Page 137 of Nine-Tenths

Bitchy.

"Your Excellency." Dav nods formally.

Simcoe's eyes cut to me, and I only offer Simcoe an unimpressed grin —as sassy as I dare right now—as I stride intothe room, and flop into one of the chairs. This man got in the way of an orgasm. I'm not bowing.

Listen, I'm a half-ass student when it comes to things that bore me, like math and history. But stuff I give a shit about? I read like crazy. And in the time Dav was missing, I did a lot of reading about the dragon who took him away from me.

The Simcoes were Family Compact hoity-toities, who believed that their name and status meant that they weremoreequal andmoreimportant than everyone around them. Simcoe the elder had already been centuries older than Dav was now when he was asked to take on the leadership of Elizabeth Regina's Canadian interests. He conquered French Canada for Britain, abolished slavery in the colonies, made deals and purchased land from the Indigenous dragons, founded York, laid out order of rule, and established the legal system.

That's good stuff, if you're a white British dude. (Less so if you’re one of those Indigenous dragons he screwed, and whose human children were scooped into residential schools. Bastard.)

And all that time, Francis was at school in England, learning how to be a good little soldier and statesman. Then Napoleon got too big for his britches. Francis, like many young patriotic men, joined Wellington to trounce him.

Then Francis was shot in Spain.

That he lived at all, apparently, was due to his draconic nature. The action had been fierce enough to kill every human in his unit. While Francis recovered, the war spilled over into North America, so the elder Simcoe recruited Dav from that same school to take what should have been his son's place at his side.

After the war, Simcoe the elder returned to England to get treatment for a mysterious nerve illness, and Francis took custody of Upper Canada in his absence. And when it became clear his father wouldn't recover, Francis made his goodbyes,and took over his father’s Canadian territories full time. Sounds noble, right?

But by every interview I'd watched on YouTube, and every newspaper profile I could get my hands on about the guy, he's obsessed with procedure, precedence, and the superiority of dragons—specificallyEuropeandragons.

The ultimate colonizer, he waltzed in and was all "hey, the way we do stuff is better than the way you do stuff, so do it the way we do it or else," and that's some bullshit right there. Now I see how his control-freak crap extends to the dragons of Upper Canada—and the humans they own (slavery is only bad when humans are doing it to each other, I guess).

I help myself to a cookie from a tiered tray on the little table in front of Simcoe. Simcoe makes a face like he'dliketo make a sour face, but thinks it would be impolite. He's proper, and it rankles the hell out of him that I'm not.

Fuckinggood.

"I've come to apologize for the... unseemly display last night," Simcoe says, when it's clear neither Dav nor I have anything to say to him. "It is such a shame a commotion was caused."

Excellent use of the passive tense to shift agency and blame away from you.

Dav waves it away, as if the traumas of yesterday were nothing more than a minor inconvenience. I crunch through the cookie, glaring.

Simcoe does a double take, appalled. "Alva, surely there are more appropriate—"

"He doesn't want appropriate," I interrupt, shocking him. "He wants me."

Simcoe looks to Dav for permission. For something. Dav, with a head bob, grants it. Shit.

I sit up, feet flat on the floor, ready to… ready to what? Duck a backhand? Jump away from a jet of flame? No, Dav wouldn'tlet Simcoe hurt me. But then, he'd let himself be flogged, so who knows what dragons think is acceptable.

But Simcoe only folds his hands on his knees, meets my eyes—his are darkly orange compared to Dav's—and says, "And you wantthis?"

Oh good. It was only permission to talk to me. Maybe after this incredibly uncomfortable conversation, I can get Dav to revoke it so I never have to listen to the self-important asshole again.

"I wanthim," I correct, brushing away crumbs. "And if that means it has to come with…" I gesture around us. "Well, then that's what I deal with."

"How magnanimous," Dav says softly, the amusement clear in his eyes, if not his tone.

Simcoe cuts a narrow look between us and I get the feeling that we’re playing with fire. I don't care. I'm not spending the rest of my very long life scraping and kowtowing to the man who is, as far as I can tell, single-handedly responsible for making Dav crunched.

Begin as you mean to go on, Mum would say.

Simcoe narrows a calculating gaze at me. "Do you understand the honor of your position? Your responsibilities as a Favorite? Especially in the house of Tudor?"

"Barelywithin the house, please," Dav says gently.

My boy's got his hands folded behind his back, his shoulders loose but his fingernails digging into his palms. No, not fingernails—the tips are black, hard. Talons. Maybe Dav's feeling it too, the way there's something off about Simcoe being here. Like a whole-ass thunderstorm has been boxed in between these four walls and has nowhere to go but through our skin, into our cells, to make our insides crackle.