A Shade of Dragon 2(51)

Theon’s eyes softened. “I know you very well,” he assured me. “Trust that this is difficult for me to say. And I know how you must feel to hear it—”

“You must not know! You must not know, or you wouldn’t have bothered. I understand that you have thoughts, and feelings, and I respect them… but I am a woman, Theon. I’m a grown woman, and I have complete autonomy over my body. So unless you’re going to physically force me through that portal and back to DC, this conversation is over.”

“You will not leave my side. You will not leave my side, even in war, even in the blistering cold, even when I am telling you to go.”

“That’s right. You will need to force me through that gate.”

Theon angled his eyes away from me and sighed deeply. “Then that is what I will do.”

I blinked.

“You wouldn’t. You wouldn’t do that to me, because you know that it would make me hate you—forever.”

Theon nodded. “I know,” he said. “You will have to hate me, then. I would rather die knowing that you are safe, and home, and full of hate for me, than to live, even forever, and know that you have died fighting at my side; I could not bear to live another day knowing that you died because of me, even if the entire kingdom was secured as a result. I would rather—”

“Stop!” I snapped. “I don’t want to hear about all the things you’d rather! I can’t believe you’d give me so little! Like I’m not a real person—I’m some kind of doll to be protected from breaking. I’m not a doll, Theon; I’m a woman. I can make decisions. I love you enough to make this decision; I will hate you forever for taking the decision away from me. I don’t want to be safe. I don’t want to be home. I thought you were so advanced… so aware… but if you take this decision away from me—”

Tears of rage filled my eyes unexpectedly, and I looked away from him before they spilled.

“—then I know that you were never as advanced and aware as you seemed,” I choked out.

Theon sighed, but I didn’t dare look at him, didn’t dare see his face for one moment. My body vibrated with indignation. How dare he? I had finally done something that, to me, was a hallmark of growth—and he was rejecting it! He wasn’t going to give me the chance to love him as deeply and as fully as I could.

“In my culture,” Theon explained haltingly, “a maiden is considered to be of the highest value. We have not had women of mating age in thirty-five years now. We have been taught to guard them with our lives—and that, so long as they are maidens, their safety is even more important than their autonomy. But…”

“But?” There had to be some loophole to keep him from forcing me back home. If I was trapped in DC, unable to see him, talk to him, even know what was happening in The Hearthlands, I would go mad. I would be driven to such bitterness and resentment.

“But,” Theon continued, “if you were to become my wife… our staying together would be condoned—because we also encourage our men and their wives to work as a single unit. A man who would not believe in his wife—who would force her off of the battlefield—would be seen as weak, for his wife, or his faith in his wife, would be weak. This is why my mother will not leave The Hearthlands until Father has been secured. They are soulmates now. They operate as two halves of a whole, and as long as he is imprisoned, so is she. She cannot leave. And if we were married—I could not fight without you.”

I looked around the blackened cavern where we stood together, suddenly feeling as if we were being watched. But no one was there. “Theon,” I said, “are you… asking me to marry you right now?”

When I turned back to him, his eyes met mine with a kind of evenness I hadn’t anticipated. There was no fear. No embarrassment. Only honesty. “I am telling you to marry me right now.”

It felt like it’d been years since we’d seen each other, and I remembered him—everything which had brought us to this point—vividly now. My heart ached, and my throat became tight with joy.

“Okay,” I whispered.

I wasn’t sure who came to who first, or if we drifted together like leaves caught in the same vortex of autumn wind. The stress dissolved, and we dissolved with it. I was in his arms; his fingers were in my hair; our mouths crashed together and danced against each other like long-lost lovers, reuniting from across a crowded room. All the tightness from my muscles drained away and I believed Theon when he said that married couples were soulmates, were two halves of the same whole. I no longer felt the boundary of his body against mine. I felt only complete.