The Dragon's Promise (Six Crimson Cranes, #2)

by Elizabeth Lim

“It would never have worked between us, being companions and all. We’re both far too proud—and I’m far too magnificent.” I tilted my head but didn’t speak. I knew he wasn’t finished. His voice went solemn. “All the same, I’m glad to have known you, Shiori. You’re interesting, for a human. When you look into the sea, think of me sometimes.” “I will,” I said softly.

Seryu’s strand and mine had been knotted once, tied so closely by fate that we had almost been bound forever. Now I wasn’t sure whether they would ever cross again.

“I’m not hungry,” I lied, three words I had never said before in my life.

“Your brothers warned me that a lifetime with you would mean plenty of jabs to my pride. But my love for you is far greater than pride, Shiori. Far greater than anything.”

It was the profoundest magic how Takkan could cast away all the darkness that plagued my mind. How he turned the shame heating my cheeks into joy, and how that joy radiated across my body, seeping from pore and hair until I could have rivaled the sun with my brightness. Even my insides were beaming.

“I bind you to me, Shiori’anma,” he said. “Let our strands be ever knotted as we weather joy and sorrow, fortune and misfortune, and pass our years from youth to old age. We are of one heart, honor-bound, and one spirit, whether on earth or in heaven. From now until ten thousand years forth.”