Page 28 of Nobody Told Me Thrift Shops Sell Stolen Dragon Heirlooms

Fuck you too, buddy.

I hovered long enough to stare at him.

He stared back and, with admirable commitment, repeated the gesture.

I might have left it there. Under ordinary circumstances, I would have. His evening was his own business, and nearly colliding with a dragon during a romantic outing was objectively the sort of adversity that gave a story shape. But then my vision settled properly on the details I’d missed in the first seconds of avoiding a crash, and I saw the small square of dark velvet clenched in his other hand.

Ah.

That explained the gesture and the blazer. It also explained the woman’s hair, which had been blown into the kind of expensive softness that required either a professional or a rare alignment of weather and genetics.

I circled once, slowing.

The woman gasped and pointed at me, then at the man, then back at me, clearly incapable of choosing which development deserved precedence. The man looked less moved. His mouth had flattened into a tight line now that he realized the universe had assigned him a supporting role in his own proposal.

Something unexpectedly warm stirred in me. A memory of my mother laughing on the upper terrace when I was perhaps ten, demanding I do the smoke trick again because, in her words, it made me look both majestic and deeply pleased with myself. I had practiced for a week after that, improving it solely because she asked.

I drew in a breath.

Heat gathered at the back of my throat, bright and immediate. I held it there until it glowed behind my teeth, then let the fire die before release. Smoke poured from my mouth in a thick white plume, denser than cloud, obedient for a moment to the angle of my flight. I banked upward and curved through the sky, writing with the trailing smoke.

MARRY ME?

The words stretched across the evening above them in enormous pale script.

For one suspended second, neither of them moved.

Then the woman gave a shocked, disbelieving cry. Her hands flew to her face. Her phone nearly went over the side of the basket. The man turned and looked up at the words hanging over them, then at me, awe written all over his face.

Having committed to the bit, I decided that half-measures would now be embarrassing.

I dropped beneath the balloon, the basket passing overhead with a soft groan of wicker and burner heat, then pulled sharply upward behind it. When I rose into view again, I coiled through the air so the man, now kneeling in the basket, had a dragon and a full sunset at his back. It was excessive and almost certainly invasive. It was also, however, a remarkable backdrop.

The man turned and blinked at me once as if asking whether I intended to remain.

I gave what I hoped was an encouraging look rather than the expression of a dragon evaluating his time management skills.

To the man’s credit, he recovered quickly and opened the box. Even at a distance, the stone caught the last of the light.

The woman burst into tears.

She bounced on her toes, then threw her arms around his shoulders before he had finished speaking. Laughing into her hair, he rose to his feet. She nodded several times in furious succession, then kissed him with such enthusiasm the basket rocked.

Satisfaction I hadn’t earned moved through me. It was ridiculous that I should feel personally invested in the outcome of a stranger’s proposal, yet I found myself smiling as I turned away and darted through the air.

The sky had darkened while I played accomplice. The apricot along the horizon had turned amber with tinges of ash blue. Below, lights had come on in clusters, warm and golden against the land. The smoke letters would be gone already, whisked away by the wind. Only the memory of it would remain, sharpened by retelling. The dragon interrupting, then painting the sky with one of the most important questions a person could ask.

I flew on, higher than before, welcoming the cold and the dark. But the heaviness I’d carried had loosened at the seams. Ahead of me, the evening opened in one vast sweep, and for the first time all day my thoughts didn’t stray to loss, or duty, or the architecture of everything that might go wrong.

Instead, I thought—with an optimism so uncharacteristic it was almost embarrassing—that perhaps the sky had seen fit to offer me a sign.

My life would not be transformed because I’d accidentally improved a stranger’s proposal. But still, it was a suggestion that not every approach ended in collision and interruption didn’t always mean ruin. That sometimes you swerved, improvised, made a spectacle of yourself, and arrived at something unexpectedly good.

By the time I turned back toward the manor, the last light had settled low along the hills, and the wind along my scales felt almost like a blessing.

In the morning, I would meet the lawyers, and the long work of reclaiming what had been scattered could finally begin.

Payton & Wallace occupied thirty-one floors of polished restraint and expensive confidence in Midtown, all limestone lobby, brushed brass, and reception staff who knew precisely how long to keep a client waiting before it started to feel strategic.