Dragon's Keep

A and I both just read Dragon's Keep by Janet Lee Carey. It is set in around 1100 on Wilde Island. It's about Princess Rosalind who was born with a dragon's claw on her left hand and a prophecy that she will bring peace to the island.

Dragons have been preying on the people of Wilde Island for many years. Because she has a dragon mark, her mother forces her to wear golden gloves all the time so no one will see it. Her mother brings in all sorts of healers to try to cure the "flaw", but the healers are useless, partly because they are never told what they are supposed to heal. At one point, Rosalind is nearly eaten by a dragon, but when she takes of the gloves in order to try to scratch it, it kisses her claw and flies away.

Rosalind meets a young knight and begins to fall in love with him, but during a hunting accident, he sees her claw and appears to be disgusted. He sails away the next day to fight the civil war in England between Stephen and Mathilde. Shortly after this, Rosalind is kidnapped by the dragon to care for his pips (baby dragons) since their mother has been killed. He agrees to eat no more people as long as she doesn't try to escape or speak to any other humans. She comes to love the father dragon and his brood. Her best friend comes to the island to try to rescue her on a stormy day and end up saving the life of one of the pips by giving up her own life. The dragon finally realizes that not all humans are bad. (There's a long back story of dragons having saved humankind by giving them fire and then the treaties the humans made being broken and the dragons being hunted to near extinction.) He dies in grief for his lost mate and another pip that was killed in the storm.

Rosalind is brought back to the island by her dragon friends where she tries to regain the throne from a usurper who has poisoned her mother. She is nearly hanged, when the knight shows up and saves the day. The dragons come back and give her obeisance and she strips off the gloves and the people proclaim, "The dragons have given her a dragon's claw as a sign of peace."

It's a pretty good book. We both enjoyed it.