Page 90 of Nobody Told Me Thrift Shops Sell Stolen Dragon Heirlooms

“That’s not comforting.”

She held out her hand.

It was absurd that the simple offer of her hand could quiet the world around me. We had touched in the stairwell. She’d placed her palm on my chest. I’d offered her my arm more than once this evening. But this was different, because she was asking me to step into public foolishness by choice.

“Come on,” she said. “We booked a Friday meeting. Your family’s sword is officially closer to coming home. Max looks phenomenal. This is a victory lap.”

“I don’t take victory laps.”

She rolled her eyes. “Then call it a strategic morale exercise.”

I looked down at her hand. “You think renaming it will help?”

“I think renaming things is fifty percent of law.”

I scoffed. “That’s not true.”

She stood there with her hand extended, smiling up at me in a ballroom full of people who might very well look over and decide something about us. About me. About her. About whether a dragon heir looked foolish stepping in time with donors, lawyers, philanthropists, and one retired military dog.

My mother’s voice came back to me, soft and dry.

Some rooms are badly built.

Perhaps Quinn was right. Perhaps the answer wasn’t always winning the room. Perhaps, occasionally, it was refusing to let the room define the victory.

I took her hand.

She grinned bright enough that the decision seemed less like surrender and more like reward. “Oh, this is going to be great.”

“I’m already regretting it.”

The caller waved us into the outer edge of the circle. Quinn pulled me into place with more enthusiasm than accuracy, Max trotting after us before settling on the edge of the dance floor beside a woman in pearls who immediately bent to admire him.

“Max is networking,” Quinn said.

“He’s better at it than I am.”

“He has softer eyes.”

I shook my head. “I won’t compete with the dog.”

“Wise.”

I wasn’t bad at dancing. That would’ve been unacceptable. I watched the pattern once, then followed: step left, step right, turn, clap, change partners briefly, return. It was simple enough, though several guests treated “left” as a philosophical suggestion. Quinn giggled when an older man in a white dinner jacket spun the wrong direction and nearly collided with a table.

When the sequence brought her back to me, her hand found mine, and something in my chest eased.

“You’re smiling,” she said.

“I can’t help what my face does when I’m concentrating.”

I looked down at her, and the step almost went wrong because she was dazzling.

Quinn’s face was flushed from movement. The plum dress turned beautifully when she did, the beadwork at her wrists catching light in small flashes. She looked happy. Not because the evening had been easy. It hadn’t been. Not because she’d forgotten what the room was. She hadn’t forgotten anything.

She’d simply decided to enjoy what she could.

I found that more impressive than any legal argument she’d made.