He glanced down at her sheepishly. “I do not.”
She rolled her eyes at him, but she smiled all the same. “Your poor parents then.”
He could not maintain the pretence of affront, even though he tried, instead stooping to kiss her, still gratified that he could do so. Her gun might make him nervous, but he decided he would rather she have that than her poison, or else he would never know what it was to experience this.
Experience her mouth upon his, the simple pleasure of brushing his lips against hers.
“I have decided you are quite remarkable,” he said, pulling away.
Prim hummed, leaning against his arm as they continued on. “I could say the same thing about you.” He made to protest that he was being quite serious, but she continued speaking before he could. “You let me be me.”
He smiled, pressing another kiss to the top of her too-short head, simply because he wanted to.
For she was here, unharmed, just as he would always have her be.
He could not predict what would come in their future. If they would soon be blessed with a youngling of their own, if his parents could ever truly return. Or perhaps their journey to the colony, of helping them escape, would prompt recompense with the Narada that meant war after all.
He simply could not know.
But Prim was here, she had managed to impress at least one of the elders, and that was more than he had managed to accomplish in his lifetime.
Quite remarkable.
“I should still like to know your name,” he reminded her. “I could promise not to use it, if that would allow you to tell me.”
“You really aren’t going to let this go, are you?” She shook her head, sighing, as he confirmed that he would not. “It wasn’t even for a good reason. She was just glad I was born! Kept yelling it when the pains got bad, and I guess it stuck because she decided to use it as a name.”
Rykkon waited patiently, continuing to stare down at her. “I should still like to know what it was.”
She grumbled something beneath her breath, something about an infuriating mate, how she should turn about right now and return home, and she carried on so long that he thought she would refuse him. But after a roll of her eyes, a huffy breath, she told him, her tone dripping with repugnance.
“Mercy. My mother named me Mercy.”
Rykkon smirked.
He smiled.
And then Prim hit him.
“I told you it was a ridiculous name.”
“Untrue,” he assured her softly. He did not know much regarding what names were traditional to her people. He had heard varied ones—people his mamé had known, her parents, friends. But this...
“I find it very fitting, as it must have been for your mamé. For that is what you are to me. That I should not have to be alone any longer. That I have someone to love and who blessedly loves me in return. I find that a very merciful thing.”
He would not use the name, not if she did not wish it. But perhaps privately, in the recesses of his own mind, safe and hidden from whatever prompted her to dislike the name, he could call her that.
His Mercy.
She looked up at him silently for a while, before she shook her head, her cheeks turning pink before she hid one against his arm once more as they walked.
“If I’m remarkable, then you’re ridiculous.”
His Prim.
And he kissed her again, for he would have her be nothing else.
Not as long as she was with him.
Precisely where she belonged.
Also by Catherine Miller
Destruction of Obsession
A Rose in Winter
A Civic Duty
A Nymph Without Mercy
The Making of a Lady
The Phantom’s Witness
Mercy (Deridia Book 1) Page 38