Page 26 of Dragon Kissed

“I am dry.” Steam still rose faintly from his shoulders. She stared. He looked down: the rainwater had already evaporated off his skin. “Right,” she said. “Of course you are.”

He should leave. Instead he watched her cross to the table and pour tea from the pot Lirien had left hours ago, watched the line of her bare legs, the loose fall of her hair, the small domestic grace of a woman making tea at two in the morning for a man she’d watched turn to scales. “It’s cold,” he said.

“I drink cold tea.”

“You forget tea until it becomes cold.”

She glanced at him. “You remembered.”

“I remember everything you tell me.” The words stopped her.Again. Too much.But it was true, and he found he did not want to take it back — he had two hundred years of memory crammed with the faces of the dead, and he had made room in it, without deciding to, for every small thing she’d said.

Nica poured a second cup. “For you.”

“I do not want tea.”

“I don’t care.”

He accepted the cup. The liquid was cold; he warmed it between his palms without thinking, and steam rose, and Nica stared at the cup, then at him. Demetri drank. Her mouth twitched. “You are the strangest man I have ever met.”

“I have been called worse.”

“Recently?”

“Frequently.”

She sat on the sofa and drew her bare feet beneath her. Demetri remained standing. She looked at the empty space beside her; he chose the chair across from her instead, because the space beside her was the most dangerous place in the house, and the dragon objected.Closer.

No.

Coward.

Disciplined.

Old coward.

He ignored it. For several minutes the only sound was the sea, striking and withdrawing, striking and withdrawing, far below. Nica held her tea in both hands, the warmth he’d put into it curling steam past her face. “You said you intend to court me.”

“Yes.”

“Does this count?”

“No.”

“Good. Because it’s terrible.”

His mouth moved, and this time he could not stop it. Nica stared, and Demetri realized he was smiling — the expression felt unfamiliar on his face, unused, like a door swollen shut for years and forced suddenly open. Her gaze softened. “You should do that more often.”

“What?”

“Smile.”

“It is not a useful activity.”

“It changes your whole face.”

The smile vanished — not because he wanted it to, but because the tenderness in her voice reached too deep, into a place two centuries of discipline had walled off, and something there ached. Nica looked down at her tea. “I’m not going to ask again tonight. What I saw.” He said nothing. “But I’m not forgetting it. And tomorrow, I want actual answers.”

“I will give you every answer I legally can.”