A Destiny of Dragons (Tales From Verania #2)(3)

“We’re not anything of the sort,” Justin snapped. “In fact, my first act as King will probably be to behead you. Fair warning. And the hug was against my will, like most of the things you do to me. And it was made worse by the fact that the King of Fairies kept telling you to lick my—”

“You can’t kill me,” I reminded him as I stopped us at the entrance of the alley. “You would miss me too much and would probably feel really bad.” And I would also be dead, which would suck for me.

“I highly doubt I would feel anything at all but immense relief.”

Okay, I could work with that. “The people would revolt.”

“Or there would be celebrations in the streets as they would no longer need to hear your inane prattling.”

My trump card! “Gary would come after you.”

Justin sighed. “Now that I believe. He still looks at me like I wasn’t the one left standing at the altar on my wedding day while my fiancé stared lovingly into the eyes of another man and spouted disgusting platitudes of jerking off your heart or whatever the hell else was said.”

I glanced out the alley to make sure we hadn’t been noticed. “I don’t know if that’s quite what happened.”

His glare was rather ferocious. “Care for me to refresh your memory?”

Nope, not at all. “You’re distracting yourself from what’s important.”

He gaped at me. “Your level of self-awareness would be remarkable if it wasn’t so terrifying.”

“Thank you.”

“That wasn’t—”

“Don’t you want to know why we’re here?” I asked.

“No.”

“You did just a second ago.”

“I’ve since changed my mind.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to know? Not even a little bit?”

“Sam, if you don’t take me back to the castle this instant, I’m going to make sure you’re miserable for the rest of our lives.”

My heart swelled. It was inevitable.

He took a step back. “What. Why are you looking at me like that? Like you’re having feelings?”

I needed to hug him very badly. “Because,” I said, taking a step toward him. “You just said you wanted me to be miserable for the rest of our lives. Like we’re going to live long and miserably together. Forever. As best friends.”

He blanched as he held up his hands, back hitting the brick wall of the building behind him. “That’s not what I meant. You stay back! You hear me? Godsdammit, Sam, you stay back—”

“We’re going to hug,” I demanded, taking another step.

“No, no we’re not.”

“You can’t stop it,” I said, holding my arms out wide. “It’s gonna happen.”

“Godsdammit, I will kick you in the—”

But before he could move, I had him pressed up against the brick wall, arms wrapped tightly around him. His arms were trapped at his sides. I laid my head on his shoulder, tucking my nose against his neck. “Shh,” I said. “Shh. It’s okay. It’s okay. Just let it happen.”

“You are hugging me against my will.”

“There’s no such thing,” I whispered. It was a good hug. Maybe not the best, but we had time to get there. Justin had just all but admitted that. It was glorious. I would probably write a poem about this day when we got back home.

He sighed heavily, like he couldn’t believe I could be so wonderful. “You really don’t understand boundaries, do you?”

“Only that they’re made to be broken,” I said. “Also, I would let your arms go, but you’ve already proven you can’t be trusted to hug me back.”

“It’s not my fault you bruise so easily,” he muttered.

“Yet you still seem to try—”

“Are we done yet?”

“It hasn’t even been a full minute. Everyone knows that hugs last for at least two minutes. It’s mandatory.”

“No one thinks that. Sam, literally no one.”

“Maybe we should,” I said, squeezing him tighter. “Maybe there’d be no wars if people just hugged all the time. After all, you can’t be armed if you have someone in your arms.”

“Unless I stab you in the—”

I felt like that was a good time to end the hug.

I turned back toward the entrance to the alley as he grumbled what I was sure was nothing but compliments about my existence.

It was going on dusk, and the street ahead was busy as people scurried about. Shopkeepers working the stalls called out their wares in loud, boisterous voices, selling fresh fish from the port and handwoven baskets and jewels crafted by the fires of dragons. It stank of animal shit, cooking meat, and something so distinctly Verania that I couldn’t help but love every single piece and part of it. These were my people; this was my city. As if in response, somewhere in the crowd, there came the sweet, sweet chords of a lute playing a song that had taken Verania by storm over the last several months after it’d spent close to a year circulating in the pubs.

“I swear to the gods,” Justin muttered, “if I have to hear that godsdamned song about cheesy dicks one more time, I’m going to find out who started it and send them to the dungeons forever.”