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Ev turned away from the train tracks to look back toward the town.

The sky should be filled with dragons. Instead, the only thing visible was the glow of the castle.

The sprawling glass monstrosity at the highest point of town was the most visible thing around, lit up with spell-light at all hours.

Because when you were as rich as the Hotthorpes, why have electricity if you could have something twice as costly and half as practical?

Fuck it. She was going to steal a dragon.

***

No wall surrounded the castle, not even a gate across the drive.

The fireflies blinking lazily above the grass before twilight had even fallen were probably security drones, and the massive glass atrium – the source of the spell-light visible from the train tracks – was undoubtedly etched with protective runes.

Stepping even one foot onto the property was beyond stupid.

But if she could stay just outside the property line…

She’d come this far; she couldn’t turn back now.

Even from the bottom of the drive, Ev felt the dragon, like someone singing at a frequency just on the edge of hearing.

The sound lit up her spine, turning every vertebra into glass, her belly into a struck gong.

She’d never had occasion before to experience the way dragons picked up and amplified human emotion.

She felt it now. Like a cell signal plucked out of the air, the Hotthorpes’ dragon sharpened and bolstered everything inside her and cranked it up to eleven.

Reckless, unstoppable, ambitious, stupid.

“Kill the princess, save the dragon,” Ev murmured.

She swung wide, keeping low in case any of the Hotthorpes happened to glance out the window. She wasn’t sure where the property line lay, but no alarms sounded, no heavily armored hands dropped onto her shoulder to haul her away.

The dragon’s song changed in pitch – a higher, more anxious register.

Behind the castle, multiple levels of terraces stepped down the hillside.

Ev picked her way carefully down the slope to the lowest level, and still no alarms shrilled.

Maybe the Hotthorpes didn’t even bother with security, knowing no one would ever dare.

One foot on the smooth flagstones, and then before she lost her nerve, Ev crossed the terrace in one go and peered over the rail into the massive pit below it, also dug into the hillside.

Too perfect, too beautiful.

Spell-light gleamed off scales that were blue-purple-black-green-maybe-pink-sometimes.

Princess Carissa’s dragon was massive, even curled in on itself, snout tucked into its flank, sleeping.

Ev ached to touch it; an overwhelming sensation of want, bordering on hunger.

She needed to run her hands over those scales, needed to put one in her mouth.

Warm, shiny, and smooth. Could something taste shiny?

Yes. But just to be sure, she would launch herself over the railing and find out.

No.

Ev dug her nails into her forearms, letting the pinch against her skin bring her back.

Unlike a dragon, she couldn’t fly. Stupidly, she hadn’t even brought the most rudimentary tools, and even if she had bolt cutters, they would be inadequate against the massive chains keeping the dragon in place.

She was the worst thief ever, or certainly the least prepared.

But the pull of the dragon remained, a need like air.

What had been a passing whim now became a full-blown obsession with the dragon’s influence feeding her.

She would free the creature, but not tonight.

New plan. Fuck it. She was going to become a tutor.

Befriend the princess, save the dragon. How hard could it be?

***

Ev stared down the length of Castle Hotthorpe’s drive.

Somehow, it was even more intimidating in daylight.

The band around her wrist marked her as belonging, no one would arrest her, but she was having second thoughts.

And below those thoughts, the insistent burr of the dragon remained, like an earworm of a song, never entirely leaving her consciousness.

Doubts or not, she had to suck it up. It was her best chance at getting to the dragon.

The door chimed and a screen lit up with the simulated face of a bored-looking security program.

“I’m the tutor?” Ev hated how uncertain her voice sounded.

“Scan your wrist.” Contempt colored the electronic voice, even though Ev knew that was impossible.

“Oh. Right.” Ev lifted her wristband and the door clicked open.

“Miss Carissa is in the atrium. To your right.” The voice, and its condescension, followed Ev across the hushed marble entry hall.

Despite the weather outside, inside the atrium it was full-blown summer.

Plants grew riot, dripping fragrant blossoms, all surrounding a pool lined in turquoise and emerald tile.

Carissa lounged in a bikini at the far end of the room, legs long and tanned, toes and fingers glinting with matching mani- and pedicures.

