The clock stopped. Nick opened his eyes.
“What happened, baby? It looks like you’ve been crying.” He reached for her and wiped her tears away with his thumb.
She caught his hand between her own. “We don’t have much time. There’s something I have to ask you.”
“I’m so tired. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“You’re dying,” she blurted, and the tears came again.
“I am? I’m not in any pain.”
“Internal bleeding. It’s insidious. We can’t fix it. Not a human doctor or Harriet.”
“Oh.” His face softened.
“I’ve used dragon magic to stop time and wake you, but I can’t do this forever.”
“So, this is goodbye?” He rubbed his thumb softly against her cheek. “Don’t cry for me, baby. Everyone dies. Well, not you, but humans.” His words vibrated at the corners, and she could tell he was trying to comfort her and hide his own fears.
“I can save you,” she said, “but it entails bonding you to me, the same way I bonded Harriet. I would have to feed you my tooth. The magic would heal you, but it would also connect you to me for the length of my life.”
He inhaled sharply. “Yeah, I heard about the tooth thing from your brothers. Didn’t know what it meant though.”
“It’s forever, Nick. If we do this, there’s no going back.”
He stared at her for a moment, his eyes wide. “It sounds like you’re proposing.”
“Marriage is until death do us part. What I am proposing is a commitment far longer and greater still. I’ll be able to draw you to me and feel where you are at all times. You will live forever and will have to change your identity as I do. The intimacy this requires is unlike any you’ve experienced before. At times I will be inside your head. My magic will burn inside you.”
She watched his throat bob on a swallow. “You’re not doing a great job of selling this thing, Rowan. Jesus.”
She ran both hands through her hair, feeling like a feather caked with mud, what beauty and lightness that had existed in her now suffocated under the choice before them. She refused to tell him the rest of it, that she would likely go mad if he said no. She refused to load the weight of her suffering on his shoulders. If he chose this, it must be his choice only, and for no other reason than his deep desire to be with her.
“Rowan… Rowan…,” he said softly. “I need to tell you something, and I can’t do it with you crying like that. It’s tearing my heart out.”
She bolstered herself and wiped away her tears.
“Good. Uh, you know, I never really bonded with anyone as an adult. After my mom died and I was left with Stan and he was like Mr. Evil, I just closed off to other people, you know?”
She nodded. She did understand, but it crushed her to hear it.
“I used to think there was something broken in me. Permanently broken, because as a child I’d just never learned to be human like everyone else and there was a hole where my heart should be. A goddamned gaping chasm.”
“Oh, Nick…”
“No, wait, I’m trying to tell you something. So I’m walking around all my life with this hole, this weird emptiness that I can’t fill with anything or anyone. Drugs don’t work, drinking don’t work. I can’t fill it with anything. And then you come along, and I realize… I realized that the reason I could never fill it with something from this world was because the shape of that hole wasn’t of anything worldly. It was the shape of you. Dragon big and as bright as your smile. Being with you, it’s the first time I’ve felt wanted and the first time I’ve really wanted someone else. It was like a taste of what it was like for other people. Warmth and caring. Feeling… connected.”
“Oh, Nick.” Her heart warmed at his words.
“I want to do all the things that couples do. Dinner. A show. Fighting over the remote. All of it. I want all of it.”
She inhaled a shaky breath. “Then you agree to be mine? To take the tooth?”
“I want to give this a try.”
She shook her head. “You’re not listening. There is no try. This is forever. There is no room for failure.”
He squeezed her arm. “I want the tooth. I want you, Rowan.”
