“She suggested what?”

Kanesha sounded as intimidated as I felt.

“That if we were married then…well…it would keep you out of the group home. I…I don’t know.”

She reached to rest her hand on mine. “I’d thought about it, but…I was thinking about it for, you know. After college.”

“So was I. Give us lots of time to make sure we aren’t going to be at each other’s throats. I’m worried if we do this we’ll end up splitting up.”

“Yeah…on the other hand, I want to stay with you. More than anything. And I couldn’t be more of a target for…”

No, I thought, she couldn’t. It might even temporarily get Surtur to back off – to leave me alone as long as Kanesha was in the picture. I got the impression fire giants had at least some honor. Demons, by definition, had none.

“I just…the idea scares me.”

“What idea?” Thruor had her head poked around the door.

“The lawyer working on my emancipation paperwork had an…uh…interesting idea for getting Kanesha out of CPS.”

Thruor blinked. Then she laughed. “Well…uh…it would work.”

“Yeah, but I’m worried we’ll explode all over each other.” If we tried to live together without Mike as a buffer, likely in a small apartment. Yeah. I worried.

“Look, I’ve known couples to stay together for twenty, thirty years then do just that.” Thruor grinned a bit. “The two of you are quite capable of working it out.”

She didn’t voice that for me it would be temporary anyway. I saw that in her eyes as she glanced towards me.

“I’m going to…look…uh…”

Kanesha squeezed my hand. “We can sleep on it, but we need to act tomorrow if we’re going to, ’cause can you imagine some social worker signing the paperwork for us?”

“Heck no. They’ll probably send us as far apart as possible in the hope we’ll get over our unnatural attraction.”

Unless we were lucky and got a sympathetic one. Or one who saw the practicalities of getting both of us out of the system to make room for other unfortunate kids.

I supposed we could hope. But I knew Mike would agree to this. And there was the other factor – that once we had the license, it wouldn’t expire or be withdrawn…if things settled down, we could always wait.

If things settled down.