“What exactly do you guys do to propose to someone here?”
Asher bristled with my question, and I stopped walking to look at him. He hadn’t said a word since we left the seventh floor.
“Dude, are you okay?”
“I, um. I…”
“Seriously. What’s up with you?” I asked, truly baffled by his behavior. “You have barely even looked at me since—” The flash of his ashen face by the entrance of my room when Evie and I were together suddenly returned to me, and I cringed. I had legit forgotten about it. “Oh. You saw us.”
“Please forgive me. I did not mean to walk in on you. I swear it, Brother. I thought you’d be ready to go meet your guard. It never crossed that my mind that you and the princess would be—”
“Doing the nasty?” I purposely joked because he seemed about to dig a hole in the ground and stick his head into it. He was so mortified.
His eyes widened at my words, cheeks becoming tomato red from embarrassment. “Don’t call it that. I’m so sorry, I—”
“It’s no big deal. Honestly, I’d totally forgotten, Brother.”
“Thank you,” he added, seeming to breathe for the first time since he caught us. “I truly appreciate your forgiveness and understand—”
“Dude. It’s nothing,” I assured, cutting off his profuse apology. “Just let me know when you and Skylar will be doing it too, so I can watch. Then we are even.”
His eyes literally popped out of his skull. “What?!”
Okay, not literally, but still.
Laughter burst out of me, unable to be contained. Messing with him was too easy.
“I am kidding!” My hand landed on his back, patting it reassuringly. “Seriously, just forget it. As far as I’m concerned, nothing happened. No need to bring it up again, especially not with Evie. She might have a heart attack if she knows you saw her.”
At the mention of her, he cringed—still mortified—but the soul finally returned to his body. He nodded, finally believing that I really didn’t care about him seeing us.
“I’m sorry. I won’t come into your quarters like that again. You have my word.”
“I know.”
We resumed our walk, but he stopped before opening the gate, suddenly remembering my previous question. “What do you mean, ‘a proposal’?”
Right. “Well, in the Mirror World, when you want to be with the woman or the man you love, you ask her/him to marry you. There is usually a ring involved when you ask them.”
“So, it is a proposal to spend the rest of your lives together?”
“Exactly.”
“I know what you mean, but we do not propose here, as you call it. The practice has been lost through the years. It is rare for someone to do that. If we want to be together, we just pair. Long ago, the tradition was to offer the person you love the grand gesture.”
“A grand gesture?” I asked, a bit confused.
“Yes. You prepare something that has great meaning for the one you love. An act only you know will touch their soul like nothing else can. Something so meaningful to them that it tells them you will take care of their heart if they entrust it to you for life.”
That sounded beautiful, and kind of impossible because what could I possibly do for Evie that would tell her that? I knew who she was, I knew her heart even when she guarded it so fiercely, but I hadn’t been by her side long enough to hold some special secret that could help me prepare a grand gesture for her. Also, she knew I loved her, but this was next level.
My shoulders slumped as I thought about it, kind of wishing I could just give her a ring.
Weirdly enough, Asher’s lips twitched. “After what I saw you doing to her, I’d say you have nothing to worry about. Just keep doing that, and you are good.”
Chuckling, I pushed him. “You have some nerve.”
He laughed, and I was glad to see that his embarrassment was gone, though he suddenly became thoughtful. “You brought Star, her soulmate, back to her. I don’t think there is a grand gesture that could ever surpass that.”
Warmth spread through me with his words. “But that wasn’t intentional, though. I just knew I had to help them reconcile. It wasn’t planned.”
“Exactly.” He smiled. “You do things because they are the right thing to do, because you want to do them for her. The gesture that comes from your heart without expecting anything in return is the most valuable of all, Brother.” Winking at me, he turned and pushed the doors open. “Just ask her. You need do nothing else.”
Becoming silent, I thought about his words as we made our way to the field. I guessed whatever felt right, that was what I should do, but still.
My steps halted when I lifted my gaze and found Quinn jumping onto her Dragon. She, along with Aaron, Charlotte, Eduard, Harvey, and Louis seemed to be getting a crash course on how to mount them mid-flight like my father did, how to jump from one to the other, and well, anything that had to do with Dragon riding. They couldn’t fully fly while in the mountain, but it would prepare them for when we could take them outside.
One thing was for certain, the way my friends were fluidly moving from one Dragon to the next after only one day of training said Imogen was a great tutor, and my friends’ abilities really were more advanced than the rest. It was impressive. They hadn’t come to play.
What stopped me in my tracks wasn’t their skill in the art of riding, though. It was the fact that Quinn was on Knight’s back.
“What the hell?!” I gasped, marching towards them. Quinn couldn’t have Knight; he was one of the Four Dragons. I needed him for the battle. “I—” My gaze widened when I realized that Ardor was with Charlotte while the rest of my guard mounted Dragons from the honeycombs that I was connected to but that never had a companion before today.
A companion…
The fight died instantly when I recalled my mental conversation with Tharion yesterday.
“It’s up to them to join with another and choose to fight, Filius. I cannot make them. Only a Dragon ready to find their soulmate can join us. They must decide…”
Knight and Ardor had found their soulmates, and no matter how much I needed them, I couldn’t get in the middle of that. It was a sacred bond.
“Aren’t those two of the—”
“Of the Four Dragons your mother said I needed to win the battle? Yes. They are.”
Asher’s every muscle tensed when I called the seer his mother, and I internally cursed. “I’m sorry. I won’t call her that again.”
“I would appreciate that.”
“I guess we are back to square one,” I mumbled.
Fuck me.
“Forgive me, Braxton. When we arrived this morning, Ardor and Knight were here,” Imogen explained the second we reached her, realizing the same thing I had. “I know you need battle-ready Dragons, but they claimed Charlotte and Quinn, and I couldn’t stop it.”
“I know.”
“But before, you had three experienced Dragons out of the four. Now you have one.”
Tharion, now I only had him.
“I’ll just have to find two more.” A concerned breath sank my chest while my mentor and Asher exchanged a loaded glance.