Pure Dead Frozen by Debi Gliori

her dressing table, pinning up her long silver hair, Mrs. McLachlan sighed. In over six hundred years, Ffup’s grasp of the rudiments of etiquette had not improved one whit. The dragon
still
behaved like an untamable teenager, despite being a parent herself. Wondering what had brought her upstairs, Mrs. McLachlan poked a final pin into her hair and turned to face her visitor. Clearly nervous, Ffup clasped and unclasped her front paws, her golden eyes fixed on the floor and little puffs of steam coming from both nostrils.

    â€œEr,” she began, “it’s great to see you’re back on your, um…We’re so delighted that you’re feeling, er…I was wondering if now would be a good time, ah—” She broke off, embarrassed, as her stomach gave a loud roar of complaint, its digestive chorus running to several verses, each one longer and more embarrassingly loud than the one before.
    What
had the dragon had for breakfast? wondered Mrs. McLachlan. Or did her ridiculous diet forbid breakfast, along with every single food substance known to man or beast—with the sole exceptions of grapes and strawberries, neither of which were in plentiful supply this far into a Scottish winter? Ffup had, in fact, breakfasted well. She’d sneaked out of the house with a twelve-pack of tuna, three tins of anchovies, two jars of salmon in aspic, and a defrosted packet of fish sticks, taking this fishy feast down to the lochside to share with her husband-to-be, the gigantic sea serpent the Sleeper. When the loch waters had parted to reveal the huge head of her beloved, they also unfortunately exposed the undulating form of a smaller, perfectly formed, dainty
female
sea serpent, her coils coyly intertwined with those of Ffup’s so-called fiancé.
    Ffup’s initial reaction had been to hurl tins of tuna at her faithless Sleeper, but as three tins sank without trace several hundred yards shy of their target, the betrayed and weeping dragon decided not to waste any more food on such a scumbag. Stomping off into the privacy of a vast rhododendron bush, Ffup indulged in a spot of comfort eating, wolfing down every last flake of fish, drop of oil, and blob of aspic in between floods of tears and howls of outrage. By the time the last fish stick had slid flabbily down her throat, she had come to a decision. The engagement was off. The wedding was canceled. She’d phone the florist, the caterers, the dressmaker, the printer, the coach hire company, the minister, the marquee people, the chandlers, and the firework display designers, and at the same time cancel her subscriptions to
Bridal Beast, Dragon Damsels,
and
Weight Wibblers Anonymous
…tomorrow. First of all, and most important, she had to go through the time-honored tradition of removing her engagement ring and flinging it back in the face of the…the faithless, lying, two-timing, slimy toad who…who had broken her poor innocent little dragon heart.
    But before
that,
she had to find her engagement ring. Four months ago, when the Sleeper had slid the colossal diamond onto her talon, Ffup had been ecstatic. So ecstatic that, in all the girly froth of showing off her new engagement ring to her admiring family, she hadn’t noticed Mrs. McLachlan drawing back from the ring with a gasp of horror. For Mrs. McLachlan had recognized the stone in Ffup’s ring. She alone had realized that it was no diamond, no matter how brightly it seemed to glitter. She knew that the stone was older than a mere prehistoric lump of compressed carbon, older than Time itself. Unfortunately, she also knew that the stone was a prize that certain Hades-spawned entities would stop at nothing to acquire. When Ffup’s talon had turned a hideous corpse-gray beneath the ring’s embrace, Mrs. McLachlan had seized the opportunity to protect those she loved. On the pretext of allowing Ffup’s talon time to recover, she had taken the ring, removed the stone