Page 126 of Nine-Tenths

"Oh, is it?" I bat my eyelashes at him.

"You're a menace."

"And you love it."

"Lord help me, I do." He kisses my hand again.

I drag Dav over to a table and help myself to a fun-size chocolate bar from a candy bowl, because I can.

"Are you going to tell me what The Gift is," I ask, holding it up demonstratively before I snap the chocolate in half with my teeth. "Or am I going to have to corner Laura?"

"I'm so foolish," Dav says with a groan, and nips the other half of the candy out of my fingers without even asking. "Laid out so plainly, I don't know why I didn't see the correlation. There isno biological reason why The Gift should be reserved solely for Favorites."

I'm tempted to step on his foot again. "Explain."

"Favorites in close proximity to a dragon experience a strengthening of their constitution. Disease does not touch them, the afflictions of age pass them by. Just as drinking the dragonsfire coffee did for your allergy, and Hadi's insomnia, Laura’s aging has been retarded. However, it is also not a guarantee," Dav says. "It’s been unevenly successful, historically."

"Well, if it’s all down to the infectious rate of dragon spit, there'd have to be some serious hanky-panky if you’re not breathing all over the food. And if every relationship isn't sexual…?"

"They're not," Dav agrees.

"Then the platonic Favorites don't get the literal benefits of their friendship?"

"Quite," Dav says. "I am beginning to wish we'd paid greater attention to Pedra."

"No kidding." I let that sit between us for a moment. Then, softly, I ask: "Why didn’t you tell me?"

"I suppose I wanted to see if it would take, before I—"

"Before you what?"

Dav pushes the mask up my face, and leans down for a soft, gentling kiss. For all his talk of no PDAs, he's being awfully handsy. And tongue-y. Still, illicit dark-corner smoochiesareon the list of my fave Halloween activities.

Dav backs me up against the wall, into the pool of shadow cast by a nearby pile of jack-o-lanterns, and whispers: "Before I told you that you have every reason to expect to live for exactly as long as I do."

Chapter Thirty-Four

"Let me get this straight. We fuck," I hiss, pushing him back with my hands balled in his fancy lapels, forcing him to meet my eyes. "And it curesdeath?"

"Aging," Dav corrects, glancing around cagily. If he tells me to keep it down I'mreallygonna stomp on his foot. "And when I pass—"

"Babe, I amnotready for the discussing-funeral-arrangements stage of the relationship—"

"When I pass, and you're no longer, ah, being serviced, you'll pass, too."

That slaps into my solar plexus. It takes me a few tries to get enough air to ask: "I'll die when you die?"

Dav cups my face, eyes skimming over my features, memorizing this moment. "Yes. Within a few months, your lost time will catch up to you. Most Favorites simply go to sleep and never wake up."

"And until then, I'll be twenty-four forever?"

"You’ll age, but slowly." A fond look steals across his face, and he brushes the hair that's come loose from the mask behind my ear. "I look forward to seeing how handsome you are with some gray here, in a century or so."

A century.

Fuck.

"And, uh… how many of these centuries will I… enjoy?"