“I hope we get to it,” I say. “The book I picked issogood.”
“Double good?” Kayla suggests, giving one of her rare smiles.
Hannah wiggles her eyebrows. “Twice the fun?”
“You know it!” We share a laugh, none of the men realizing I picked a book with a two-dicked hero this time around. Who can blame a girl? I was feeling inspired.
“Chicken!” Princess Buttercup pats my cheek with a tiny hint of claws. “I only stopped playing because you promised chicken!”
“That’s it. We’re leaving,” Luke growls, scooping me into his arms.
I call goodbye to everyone as he springs into the air, carrying us home.
Dinner centers around chicken, exactly as promised, all of us eating in our favorite spot in the sitting room while watching TV. We moved on from dance movies and have been trying to find something Luke will love. He glared his way through several fantasy shows, angry that the dragons were subservient to humans instead of fully sentient and able to speak. So now we watch murder mysteries, because it turns out he enjoys figuring out who the bad guy is before the on-screen detectives do.
My spoon scrapes the bottom of my ice cream bowl as the murderer is arrested and the final credits roll.
“I told you it was Felix.” Triumph rings in Luke’s voice as he jabs a clawed finger toward the screen.
“You sure did.” I bite my lip to keep from grinning. He gets so excited to be right.
Luke turns off the TV, stands, and holds out his hand. “It’s time.”
“Really?” I set my bowl aside, and Princess Buttercup leaps on it and starts licking, having already “cleaned” Luke’s.
“Really.” He pulls me to my feet and leads me down the hall to the library. Once in the reading room, he picks upDance of Desire, the couple eternally waltzing across the cover.
“What if we try a different book first?” I bite my lip.
He frowns down at me. “We’ve already tried other books.”
I exhale. He’s right. I’ve practiced my book magic for months now. Taking a note from Harriet, I’ve used short stories. If I send us into a book with intention, we stay inside for the full story instead of hopping in and out like my first messed-up spell. I’ve also successfully used Catherine’s trick of saying “the end” to pull us out before a story is done.
We’ve ridden unicorns across rainbow bridges through a glittering sky of stars, conned alien mobsters in a galactic nightclub out of a priceless star-diamond, and ridden a gondola through Renaissance Venice while serenaded by a troubadour. We’ve dined with the queen of a fantasy world where colors are magic, run through a twisty labyrinth chased by a barghest, and picnicked in a magical glen where the butterflies chime music with each wingbeat.
But I haven’t tried sending us into a specific scene in the middle or end of a longer book. Luke expanded the human collection to contain fiction, and thousands of amazingworlds wait inside those novels…ifI can control this last aspect of my magic. We’ve talked about trying it for days and even have on old clothes we won’t mind losing when ours get transformed by the book. But I still hesitate,Dance of Desirerepresenting one of the biggest screwups of my life.
“What if I mess up?” A knot of nerves tightens in my tummy. “What if I send us to the beginning and we get stuck and have to do the whole book?”
“That won’t happen.” He tips my chin until I meet his eyes. “For one thing, you can say ‘the end’ and pull us out at any time. For another, if we’re going to be trapped in a book, I can think of worse ones than this.”
“I thought you hated it!”
“How can I hate the book that brought me you?” He pulls me into his arms.
I give a pleased gasp and melt against him. Luke always says the sweetest things! My squishy heart turns to mush, a hundred sparklers going off inside my chest and filling me with light. I am all the metaphors of happiness!
“Besides, I want to see how their final dance scene goes so that I can prove ours was better.” He smirks. “I am, after all, superior as a dragon.”
“You are.” I smile at him. “You’re my grumpy dragon, and I wouldn’t have you any other way.”
“Here.” He reaches into his hidden pocket and pulls out a packet of cinnamon hearts.
“I already had dessert.”
“For your focus.”
I pop a few in my mouth, letting the invigorating flavor of the sharp cinnamon coat my tongue. Closing my eyes, Icall upon my magic. It leaps within me, thrumming along the mate bond I share with Luke. An echo of his magic flows back to me, full of his belief in my abilities.
