83. Bertram
Bertram
Bertram had Helena sit in front of him on their flight back, her curves fitting snuggly between his open legs, his arms tight around her, his face buried in her neck. He didn’t want to let her out of his sight or out of his arms.
True, she hadn’t even been missing all that long, but every second he didn’t know where she was had been agony. He had never been more grateful to have taught Lovey “where’s Helena?” as a behavioral cue or encouraged her to learn to fly.
Of course, the flight to find Helena was by far the longest flight the little cub-chick had made. Now that she wasn’t needed to lead them to Helena, Lovey was sleeping peacefully on the bicycle’s handlebars rather than flying in front of it.
It shouldn’t have worked, Lovey on the handlebars, Diana on the first bicycle seat, Bertram and Helena both on the second bicycle seat that seemed to have grown bigger now that two People were sharing it.
But given what they had now seen of Diana’s magic, it wasn’t so surprising that she could make the bicycle do more than fly.
“So,” Helena said as they tore through the air back toward basecamp, “anything you want to tell us?”
Diana shrugged. “Not all that much to tell.”
Bertram raised an eyebrow.
“Or too much to tell,” Diana said. “I’ve been alive through many years, across many spaces. Giving you any one single story feels like nothing at all.”
“That bartender didn’t call you ‘Robin’ because of your wings, did he?” Helena asked. “That’s your real name.”
“I don’t have a ‘real name,’ ” Diana said. “Some of my names are older than others. Robin is an older name of mine, and Weland has worked for me a long time.”
“Worked for you?” Bertram asked. “Wait. Is A Wild Thyme your bar?”
“Of course it is.” Diana laughed. “Gods, horny People are truly so oblivious. Did you really think there happened to be a bar right by a remote mountain range? Let alone the greatest bar in the world?”
Helena blushed. “I—good point.”
“It exists in a pocket universe of my own making and upkeep,” Diana said. “Easily accessible from anywhere and any time.”
“That makes way more sense,” Helena admitted. “And I—I didn’t even think to question it.”
“You were both in the stupidest kind of love,” Diana said, matter-of-factly. “You wouldn’t have needed me if you hadn’t been. Don’t be embarrassed. I’ve been doing this a long, long time. Despite my teasing, you’re not the absolute stupidest idiots I’ve ever seen in and out of love.”
“I’m weirdly disappointed by that,” Helena said.
“Of course you are.” Bertram shook his head. “You’re so hypercompetitive you even need to be the best at being the worst.”
Helena laughed.
They disembarked from the bike at basecamp, and Diana said her goodbyes, promising to visit soon, and yes, maybe, perhaps tell them a story or two.
The moment Lovey landed, she tackled Helena to the ground, nuzzling her face over and over again with her beak.
“I really hope this doesn’t lead to permanent separation anxiety.” Helena frowned. “It would be a shame if one small dragon abduction stunted Lovey’s emotional and psychological growth.”
Bertram smiled. Only Helena would describe a dragon abduction as “small.”
After some more nuzzling, Lovey finally leapt off Helena. Bertram offered his hand and helped Helena back to her feet.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Bertram asked, smoothing Helena’s hair. He touched her face, her shoulders, her waist, just as he had in the cave, needing constant reassurance that she was unharmed and whole and safe and home.
Perhaps Helena should have been more worried about Bertram developing separation anxiety than Lovey.
“I’m fine,” Helena said. She leaned forward and kissed him gently. “I promise. Largely thanks to you. And Lovey and Diana. But you’re the one who called Diana and the one who helped train Lovey to find me . . . Bertram, you saved my life.”
Helena’s eyes were wide with love and gratitude.
Bertram shook his head. “You saved your own life. You’re the one who healed the king.”
“Which I couldn’t have done if you hadn’t brought me the tools,” Helena countered. “Which also then put your own life at risk—”
“Which you then saved by operating on the dragon,” Bertram said at once. “So, if you absolutely insist on giving me an accolade in this, we saved each other’s lives.”
Helena took Bertram’s face in her hands and kissed him. “And I would do it a million times over.”
