Page 37 of Dragon Cursed
"No."
"Why?"
She thought about it.About the right answer.About all the answers that were true.
"Because I love you," she said simply."Because I have always loved you.Because every step of my life has been walking toward you.Because my grandmother told me on her deathbed that he would come, and he did, and he isyou.Because no one has ever looked at me the way you look at me, and I am not letting that go.Not now.Not ever."
A long silence.
His arms tightened around her.
"I am not worth that."
"You are."She kissed his temple."You are.And I am going to spend the rest of my life proving it to you.However long that turns out to be."
He shuddered.
He turned his face into her palm, and she felt wet heat on her skin, and she didn’t say a word about it, because she understood that a man who had been strong for so long didn’t weep where anyone could see, and she would not be the one who made him do it twice.
After a long time, he raised his head.
His green eyes searched hers.
"I am going to keep you alive,a chuisle."His voice was a low, broken vow."I don’t know how yet.But I swear it on the blood I have given this forest.I will not lose you."
"I know."
She pulled him back down to her.
The fire burned low in its iron cradle.Outside the lair, the cursed forest stood silent.And inside it, for the first time in three centuries —
A dragon slept in someone's arms.
10
Alsander
He hadn’t knownhe could be tired like this.
Not the wrung-out exhaustion of a long battle.Not the gray bone-tired of three centuries of curse-bleeding.Something else.Something quiet.
The kind of tired a man earned giving pleasure to a woman.
He lay on his back on the bed of furs with one arm under his own head and the other curled around the woman tucked against his side.Firelight crawled across the high vault of stone above them.His body felt heavier than it had in a hundred years.
It also felt lighter.
Poppy had her cheek on his chest.Her hand traced an old scar across his ribs.Her hair was a silken sprawl across his shoulder.Neither of them had spoken in a long time.
He had thought, when he carried her into this lair, that he would not survive a second hour of having her in it.
He was past the second hour.
He was alive.He was warm.His lair didn’t feel like a tomb.
The skin between his ribs, where the rot had been deepest, no longer ached when he breathed.
He drew a long breath in.
