In Unexpected Magic, due for publication on June 16th, my heroine is saved by being kidnapped by a dragon. Is it out of the boiling kettle into the fire? Or something else?

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Delia had no idea how much time had passed before she surfaced into consciousness. It was long enough for her to be somewhere else—somewhere she did not recognize. She was lying on her side on a grassy slope, looking down from a height across a body of water to the steep side of a mountain.

She moved cautiously, lifting herself up on her elbow. Every part of her ached, though she could see no visible wounds, and her limbs moved without increasing the pain. A glance told her that the lake, or perhaps river, had mountains on both sides, and that the gentle slope beneath her dropped away suddenly a dozen paces from her hands.

As she looked around, she realized she was not alone. The other occupant had been unseen behind her until she turned her head. He took up the full width of the slope and most of the length, and even so, his forelegs draped over the edge of the drop, as did his tail.

He—she could not have said why she thought the dragon was male, but she could not think of him by any other pronoun—gazed at her with large, calm, yellow-brown eyes. Perhaps she was still in shock, for she did not feel afraid. The dragon could have eaten her in one gulp, but he had not done so. Not yet, in any case. Indeed, if one looked at the situation dispassionately, he had saved her from the Welsh mage.

“Thank you for saving me,” she said.

The dragon inclined his head, as if acknowledging her comment. He was rather beautiful—a deep emerald-green, shading to mint-green on his belly and throat. His wings, folded now against his sides, were the deep green of his body but laced with gold, and the spine ridge that ran from the tip of his tail to the horns behind his ears was also gold.

As to his shape, he was everything she had ever imagined a dragon could be. On first sight, she had compared him to the chicken-house dragon, but up close and now that she was calm, she could see how wrong she had been. It was like comparing a pigeon hatchling to an adult peacock, or a rat to a thoroughbred horse. The same number of limbs, ears, eyes, and so on, but on one functional and on the other, elegance personified.

“Where are we?” she asked him, sitting up and looking around.

The dragon stood and walked away, heading along the ledge and around a corner. With no other viable option, Delia followed him, but stopped at the threshold of a cave whose entrance was so high that the dragon had gone ahead of her into the gloom, crouching and moving forward with his head down and his body nearly touching the ground.

A sudden burst of flame in the interior had her leaping backward. She looked longingly around at the landscape, but could see no signs of habitation, no hint of a possible rescue. If she ran, the dragon could catch her in moments.

He saved me from the mage, she repeated to herself, and stepped resolutely into the cave.

After several steps, it opened out into a great vaulted cavern. The dragon had lit a fire in the middle, and by its flickering light, Delia could see several smaller caves around the perimeter of the spacious central area.

It was cooler here underground, but the fire was not necessary. Except to see by, she supposed. But those tawny eyes had slitted pupils, like a cat’s. Did the dragon need light to see by?

She could not afford to be soothed by the sudden notion that he had lit the fire for her convenience. The dragon was a dangerous beast. He had already killed at least one person in front of her eyes—for she did not see how the man who had been holding her could have survived, and the mage might well have died from being thrown against the wall. Furthermore, the dragon had brought her here for an unknown purpose.

But he seemed mild enough at present. He lifted a forearm, claws outstretched—it took her a moment to realize he was pointing to one of the caves, for his paw, with its outstretched claws, looked nothing like a pointing hand.

But he waited patiently, his eyes moving back and forth from her to the cave in the direction of his gesture.

Once she guessed what he wanted and obeyed, she found the cave had been set up with an untidy bed of bracken covered unevenly with a blanket. “Who lives here?”

She did not realize she had spoken out loud until the dragon made a noise that sounded more like a gurgle than a roar, and she looked at him to find that he was gesturing to her.

“I live here?” she asked. “You set this up for me?”

The dragon nodded.