"Let go of me, you idiot!"
The dragon chortled, rumbling deep. "You're a gambit, my pretty. Perhaps you'll be rescued. Perhaps I'll eat you. But either way, I'll leverage you into increasing my hoard."
The princess looked around incredulously. "You call THIS a hoard?" she asked. "Seriously, you've got no taste." The cavern floor was covered with golden coins, necklaces, jewelry, statues, crowns. "Look, let me go, and I'll be nice to you and leave you with your shiny things."
The dragon stared at her, open mouthed, in shock. She could barely restrain herself, but incinerating her now would lose her retail value. "SHINY THINGS? You belittle my hoard?!?" The dragon gaped, thought, then composed herself. "Oh, but it will be a little richer once I've fleeced your kingdom of its treasure."
The princess shook her head and rolled her eyes. "Don't say I didn't warn you."
They were both then aware of another presence, trying to creep into the cavern unannounced. They both waited silently. The dragon in anticipation. The princess, grinning.
The hero poked his head into the cavern, looked around, eyes darting here and there. "Ooo lookee," he said flatly, "a big golden hoard."
"See?" said the princess. The dragon blasted the entrance with fire. The hero had a shield up, a rather improbably fire resistant one, and he backed away.
"Hiya Angelique!" called the hero from the tunnel. The dragon roared and scrabbled at the little entrance.
"Hiya Red!" called back the princess. The dragon walked around, seeing if she could angle her breath straight down the tunnel.
"She got anything of value in there?" called Red.
"Well she's got me!" called back Angelique. The dragon blasted the tunnel. Flame shot out the other end, flaring out of the mountain.
"Probably more like you've got her," called back Red, unharmed. "Well?" The dragon pressed an eye to the tunnel, looking for where this hero was hiding.
The princess looked around, appraising the hoard. "Well ... hm, gold, gold. Some silver. Crowns with diamonds, rubies, emeralds and whatnot. Some of these gold necklaces might have some interesting filigree. There's some armor from some past knights, but it's rusting."
"Aw too bad," called back Red.
"No books," said the princess. "No instruments. A couple swords, but they look flat iron with gold inlay and jewels etc etc etc. No interesting unidentifiable things."
"What is WITH you two?!" roared the dragon. She changed strategies — she pinned the princess to the ground under her great claw. "Come out, or I'll poke her so she dies slowly!" threatened the dragon.
The princess looked up, then started picking at her teeth. Perhaps there was some lettuce stuck there.
Enough, thought the dragon. With her other claw, she poked the princess straight through the heart. But she wouldn't poke. Confused, the dragon tried again and again, but the princess was harder than diamond.
The hero had entered the cavern again, circling behind. The dragon realized that there was more here than met the eye. By all rights they should both be dead right now. She didn't really know what she was dealing with. The exit above her beckoned. But that would leave these two with her hoard. Which they both explicitly didn't want. No this is definitely not right. She spread her wings and leapt into the air.
Except, she didn't. The princess held her claw, and would not let go, and somehow that was enough to hold her down.
"Oh, my mistake," said the princess. "I do see something valuable in here. There's a dragon!"
The dragon flopped around like a giant bird in a snare. Flame whipped around the chamber. Wings neck and tail smashed aimlessly against the cavern walls, shattering stone, bring down chunks of rock. The hero crouched in a corner and fended of the maelstrom with his shield over his head. The princess calmly held on, unperturbed, in the middle. She was an unshakeable anchor to the floor, like a child holding a balloon in a strong wind. The dragon would pause, then lash out again in wild violence. Seconds. Minutes. Quite a long time. The dragon had some endurance.
But eventually, it laid still, panting, exhausted.
"Um, Angelique?" said Red. "I've seen that you are ... capable ... but ... this is beyond plausible." He swallowed. "You're ... not human, are you."
"A girl has to have her secrets," answered Angelique.
The dragon panted.
Red turned to the Dragon. "Dragon ... can you tell?"
"Red! No!" said the princess.
"Is the princess holding you down human?" asked Red. The dragon turned its head to stare at him.
The princess started to argue, but couldn't think of what to say.
The dragon looked back at the princess. The dragon poked her again, but this time she ran her claw along the princess's face carefully. She sniffed. Sniffed again.
"She's a dragon," said the dragon. "And I'm an idiot."
"Yes you are," said Angelique kindly. "But look, you learned this time. So maybe there's hope for you." The princess transformed. Now there were two dragons in the cavern. Angelique, now holding down the original dragon, was twice her size and clearly ancient. "And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for this meddling kid," Angelique boomed.
"Don't blame her," Red said to Angelique. "I was already pretty sure you were a dragon, or an arch-demon. Or some unknown eldritch horror I've never seen records of. I hadn't narrowed it down for sure yet."
"I've no doubt," thrummed Angelique. "You've got a good eye. You see true, and when you don't see, you look again, and again, and if it's too hard you invent new ways of seeing." Angelique laughed. "It's one of the first things that made me like you."
The giant Angelique laid down her head, looking at Red out of the corner of her eye. "So ... what do you think of me now? You still like me?"
"Oh I don't know," said Red. "I was hoping for an eldritch horror ..."
"Red!"
"Angelique. I could not love you more. You're funny. You're exciting. You've got taste — you KNOW what you like and don't like and you can explain why in detail. You're capable and imaginative and you have METALLURGY as a hobby ... do you have ANY IDEA HOW RARE THAT IS??? And now it turns out you're secretly a firebreathing magical dragon who can ... sorry, sorry. You were off the scales to begin with. On a scale of 0..10, you were already a 13. You have more awesomeness than I know what to do with. This is just more, so you're holding steady at 13."
Angelique rumbled in approval.
"Actually," mused Red, "I've got some very specific ideas of what to try with your awesomeness of dragonfire, combined with perhaps tungsten and ceramic ..."
"Oh I've got some tricks there to show you," grinned Angelique.
"I'm not here," said the smaller dragon in exasperation.
This was in response to a prompt on reddit.com r/WritingPrompts, "The dragon disguised itself as the princess inorder to kill the hero. But as they spent more time the dragon seems itself falling for the hero. Now the dragon wants to live as the princess and the hero to never find the truth. Until today when the dragon was kidnapped by another dragon"