She didn’t look up from her tablet, which was just as well, because Ev couldn’t help staring.

Butterflies – Ev couldn’t tell if they were drones like the fireflies or actual butterflies doped with chemicals or dosed with magic.

Either way, they hovered around Carissa’s hair, lifting strands and looping them over each other in complicated patterns to weave together the most delicate of fishtail braids.

It was ridiculous, impossible, showing off the Hotthorpes’ wealth – magic taken so deeply for granted that Carissa seemed to barely notice the butterflies at their work.

Carissa spoke without looking up. “Are you planning on spending our whole hour just standing there?”

Ev tried to remember if Princess Carissa had ever addressed her directly before.

Maybe she’d asked Ev to pass her a script in drama class, or to borrow a pen.

The musical voice that lilted through the halls, answering the oh my gods and so cutes had been replaced by a cool indifference that felt almost studied.

Voice as armor, a shield in stark contrast to her barely clad form.

Carissa’s legs were longer, sleeker, than Ev had ever realized, her stomach flatter.

Her belly-button was pierced, because of course it was – sparkly and drawing Ev’s eye.

She hadn’t spoken yet and Carissa finally looked up, impatiently waving the butterflies away.

“You can put your stuff down and sit there.” Carissa used her tablet to indicate the chaise next to hers.

Ev briefly caught sight of a diagram on the screen, a complex-looking chemical formula she was certain they hadn’t covered in class. Carissa needed tutoring, but she read chemistry books for fun? Seeing where Ev’s gaze was directed, Carissa turned the tablet and held it against her chest, frowning.

“Now, what was it you wanted to study?” Carissa asked, as if she was the one doing Ev the favor.

Ev had the brief, absurd thought that they were back in drama class, and Carissa was play-acting as the very epitome of a spoiled upper-class brat. Because no one could be this, could they? But then her social feed indicated that yes, maybe she was, unless it was masks all the way down.

Annoyance – hers, Carissa’s, the dragon’s, all three pinging in a feedback loop. Ev couldn’t tell the source, but it made her snap her next words. “I don’t need this job.” It came out pouty, defensive.

“Don’t you?” Carissa swept her gaze over Ev, her smirk self-satisfied.

Outside, the dragon hummed, reminding Ev why she was here. She rearranged her face into something like contrition.

“Sorry. I mean, it’s just, I don’t understand why you need me, given…” She gestured to the tablet.

Carissa tried to glare, but a hint of blush crept through, caught out. She tilted her head so that her hair swung forward to hide her face, seemingly more comfortable that way.

“It was my dad’s idea, not mine.”

“So,” Ev said after a moment when Carissa didn’t offer anything further. “Do you always do your studying in here?”

“It’s as good a place as any.” Carissa’s tone was guarded.

“It’s just, all the pictures you post with your dragon, I figured—” The words felt clumsy, an obvious ploy.

Carissa scented it, her head snapping up, her glare real and unadulterated this time. “You don’t need the job. So you’re here for the dragon, then?” The frost in Carissa’s voice lay atop bitterness, taking Ev by surprise.

She’d thought flattering, cooing like the coterie surrounding Carissa at school would open the floodgates of enthusiasm. Then she would let slip some key that Ev could use to set the dragon free. Except clearly Ev had done it wrong. “No, I…” she fumbled.

Was there a chance Carissa had seen her skulking around the property? Or was it that she was used to people using her to get to her dragon?

“It was just a question.”

How had she managed to fuck things up so thoroughly already?

It was going to be a long afternoon, a long semester.

***

When Ev arrived for their second tutoring session, she found Carissa in the atrium again, but at least this time she was fully clothed – jeans softened by multiple washings and a plain white t-shirt.

A spike of annoyance went through her. The jeans were probably designer, distressed to look like an old, favorite pair.

The t-shirt, too. How much money did it cost to look like you hadn’t put a moment of thought into your wardrobe, that you didn’t care?

Carissa’s back was turned, butterflies once more surrounding her.

Her hair was loosely braided, three strands thick enough that the butterflies couldn’t possibly have lifted them unless she’d trained them somehow to work in concert.

Carissa bent to set something down; when she stepped back, Ev saw it was a shallow dish of what was presumably nectar. So they weren’t drones, then.