Page 130 of Nine-Tenths

Damn.

Oblivious to my inner turmoil, Laura goes on: "His Excellency was raised on the periphery of nobility, so his manners are much more forthright. When he offered me the position of Favorite in return for the service I rendered to the crown, he explained what it meant, what I would gain from the position in terms of support, wealth, and health. My husband James had died in the Battle of Queenston Heights. I had my children to think of. I accepted. But Alva… in the world of his childhood, one didn't speak of such things because everyone around them already knew."

"Nobody, like, sits them down and explains the birds and the bees, uh, or the tokens and the gifts, because everybody just grows up with it?"

"Yes, exactly. Well put."

It feels so dumb to preen under her praise simply because she's like a national icon, but I puff up all the same. "So Dav hasn't explained, not because he's hiding, but because he just forgets he has to tell me."

"If it makes you feel any better, Alva's first Favorite reacted much like—" Laura stops guiltily.

"FirstFavorite," I echo. "You’re the second person to mention that tonight."

Laura slows to a quiet, contemplative pause. "You didn’t know."

Whoever they are, they’re dead, I remember, all in a rush.Or they’d still be here. They’d have The Gift and they… I won’t be jealous of a dead person. I refuse. Whatever happened, Dav doesn’t talk about it and it must have been awful. I won’t let this fuck anything up. I can’t, I won’t believe that he killed her. That’s not who he… oh god.

"Why… why would Dav keep that from me?" I ask, feeling the tenuous grip on my temper slipping.

Only, only he hadn’t, had he?

I’ve done it again, he’d said.

"Wretched tragedy, what happened to Miss Woodley," she ventures evenly, neutrally. The cadence and tone are the exact same as the way the lady dragon on the dance floor had said it. By rote. Like it's something said often, around here. "I dislike that Alva will carry it for the rest of his life."

I don't think she means it as a warning.

Still sounds like one, though.

The crown princess bit the head off of her abusive Favorite. Dav could have—

"Did he kill her?" I ask, voice trembling.

"No," Laura says, gently. "And yet, yes." Her mouth does a complicated thing and I get the sense that there's a lot she wishes she could be saying, and isn't. "It was… an accident. You’ve met Alva’s neighbor? Miss Hino’Hawank?"

"Onatah? Yeah."

Oh, no, please, don’t say she had anything to do with it.

"Miss Woodley… Charlotte," Laura corrects herself sadly. "Was adventurous. Curious. She and Alva travelled widely, visited many territories, and one day there was an accident. A cliff."

I press a hand to my chest, relief splashing hard into my veins.Dav isn’t a murderer. Thank god. It’s followed swiftly with adeep grief for a woman I’ve never met, but was loved by the man I love. "How come they blame Dav, then?"

"The unnatural death of any Favorite is a cause of the deepest shame for a dragon. A Favorite is a dragon's greatest treasure. They must be guarded as such. For Charlotte to have died as she did is already a terrible stain on his name. But that she died on the territory of another dragon—a non-British dragon—is the ultimate dishonor."

"So they branded him a murderer?" I gasp. "All because she, what, shefell?How is that on him?"

"Oh no," Laura murmurs. "Much worse."

"What'sworse? Do you mean the whipping, ‘cause that’s—"

Laura glances at me shrewdly. "Do you know what it was, exactly, he was whippedfor?"

I'm startled by her casual acceptance of such a brutal act.

A different era, I remind myself.She was born centuries ago, and she's lived with the dragons long enough that beating the shit out of someone seems acceptable.

"For… breaking taboos, um, about labor?" I hedge, still not sure how much she knows about… all that.