“I guess there’s a little dragon competitiveness in me,” Bastian admitted. “They’re planning to marry early next summer after their court stuff is settled, and I was sort of thinking about an early spring ceremony.”
“We’d have to invite your parents,” Saina reminded him.
Bastian froze, imagining his parents at Shifting Sands. It was almost as horrifying as the idea of her grandmother. “I’ve changed my mind,” he said swiftly. “It was a terrible idea. Wedding lawyer it is.”
“I don’t know,” Saina teased. “Now I really like the idea. I could throw a bouquet and we could have a fancy dance. Everyone would know I was yours, and boggle at our elegance and beauty.”
“Hrm,” Bastian said, unconvinced.
Saina moved closer into his arms, sliding her curves along him. “You could peel me out of a fluffy white cupcake dress afterwards.”
Bastian swallowed, his imagination doing plenty to fill in the picture. “I’m not sure…” he said.
“Maybe your parents wouldn’t come?” Saina suggested, slipping her arms up around his neck.
Bastian kissed her, hands at her waist. “Is that a chance we’re willing to take?”
“I’ll risk it,” Saina purred in his ear.
When he put her down at last, drawing away with bruised lips, Bastian remembered something she’d said. “My parents said that they had a story that sirens used to be dragons, and you said that you had heard a similar origin story.”
Saina laughed. “It has significant differences. We say that dragons came from sirens. They were sirens - siren men - who preferred war to love. They could not reconcile their natures, and changed to shifters with two forms, one of scales and violence and one of humankind. I don’t have a mermaid voice within me, not like you have a dragon. I am a siren, it’s just who I am. Sometimes I have legs and sometimes, I don’t.”
She tapped the middle of his forehead. “It must be crowded in there.”
“That’s not where my dragon is,” Bastian corrected, catching her hand. He pressed it against his chest, feeling the flutter of his heartbeat against her palm. “He is here, deeper, and it still felt empty before you came.”
She looked at him with glowing eyes.
“Marry me,” Bastian said, falling to one knee.
“We’re already engaged,” Saina reminded him, showing him her ring.
Bastian slipped it off her finger. “Pretend we’re not,” he suggested.
Saina left her hand extended. “Bastian, my love, I will marry you. I pledge my life to you.”
Bastian eased the ring back onto her finger. “I love you, Saina,” he said, standing up and sweeping her into his arms.
When he’d kissed her breathless, he set her back onto her feet. “Let’s go home.”
Epilogue
Someone to love,
Someone to hold.
A prize of silver,
A treasure of gold…
Saina let the words and the magic with them fade away in the low-lit bar. She gestured for the audience to join her in the final refrain, and they did so eagerly, needing only the tiniest thread of encouragement from her magic. She convinced them that they each sounded amazing.
Someone to love,
Someone to hold.
A prize of silver,