“Well, hopefully not, because hopefully you would avoid being kidnapped by a dragon in the future—”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Helena pulled away. “That was the greatest thing that’s ever happened! A pileated dragon, Bertram! We saw a pileated dragon!”
Bertram smiled and shook his head. “I never should have doubted you.”
“Correct.” Helena grinned and kissed him again. And again.
Bertram hugged Helena tightly to his chest. Part of him wished that the woman he was in love with wasn’t quite so delighted about a near-death experience via dragon abduction. But if she weren’t, then she wouldn’t be the woman he was in love with.
“But. Um. There is one thing I want to talk about.” Helena looked away, shyly. “What Leroix said . . . I don’t expect you to marry me just because he said you had to—I don’t want you to think I suggested that or made the decision for you—”
“I thought nothing of the sort.”
“Okay. Good.”
Bertram waited. He could always tell when Helena had finished talking and—as was often the case—Helena was not yet finished talking.
“So. Um. On the flip side. My adamant insistence that I did not say I was going to marry you . . . that was in the spirit of not letting an angry dragon decide our marital status for us, not because I wouldn’t want to.
Not that we have to decide anything today, of course.
Obviously. It’s still relatively new—everything—well, it’s not, but it is—and I—I just want you to know, if there weren’t a large angry dragon involved . . .”
“Yes?” Bertram raised an eyebrow.
“At this moment at least I’m thinking that, yes, I would like to share my life with you, if you are interested,” Helena said, in a rush. “I’m not saying that has to mean marriage. I mean, it can, down the line, but that’s not the part that’s important to me—”
“Yes,” said Bertram.
“But I know you’re like me that you never wanted kids, and I still don’t want kids, but I am going to be raising Lovey now, and that’s probably even more work than a human child, and maybe she’ll go off on her own in three months or three years or eight years or never, so you would have to be okay with Lovey staying part of our lives—”
“I already said ‘yes,’ Helena.”
“Yes to which?” Helena said, her breathing slightly ragged, her eyes hopeful.
“Yes to all,” Bertram said with complete confidence. “Whatever it takes to share my life with you, yes. I know what it’s like to live without you. I never want to do it again.”
“Bertram,” she said, softly. She seemed too overcome to think of anything else to say.
“I lost you once,” Bertram continued, “by my own fucking idiocy. I thought I had lost you again—again twice, actually, once because of that first fucking idiocy coming back to haunt me, and once to a dragon kidnapping, which admittedly is more dramatic but less guilt-inducing . . . you can always choose to leave me. But I am not going to let go first.”
“What if we spend our whole lives stuck here with Lovey?”
“That’s how we’ve spent the last year, and it’s been the best year of my life.”
Helena frowned. “That’s because of the novelty of the relationship. That’s not going to be sustainable—”
“We’ll see.”
“And”—Helena swallowed—“what if Lovey is able to go back to the wild? And we don’t have her tying us together anymore?”
“Oh, you mean like for the first four years I was in love with you?” Bertram smiled.
“I just . . . I’m scared.”
“Why?” Bertram took Helena’s face in his hands and gently brushed her chin with his thumb. “Have I done something to make you doubt—?”
“No, nothing,” Helena said quickly. “It’s perfect. The idea of getting to study otherfolk and fight to protect them and raise Lovey and be in love with you . . . it’s all too perfect. I’m scared that I’ll lose it somehow. I’m scared that it can’t possibly be real.”
Bertram kissed Helena fiercely. “It’s real. I promise it’s real.”
She leaned against him and his arms wrapped around her automatically as he pulled her close against his chest.
“I know it’s been a whirlwind,” Bertram said.
“And I’m not saying we should act on Leroix’s, ahem, generous gift of my hand in marriage to you just yet.
But maybe in a year or two, assuming we still like each other as much as we do now .
. . assuming you can believe by that point that it’s real .
. . maybe we’ll let the dragon king’s prize be real too. ”
Helena smiled broadly. “I love you.”
“I love you too.”