what to pitch to my editor and started thinking about Dragonbound again. I remembered that what I’d written before was complete and total crap, so I came up with plans to overhaul the idea and make it into something worth working on. Thankfully, while I was working on these new plans, I decided to actually read what I’d written before. This wasn’t the first time I’d reread those chapters, but it was the first time I fell in love with them.
I loved the writing. I loved the characters. And all the things I’d convinced myself were wrong with it before . . . didn’t actually exist. (Brains are funny that way. And by “funny,” I mean more like “annoying.”)
So many thanks are in order to the people who believed in this book before I did: Holly Root, agent extraordinaire, who loved this idea from the very beginning and never gave up on it; Karen Kincy, who kept asking when I was going to finish it, no matter how many times I claimed I wasn’t; and Chloë Tisdale, who discussed every nuance—maybe even every sentence—of this story endlessly with me.
Huge thanks also go out to my editors, Miriam Juskowicz and Robin Benjamin, who were not only crazy enthusiastic about this project, but amazingly patient and understanding when it took me longer than originally planned.
You guys are all the best.