The gardener found the princess’s shoe under a rosebush while everyone else was looking toward the mountains.

He picked it up and brushed dirt from the heel. It was blue, with a little silver buckle, and he stood holding it until a guard asked which way the dragon had gone.

“North,” he said. “I think.”

By evening he was certain—though by then, everyone was certain about something.

Eleanor had gone into the garden because dinner was late and the dining room was hot. She thought she’d left a book on one of the benches. The gardener would later insist she’d been admiring the roses, which annoyed her to hear, as she had passed those roses every day for years without showing much interest.

The dragon came over the eastern wall.

There was a noise like a tree splitting, and one of the benches broke beneath its foot. Eleanor ran toward the door, but the dragon grabbed her around the waist before she reached the steps. She lost a shoe. A guard fired his crossbow, too late to do any good, and another ran into the garden with a spear, only to stand there, looking up.

By the time anyone thought to ring the alarm bell, she was gone.

Her father spent the first hour demanding answers nobody could give him. Where had it taken her? Was she hurt? Why hadn’t the guards stopped it? Eventually he sat down, and one of the servants brought him water, though he didn’t drink it.

That evening he offered gold, an estate, and his daughter’s hand in marriage to whoever brought her safely home.

Thomas heard the announcement the next morning while buying bread. He had come into town to have a loose buckle replaced on his saddle, and he hadn’t expected anything more difficult that day than finding the saddler sober.

He knew the princess, though “knew” was probably a stretch. They had spoken once in the infirmary after a tournament. He had broken his wrist falling from his horse, and had been trying to explain that the horse had slipped. It was true, but it didn’t make the fall much less embarrassing.

Eleanor had listened for a while and then asked whether the horse was all right.

He’d liked her for that.

At the palace, he found several knights talking about the mountain road and how difficult it would be to get men and equipment up there. Thomas listened, expecting someone to make a decision soon. But the conversation kept circling back to the same obstacles.

At last he asked, “Has anybody actually gone?”

Nobody had.

He wished afterward that he’d waited a little longer before volunteering, or at least thought of something better to say to the king than “I can go.” But that was what he said, and the king took hold of his arm with both hands.

“Bring her back,” he said.

Edmund could see how young this knight was, and felt ashamed of the relief that washed over him anyway, now that somebody else was going.

Thomas had no idea what to do with the hope in the man’s face.

“I’ll try, Your Majesty.”

He rode north for most of that day and slept badly at an inn, partly because of the noise downstairs and partly because he kept imagining the size of the dragon.

The next morning, the road grew steeper. There were fewer houses, and outside the last village he passed a field where several sheep stood crowded against a fence, watching him with that familiar, suspicious look sheep have.

An old man was mending a shutter on one of the houses.

“Going to the hollow?” he asked.

Thomas nodded.

The man looked at the sword hanging from his saddle, then at Thomas, and seemed about to say something discouraging. Instead, he pointed out the path.

“It comes down here sometimes. Took my son’s best ram last spring.”

“I’m sorry.”

“We sent word to the palace. Twice.” The man looked at Thomas’s horse. “Suppose they’ve found the road now.”

Thomas adjusted a loose fold of the reins. He hadn’t known about any messages.

“I can’t answer for that.”

“No. I don’t suppose you can.”

The man lifted the shutter, trying to settle its weight against his knee. Thomas dismounted and held it while he drove a nail through the hinge. It took several blows, and neither of them spoke until it was done.

“Thank you,” the man said.

Thomas swung back into the saddle.

“Be careful up there.”

“I will.”

The man watched him gather the reins.

“You don’t have to prove anything to us.”

Thomas nodded, though he wasn’t sure what to say, and rode on.

He left his horse below the cave. The animal had already begun tossing its head and backing away, and Thomas couldn’t blame it. There was a smell coming down the slope that reminded him of meat left too long in the sun.

He checked his sword twice. Then he went up.

At first Eleanor thought the footsteps belonged to another animal.

Other creatures came into the cave sometimes. A fox had appeared near the entrance that morning and vanished as soon as the dragon moved. She had watched the place where it disappeared for a long time, trying to work out whether she could fit through the same opening.

Then someone said her name.

“Eleanor?”

She stood too quickly. Her bare foot slipped on the stone, and she caught herself against the wall.

Thomas.

She remembered him lying in the infirmary, explaining his fall to anyone who would listen. She remembered having to leave because her attendant was waiting at the door.

Now he was standing at the cave entrance. She tried to say his name, but nothing came out. Her mouth had gone dry, and she was smiling, absurdly, when she ought to have been warning him.

Thomas saw her getting to her feet. For a moment his knees went loose. He’d spent the whole journey refusing to imagine arriving too late, and now she was there, alive, holding one hand against the wall.

He drew a breath that caught halfway in.

Eleanor took two steps toward him before the dragon lifted its head. She stopped so abruptly that her bare heel scraped across the stone.

There was nobody behind Thomas.

She looked past his shoulder toward the entrance, waiting for someone else to appear.

“Go away,” the dragon said.

Thomas had thought it was a mound of rock.

He had prepared himself, as much as a person could, for teeth and claws and fire. Hearing it speak seemed somehow worse.

For one dreadful moment Eleanor thought he would leave. She wouldn’t have blamed him, or at least she hoped she wouldn’t, but she was already imagining the sound of his footsteps going away.

“I’ve come for the princess.”

“Yes,” said the dragon. “I gathered that.”