Chapter Forty-Two
Mia
“What did you say?” I gasped. Had I heard him properly? Were my ears deceiving me into thinking he’d said something I wanted him to say?
He chuckled, brushing away several strands of hair that had come free. “Seriously, Mia, it’s not something you have to worry about.”
My eyebrows knitted together. “I think it kind of is.”
Worry might not have been the best word to describe my emotions, but it certainly wasn’t that far from the truth. How could it not be something I would think about? Were dragons just that casual about it?
“No, no, really, it’s nothing to be upset over. Look around you. It’s minor in the grand scheme. The roof is ready to fall in, for starters. The floors and walls, well, you can see for yourself the rough shape they’re in.”
I wasn’t sure what that had to do with anything, but he wasn’t wrong. Even then, pieces of debris were falling from the ruined ceiling. In other places, walls sagged, and the floor was a ruined mess of long furrows where bodies had been thrown hard against it, snapping and gouging out the parquet.
“Why would I be upset?” I asked finally.
It was Tor’s turn to look puzzled, his brow wrinkling. “But you just apologized. You were so worked up over it. I wanted you to know that it wasn’t anything to get riled up over.”
Things clicked in my head, and a smile twisted up the sides of my mouth while I reached up and caressed him. “Oh, dear, sweet, oblivious Tor. That’s what you meant.”
“Yeah. Of course.” He was blinking furiously while he helped me to my feet. “What did you think I was talking about?”
“The fact that you just told me you loved me,” I said, managing not to let my voice hitch at the word “love.”
“I …” he fell silent. “Oh.”
My spirits sank. That wasn’t the response I’d hoped for. “It’s okay if you said it by accident,” I told him, trying to stand tall. “We all say things we maybe aren’t ready to say. I get it.”
“What? No! Mia!” he said, grabbing my shoulders and stopping me from turning away. “That’s not at all what I meant!”
“It’s not?”
He shook his head fervently. “No. I was not seeking to retract it. I simply … said it without thinking.”
“So, if you’d thought about it, you wouldn’t have said it?”
“No!” he cried. “I just wish I’d known I was saying it.”
I chewed on my lip. “How can you mean something you didn’t know you were saying?”
“By the very fact I did say it,” he replied. “That it came out so easily and unthinking meant it was something I found natural to say at that moment. Something that felt right. And it would only feel right if I meant it.”
Anyone else in the room had disappeared from my awareness at that point.
There was only Torrent and myself, and nothing around us mattered or even existed.
He was my sole focus. And I, it seemed, was his.
His silvery-gray gaze never wavered, not once.
It was locked onto me with a near-fanatical intensity that sent indecipherable shivers down my spine.
“So, you did mean it?” I asked nervously.
Torrent swept me up in his arms, holding me casually just below my rump so that I was on a level with him.
A fraction above, actually. It was an odd thing to be able to look down at him finally, but I found myself enjoying it.
His cheeks had a pair of extremely cute dimples from my new angle that I’d somehow not noticed before.
“My darling Mia,” he rumbled, the vibrations running through my body, pressed as it was against his chest. “If there is one thing that I know at this moment, here and now, that has been made clear to me by all that has happened, it is this: I love you. Now and forevermore, I am yours. You know me, and I would level the largest mountain if it were your wish. There will never be another who stokes the storm inside me as you. Ever. I love you.”
I shuddered. The finality of that statement hit home and hit hard.
It smashed against my closed-off heart like the first cannonball against castle walls.
Giant pieces were shouldered aside as it shattered the stone, forever changing my world.
I stiffened in his arms, held aloft for all to see as my defenses crumbled down, destroyed by the only man strong enough to make me open myself up to him.
“Torrent,” I whispered, his name tumbling from my lips. “I …”
“It’s okay,” he said softly, something flashing behind his eyes too fast for me to interpret.
“You don’t have to feel the same. But I’m done hiding, Mia.
Done pretending that I don’t care for you the way I do.
From the very first day I met you, your presence has stirred something inside me.
At first, I thought it but lust, and who could blame me. ”
I blushed as he told the entire assembled crowd of dragons that he wanted to fuck me. There were worse things to hear, but that part of my life wasn't something I was overly open about.
“You were never far from my mind, and often, you were the sole focus of it,” he continued.
“I wondered how you were, what you were doing, if you were happy. Then, when I looked in the Watching Mirror and saw you, I suddenly understood why I felt this way. You were more than just a seductive human. You were my mate. The one woman I will spend the rest of my life with. Things suddenly made sense, and I was free to truly let myself care about you the way I longed to. But it wasn’t until I saw you walk through those doors, nervous, scared even, and yet willing to put yourself out there, to fight for us, that I knew I loved you.
In you walked to a room full of dragons, and not once did you shy away.
You may not see it that way, but I guarantee you, every single one of us saw the courage in you then.
I am in awe at you, and I cannot wait to discover every last thing there is to know about you because in doing so, I know I will emerge better for it. ”
I didn’t know what to say. Tor had always been a bit of a shoot-from-the-hip type, do what he thought was right and deal with the consequences as they came. But his speech, the emotions swirling in his words, they were things he’d thought about for days and had given much thought to.
He moved to put me down, but I stopped him, holding on tighter, one arm around his neck. With the other, I stroked his cheek, feeling the stubble under my fingertips.
“My Tor,” I whispered. “I don’t have a big, fancy speech for you. I have no pronouncements, no grand claims. I can only give you one thing.”
“What’s that?” he asked.
“My heart,” I said, fingers trembling. “And it’s yours. Like I am yours, and you are mine. I don’t want to hold back anymore. I don’t want to be scared. I want to love you, dammit, and I want to do so to the fullest!”
Silence followed.
Then Ty stepped forward and roared his approval, his hands clapping furiously. Thunderous applause washed over us, and I found myself laughing.
“Come here,” I said, smothering his lips with my own while dragons cheered and cat-called us, bringing a fresh wave of heat to my face.
But I didn’t let them stop me. His lips parted mine, and his tongue snaked out, strong but soft, warm, and playful all at once. By the time he set me down, my mind was mush from being kissed so well and so thoroughly.
“So, what now?” I asked nervously, my hand easily finding his, holding it tight. “What, um, what happens next? Are you the prince now? Does that make me a princess? Holy hell, that’s so wild to think about. Me, a princess?”
Torrent smiled broadly, but there was a stiffness to it that belied his nerves.
“Not quite,” he said as the dragons came toward us, Ty and Surge leading the way, big grins on their faces.
“What do you mean not yet? What’s left for us to do?”
His smile faltered. “We have to take the Test.”
I put up a hand to forestall the oncoming hugs of Ty and Surge as they sought to sweep us up. “The Test?” I asked. “What’s that? You never mentioned that before.”
“I didn’t really have an opportunity,” he said, throat bobbing up and down as he swallowed.
“What kind of Test? Do I have to study or something?”
“No, not quite,” he said, fidgeting with the ring he always wore, the sapphire with an infused flame at its heart. “We must go before the God-King. He will judge us as to whether or not we are Eternal Mates.”
“Oh. And if he says no? What then? Do I go home?”
Tor shook his head. “No. If we fail, we die.”
“We WHAT?” I shouted.
Around us, the other dragons pulled back, giving us some room.