After dinner, we tucked him into bed together. He clung to both of us longer than usual, his small arms tight around our necks.
“Be safe, Papa,” he whispered.
“Always, pup.”
“Come back.”
“I will.”
We pressed kisses to his forehead, both of us, and stood in the doorway for a long moment after he fell asleep. His little chest rising and falling. His stuffed dragon clutched in his arms. So innocent.
Our son. Our reason for all of this.
Back in our chambers, we climbed into bed. The silence was heavy with everything we weren’t saying.
“Stop thinking so loud,” Mal murmured against my hair, his arms tightening around me.
“I’m not thinking loud.”
“I can feel your worry through the bond. It is keeping me awake.”
“I can’t stop feeling things,” I muttered, knowing it was impossible.
He pulled me closer still, holding me against him completely. “I will come back to you.”
“You’d better. Killian’s already negotiated three extra cookies for when you return.”
“Two,” Mal corrected. “We agreed on two.”
“He told me three while you were getting his plushies for him. Said you agreed.”
Mal was quiet for a moment. “That little con artist.”
“Wonder where he gets it from.”
“You. Definitely you.”
“The cookies,” I continued, trying to keep my voice light. “That’s why you have to survive. Don’t make me explain to a four-year-old why his father broke a promise about cookies.”
“The cookies,” Mal said seriously. “Yes. That is why I will survive. Not because I love you and Killian more than life itself. Not because I have a kingdom to rule. The cookies.”
“Exactly. Finally you understand priorities.”
He pressed a kiss to my forehead. “I promise.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because it is true.”
“You can’t know that. Not really. You don’t know what the secret weapon is.”
“Watch me,” he said, and the arrogant confidence in his voice was so typically Mal that I almost smiled. “I have survived battles that should have killed me. I am not dying in some forest to protect a mad man’s pride. I refuse.”
“You refuse to die?”
“Yes.”
“That’s not really how death works.”
