Page 43 of Dragon Kissed

“Yes.”

She laughed — she couldn’t help it — the sound too high, edged with panic, as Demetri moved closer. “Do not touch me yet.” He stopped. Immediately. That helped, more than it should have, the instant obedience of him, the way a man who could lift a grown attacker off the floor one-handed arranged all that power around the wordnofrom her. Nica stared at the floor. Elves. Twelve hundred years. Glowing vines. A dragon in the fog. Demetri’s scales beneath her hands. She looked up slowly. “Whatareyou?”

His entire body went still. “I cannot answer that.”

“You can tell me elves exist, but you can’t tell me what you are?”

“Because their existence is not the secret that binds your life to mine.”

The words entered her one at a time.Binds your life to mine.Her throat tightened. “Demetri.”

He took one step and stopped beyond reach. “I am sorry. There are laws I must follow. Telling you everything would put you in danger. I cannot tolerate a threat to your life. Especially from me.”

She believed him, and that made everything worse. It was so much easier to leave a man who lied.

They workedfor three hours and built the beginning of a map. Crowe’s acquisition clusters overlapped Benedikte’s hunter activity. Weapons moved through shell companies. Two names appeared repeatedly, hidden behind titles: THE MAGISTRATE. THE WITNESS. Demetri recognized neither. Or claimed not to.

Somewhere in the middle of it he set a plate beside her — bread, cheese, sliced apple, the pieces arranged with a care she chose not to remark on. “Eat.”

“You get very commanding around food.”

“You forget it exists.”

She pushed half the bread toward him. “You aren’t eating either.” His eyes narrowed. They ate in silence, the fog at the windows, the fire behind its glass, the only sounds the sea and the turning of a page. It felt strangely intimate. More intimate, perhaps, than breakfast had been — two people working a terrible problem side by side and pausing to make sure the other one ate.

“You said you remember everything,” she said. “Do you remember every person you lose?”

The question came without warning, and Demetri stopped chewing. His face changed — the cold discipline remained, but beneath it something old opened its eyes. “Yes.”

She looked down. “Baba Yelena used to say remembering was how we kept people from disappearing completely. I used to believe her.” She turned a pencil between her fingers, and found, to her own surprise, that she was going to say the rest of it. “My mother died when I was six. Overdose. My father was gone before I was born. Baba raised me until I was fourteen. Then she had a stroke in the kitchen. I called the ambulance. I knewthe address but forgot the apartment number. I kept saying the wrong number.” She had not told anyone that in years. Not even Tasha. It came out of her now in this fog-walled room because the man across from her remembered everything and had just told her he carried his dead the way she carried hers. “I thought if I’d answered faster, or remembered better, maybe?—”

“You were fourteen. You were a child. You were not responsible.”

“I know.” Knowing had never changed the shape of memory. Demetri crouched beside her chair — he did not tower over her; he brought himself level, the way he seemed to know, without being told, exactly how she needed to be met. “What happened after?”

“Foster care. Six homes in four years. Tasha was in the fourth house with me. Closest thing I had to a sister. She died when I was seventeen. Another overdose. After that, I stopped believing Baba.”

“That memory keeps people alive?”

“That loving them is worth what happens when they leave.” The truth emptied the room. She had never once said it out loud, and saying it to him felt like handing over a live wire. “This is why I can’t give you what you’re asking for.”

“I have not asked you for anything.”

“You ask every time you look at me.” His breath caught.Good. Let him feel what his certainty does to me.“The last man I dated told me he loved me. He was kind. Normal. He wanted a future. I spent three days imagining it, and then I ended the relationship.”

“Because you did not love him?”

“Because I might have.” Demetri’s gaze dropped. “I’m not good at staying.”

“You stayed when Margaret was hurt. You stayed when I lost control. You stayed with a collection no one else valued becausethe objects deserved care.” He said it not as flattery but as evidence, laid out the way she’d laid out Crowe’s dates, and it was harder to argue with than any compliment.

“Objects don’t die because you love them.”

“No.” His voice went quiet. “They merely outlive everyone.” The words held more experience than any normal man could possess, an exhaustion two centuries deep. “How many people have you lost?”

“Too many.”

“Women?”