Page 216 of Nine-Tenths

Nah, fuck it, I'm gonna do it.

First off, not that you care, Simcoe survived.

Yeah, I know. He's sure not as pretty as he once was, so that's something. And he's not Lieutenant Governor anymore, either. Dav was terrified that they were gonna makehimdo the job, which, no thanks. We just want to spend the rest of our lives farming our little patch and revolutionizing the world.

Thankfully, instead of appointing a new lieutenant governor, the queen let the province of Upper Canada elect their leadership for the first time. I mean, not the humans… we didn't get a vote. Notyet. But the dragons voted—allof them, mind you, not just the settlers—and a term of service was placed on the new Lieutenant Governor. The incumbent was charged with figuring out a way foreveryoneof legal age regardless of species to vote in the next election, to be held in a few decades.

Convincing a queen to overhaul a whole system of governance may only take one bloody duel and an afternoon with some research papers. Butimplementingthose changes takes a lot longer.

Luckily, dragons live for centuries.

Centuries that Laura doesn't have. Laura confessed to me a few weeks later, one evening under a maple tree she'd helped Dav plant at the farm half a century earlier, that she thought Fynyth was going to be a fine place to die.

Which, fucking tragic, right?

"I'm open-minded," I'd replied hastily. "I'm not gonna get jealous over some spit-swapping if you and Dav want—"

She'd hushed me, thanked me for the offer… and declined it.

"I’m done now, I think," she’d said softly, looking older and grayer already. "I’m ready to go."

"But not too soon, okay?" I begged, kissing her knuckles.

"Not too soon," she’d agreed.

The next thing that happened was the start of The Conversation.

"It's not our job to dictate how reconciliation and repatriation should go," Dav had said, over tea with the queen the day after the duel. I was so damned proud of him. Especially by how primly he was seated in front of her Majesty. You'd never know that he'd woken up with an inability to sit down atall. "That's the same problem all over again: telling the Indigenous dragons what we'll give, what we'll take, and when, and how. No, it's our duty to open the dialogue and then be silent. To listen to what the people we've wronged want and need. Not to be high-handed and control it."

The queen had taken his advice to heart, and sought out Onatah's guidance. Onatah called it The Conversation, in that bluntly subtle way of hers, and it had caught on. With the help of Indigenous dragons from all over the colonies, they began to map out a plan to reach out to peacefully repatriate territory, and cede control of the land and the people in such a way that no further injustices and insults occurred, and the humans were kept in the dark.

There would come a time, as Pedra had once said, for the whole of humanity to be let in on the truth. But not until the territories were redistributed, not until the problems inherent in draconic wealth hoarding—food deserts and waste, poverty, unequal access to health care, wage gaps and unethical labor—were repaired. And like Dav had said,alsoonce upon a time, that could take decades.

Change sometimes has to come slowly to make sure it's doneright.

Dav and I ended up staying at St. Ffagan's until the snow began to melt. We decided that my family didn't need to know literally every gory detail of how, exactly, Dav and I got engaged. All they knew is that I had popped the question, and Dav had turned into a blubbering, emotional mess and cried for ten minutes on the floor of Whitehall Palace before I got a 'yes' out ofhim. So it only made sense to have Mum and the twins join us in Wales for the remainder of the Christmas holidays.

It's not like Paulette and Owain didn't have the space, and Carys was absolutely delighted to be spoiled by the whole Levesque clan. Mum and Auntie Pattie spent the whole holiday glued at the hip, and Owain, Gem, Stu and I escaped down toThe Goat Majorevery time the dragons got it into their heads to either butt horns, or start wedding planning.

And what about Onatah, to whom we owed so much of our success and happiness?

As Dav promised, as soon as we got back to Canada, the contract they had drawn up to return all but his nesting grounds to her went into effect. And she, in return, had surprised both of us by immediately handing the portion that had been Dav’s marquessate down to her daughter Anwaatin.

Yes, you read that right.

Daughter.

Turns out Onatah has a whole goddamned family of dragons who co-manage her territory, in the Onguiaahra way, and she plays shit close to the vest. So close that I have yet to meet Onatah's Favorite, the gloriously stingy bitch.

I like Anwaatin, and she likes me, and seeing as we're closer in age than I am with Onatah, we spend a lot of time at Beanevolence just talking shit out and sending proposals back to Pedra and the senior adviser teams in both the Scots and British courts.

You know, just casually exchanging texts with royalty.

As you do.

Pedra was immediately offered a place in Elizabeth Regina's hoard, celebrated for her initiative and research (offered, not simply Collected.) With my Auntie Pattie to guide her, she'd accepted, and immediately became tangled up in consultations,flying all over the world to collect enzyme samples from dragons of all nationalities, ethnicities, and creeds.

Let me see, who else…