Page 62 of Kian

“He’s elected. He’s also a Thyphian,” Avril whispered back. “They have mind-reading powers. The circlet blunts his gift, so that others feel comfortable with him. If he took it off, it would hardly be fair to try and negotiate with him.”

“Wow,” Kinsley said, impressed that someone in such a position of power would take steps to level the playing field for the poor miners of a frontier moon.

“He has the makings of a great leader,” Chigum said, with a look on his face that said he was thinking the same thing she was.

Then music began to play, soaring strings and pounding drums, and Kinsley met Kian’s eye.

“Ready?” she asked, handing off the snoozing baby Nova to her Auntie Avril.

Kinsley and Kian had practiced waltzing around the living room a few times, but he was so enormous that it was hard not to smash into things, which always made her giggle.

Now, he took her hand and bent over it for a moment, before sweeping her onto the dance floor.

It was only the community center, but everyone had been decorating it for days, so that if you didn’t look too hard, it could have been the most beautiful ballroom in the world. Though the decorations were all made of paper, and the floating lights were hanging from strings rather than being proper solar lanterns.

But at that moment, none of it mattered. Spinning and swaying in Kian’s arms, Kinsley felt like a princess.

Kian’s movements were beautifully practiced. She suspected that the big warrior must have been working on his dancing in private these last few days.

But his expression was so serious and concentrated that it made her smile.

“What?” he hissed. “Am I doing it wrong?”

“You’re amazing,” she told him. “I’m smiling because I’m sure I’m on the arm of the best dancer in the room.”

That earned her a smile back from her not-so-grumpy warrior.

“You’ve been practicing without me,” she teased. “And it’s paying off.”

He whirled her out and spun her back to him, as if to prove her right.

“I practiced something else, too,” he confided. “When the song is over, I’ll show you.”

Too soon, the final strains of the song played.

The dancers came to a halt, bowing and curtsying to each other as everyone else applauded lightly.

Kian took Kinsley by the hand and marched her away with such vehemence that she wondered if she was in some kind of trouble.

“Go get ‘em, tiger,” Lyslee whispered loudly to him on their way past.

Avril elbowed her and the two sisters laughed like a couple of school children.

“What in the world?” Kinsley wondered out loud.

But Kian didn’t stop until they were out in the frigid tundra, with the frozen lake beyond them glittering in the starlight.

“Kinsley Agate,” he said without any preamble, dropping to one knee and holding out a little box with something inside that sparkled more than the icy lake. “Will you marry me?”

“Kian,” she whispered, feeling overcome.

There would be so many magical moments in their lives. The christening of the fishing boat, the day Nova spoke her first word, and the day she took her first step. Kinsley was looking forward to all of them.

But this was a moment she had never expected, a moment so important to Terrans, but that she never thought would be honored by one of another kind.

“You don’t want this?” Kian guessed. “It was the largest ring I could afford within reason. I was told Terran women love this tradition.”

“Any larger and I wouldn’t be able to lift my hand,” she laughed, looking down at a gemstone the size of an acorn. “No, I just… I didn’t expect this, and it makes meso happy.”

She began to cry, and Kian laughed, rising to wrap his arms around her.

“I will do my best to make you happy with surprises for the rest of your life, my beautiful mate,” he murmured in her ear.

“I know you will,” she whispered back. “I know you will.”

***