Page 65 of Dragon Kissed

“It is invasive.”

She likes it.

Nica ignored the dragon. Mostly. Because he was right, and the dragon always knew when he was right, and gloated.

Demetri kissed the top of her head. “The legal documents are complete. The current identity will remain active.”

“And in sixty years?”

“I will appear eighty-three.”

“You’ll hate that.”

“I already dislike it.” Nica smiled. “And me?”

“You may choose how you wish to appear.”

“Thirty forever sounds suspicious.”

“Forty?”

“Rude.” His arms closed around her, and Nica turned in his hold, and the humor drained out of her into something she was still learning how to say. “I’m serious. I don’t know what forever looks like.” She had spent her whole life unable to picture next year; forever was a language she did not speak.

“No one does.”

“You’ve had more practice.”

“Poor practice.” He said it with two centuries of loneliness folded into two words, and she understood that his forever had been as frightening as hers, only longer. She rested her hands against his chest, and the silver mark across her back warmed, answering the nearness of him the way it always did now.

Demetri’s eyes flashed ruby. “There is something else,” he said.

Nica felt his nerves before she saw them — a flutter down the bond, incongruous in a creature that had faced kings and executioners without blinking.Demetri Vasiliev. Terrified.The dragon bounced inside the bond like an impatient animal.Ask her.

“I am attempting to.”

Slowly.

“I have waited three weeks.” Nica stared. “Are you arguing with him?”

“Yes.”

“About what?” Demetri released her, stepped back, and went down on one knee. Nica’s heart stopped. The dragon roared approval. Demetri held no ring. Instead he opened his palm: an old Russian icon pendant rested there, ruby enamel surrounding a tiny silver flame. “My mother gave this to me when I left Russia,” he said. “It is the only object I have carried through every identity.” Two hundred and seventy years, a dozen names, a dozen buried lives — and this one small thing had survived all of them, and he was giving it to her. Nica looked from the pendant to his face. “You don’t have to?—”

“I know.” His eyes held hers. “The bond made you my mate under Draquonir law. It did not make you my wife under yours.” Her throat tightened. Demetri spoke in old Russian then, the same formal language she’d read from the manuscript on the first day, Baba Yelena’s cadences in a dragon’s mouth. “Before fire and witness, I ask not for obedience, but companionship. Not for possession, but return. Walk beside me while roads remain.” Tears blurred him. He continued in English. “Marry me, Nica.”

The dragon pushed through.Say yes.

She laughed through the tears, and Demetri’s eyebrows rose. “He’s impatient.”

“He has no manners.”

I have waited two hundred and seventy years.

Nica touched Demetri’s face — the jaw she’d wanted to feel under her palm the first moment he caught her, the mouth that hadn’t known how to smile and now did, because of her. “Yes.”

The word barely left her before he stood and lifted her off the floor, and she wrapped her arms around his neck, and Demetri kissed her, and the dragon filled the bond with fire and triumph, and for once she did not tell it to behave.

Behind the glass wall, Margaret stopped walking. Caelen followed her gaze. Lirien appeared in the corridor and clasped both hands beneath her chin. Nica lifted her mouth from Demetri’s. “We have an audience.”