Page 160 of Nine-Tenths

Doesn't matter.

Who's gonna see me anyway?

Nobody, that's who.

The next time he knocks and wakes me, he says: "Pedra's dropped off a copy of her research. It explains so much. There's something about symbiotic biology and side-by-side evolution. Idon't understand all of it, Mine Own. I need you to explain it to me. Please. I want to understand it."

I'm not hungry. I'm starving. I want him to go away. I miss him. I'm sick of sleeping. I'm exhausted. He waits for me to say something.

"I've called Dr. Chen," he adds. "She's going to call you. Please pick up?"

I haven't turned on my phone in days.

"You can't stay in here forever," Sarah says, barging in to throw open the curtains, letting in the sun.

I hiss at her like a movie vampire. "Just watch."

"I am." She picks up a pair of jeans I'd thrown against the wall days and days ago, and stuffs them into the tasteful laundry basket by the wardrobe. "It's pathetic."

I snort. "Easy for you to say. You're here by choice."

"Oh, am I?" She sits on the hunter-green velvet armchair in the corner of the room. "The Applebys are legacy hoard. I've never known anything else. When I went away to school, I made the conscious choice to pick something that would be useful for Master Tudor. I'm as happily employed here as I would be anywhere else." She shrugs. "And here I get room and board taken care of. We have a cute little house out the back of the vineyard."

"But—" I bolt upright, not giving a shit about my greasy hair or week-old beard. "But you're athing. You're owned. Your kids, too!"

"So is every single human being on this planet. The only difference is that we know it."

She means dragons, and the way they've divvied up every person on earth, but my brain flashes to minimum-wage workers living at the poverty line, and the way capitalism has endangered lives as well as the environment. Sarah is more right than she’s saying.

"I wish I could go back to ignorant bliss."

"To be frank? I kind of wish you could, too," she huffs. I gawp at her. "You're being a massive pain in the ass. The cleaners are stressed out, Cook is beside herself, and I've never seen the boss so—"

"Oh, of course!" I interrupt. "Yes,he'shaving a hard time. The boss is so inconvenienced! Dav, Dav,Davis clearly the only person whose feelings matter here!" I throw my arms and let them drop on the covers with a feeble, impotentfwump.

Yes, I am being childish.

No, I don't care.

Sarah lets that hang between us. Then she asks, softly: "And you think that yours don’t? You’re his Favorite."

"Again, back to the part where Ibelongto him!"

"There's a lot that's not ideal…" she starts, and then stops, rubbing her fingertips on her palms, contemplative. "Someone else more or less rules your life, that's true. But you have options. Your opinions matter. Dragons are happiest when they're surrounded by their greatest treasures, when those treasures are happy in turn. It's not… master and slave. This isn't America."

"Africans were enslaved in Canada, too."

Sarah quirks a smirk at me. "And Master Tudor helped enslaved mothers smuggle their babies onto British ships so they’d be raised free."

"Oh, he… he never told me that," I admit softly.

"There's a lot you don't know yet." She huffs out a sigh. "Our relationship is more like family, like I’m working for my uncle's business."

"But the kids—"

"Can be anything they want," Sarah says firmly. "Whatever it is they want to do, Master Tudor will make space. He'll make up jobs here if he has to—or he'll help them find something off the estate. And I never have to worry whether they’ll ever go hungry, or go into debt for their education, or if they’ll die alone in some state care home, because they’ll be looked after,always."

"What about their father?"