Page 98 of Dragon Cursed
He didn’t know how to tell her.
He kissed her hand instead.Then her mouth.Then her hair.
"You died," he said softly."You died,a chuisle.She would not let me follow you.She gave you her piece — Mairin's piece — directly.Her magic is in your blood now."
"Oh," Poppy whispered.Her free hand had risen to her own face.She touched her cheekbone, her eyelash, the corner of her own eye, as if checking."Oh, my eyes feel — different."
"They are different."
"Alsander."
"Yes."
"There is something else.You — your face — there is something else you have not told me."
He looked at her.He looked at his mate, who had walked into a shrine expecting to die for him and who had come back with a goddess in her blood, and he understood that there was one more thing she didn’t know that he had to give her.
He took her hand.
He laid it flat on her own belly.Below her sternum.Below the place where the pendant had lived for ten generations.
He kept his hand on hers.
"Listen," he said quietly.
"Listen for what?"
"With the new senses you have now.Listen."
She was very still under his hand.
Her brow furrowed.Her gold-green-blue eyes went distant.He watched her listen with a sense she hadn’t known she had, a sense her line had carried for ten generations and had never been allowed to use until now, and he watched her find what was inside her own body.
Her face changed.
He watched her go from bewilderment tounderstandingin the space of one slow inhalation, and her hand under his trembled, and her free hand flew up to cover her mouth, and the gold-and-green-and-blue of her eyes filled with tears.
"Alsander."
"Yes."
"There is — Alsander, there is — "
"Yes,mo chroí.There is."
"A baby." She was laughing through the tears.Her whole body was shaking."There is a baby.There is — there is ababy, Alsander, I — when did —how— "
"The night in the moss, I think."
"The first — thefirst— Alsander, I was — I was on thecontraceptive, my grandmother's tincture, I have been taking it since I was — "
"The bond overrode it.The fire-binding last night took deeper than it should have because there were two of you,a chuisle.I didn’t know.I didn’t understand until the goddess passed her gift through both of you.Two heartbeats.Both yours.Bothmine."
She was crying.
She was crying the same wet helpless laughter she had laughed in the car at the postman, in the cottage at the cookies, in the bedroom at the way her aunt held her hand.She buried her face in his chest.She pressed her hand harder to her belly under his hand, and he felt — through the bond now alive in both of them — the small new fire of his child curl under her palm andsettle, sensing her, sensing him.
"Alsander."
