“Hyperion’s hideous,” I say.
She laughs. “It did?” And then she bursts into tears. “This is the best Christmas ever.” She hugs me, and I’m not inclined to argue with her. “You’re amazing, and I love you, Axel.”
My heart swells, or it feels like it does. “Thank you.”
She shoves back, frowning. “No, that’s not what you say.”
“You said I’m amazing.” I blink. “Why is that not what I should say? I thought expressing gratitude was polite.”
“But I also said something else.”
I stare at her.
“I said I loved you.” She thumps my chest. “You have to say, ‘I love you too, Liz.’”
“If I have to say it, then does it really mean anything?” I smile.
This time, she doesn’t thump me. My little warrior punches me as hard as she can. “Yes, that’s what you say.” She stands up on the bed, and she spreads her legs, her hands out. “Unless you want a fight on your hands, a fight I don’t think you can handle.”
This feels like my Christmas present. I stand too, enjoying the added complication of the unsteady footing of this human bed. “Okay.” I smile. “Go ahead. I might enjoy fighting you as much as I enjoy hugging you.”
Her eyes flash, and she strikes, her hand hitting my shoulder. I spin her around, shoving her down on the bed, and straddling her hips. I drop my face by her ear. “How long do you want to do this before you surrender?”
She snaps at my face, like she might bite me. “I’ll never surrender.”
“And that’s why I love you, Elizabeth Chadwick,” I whisper. “Forever. In every form, in every time, even without all my memories, I just fall for you all over again. I think I loved you, even before I found this body again, because you are surprisingly, unexpectedly, exactly what I need.”
She freezes, and then, somehow, she flips around underneath me. Her hands snake around my head, and they pull me down toward her. When our mouths meet, something inside of me roars to life. Mine, it shouts. Mine!
She kisses me back just as fiercely, and I realize that I’m lost. I have no idea what I’m supposed to do next. And in the early morning light, Liz shows me exactly what to do.
It’s fast.
It’s slow.
It’s perfect.
And then she closes her eyes and falls asleep again on my arm. I’d rather die than move in that moment. But like all moments, like time itself, it’s slippery. It doesn’t last.
As the rays of the sun beat down harder and harder, Liz’s eyes finally open and she smiles. “I love you, Axel.”
I smile. “Thank you.”
This time, she bites her lip, and she shakes her head. “I’d love another training session, since you clearly have trouble learning things the first time, but we don’t have time. It’s Christmas morning.” She springs out of the bed, and she grabs her clothes, and she ducks into the bathroom. I dress while she’s gone. When she emerges, clean and dressed, she’s still smiling.
“Is that what you don’t want Hyperion to do with your sister?”
She coughs.
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
“It is a yes,” she says. “An emphatic one. As humans, we don’t do. . .” She coughs again. “That until we’re adults.”
I nod.
“Wait, is that not close to what dragons do when they mate?”
I laugh. “Uh, no. Nothing like that. When we fly, our bodies entwine, and our magic spills over, and then. . . I’m not entirely sure, never having done it, but it’s not like that.”
