Page 39 of Nine-Tenths

"What?"

"Remodeling my farm is not quite the same as saving your sister from ruin, but if it's not enough, I am willing to go jump into the duckpond in only my linen shirt."

I laugh at the thought and cling to him. "This is so much ."

I feel breathless.

"I wasn't lying when I said I had hoped, Colin.

That I had… wanted ." He pulls me tight against him, the long, lean line of him.

I'm feeling overwhelmed, if I'm honest, and I'm learning that the grounding force of this embrace is a hundred times better at keeping me connected to myself than any weighted blanket. "Dragons play the long game."

"I'm getting that."

" Without any expectation of reward," he adds, making sure I meet his eye, that I understand that he did all of this knowing that I might say no thanks , and he would respect that.

But Christ, how could anyone ever honestly believe that I wouldn't…

I had spoken.

And he had listened .

I had dreamed.

And he had made it a reality .

"You know, I think this is the sexiest shit I've ever seen." I push him, gently, around the fence and back against the wall of the chicken coop, where we’d definitely be hidden from any lingering paparazzi. "I should thank you. Hm. I think I owe you a few."

Dav groans. "If we start keeping score, I'll—"

I don't know what he'll do, because I yank his jeans and underwear down all in one go, and kneel in the grass.

After, we're both flushed and panting, sitting in the lee of the coup. Dav is eying the empty upper windows of the house with mortification and no small amount of suspicion. I link our pinkie fingers and say, simply, honestly: "Thank you."

Dav gifts me with one of those sunrise smiles.

"No, thank you. My land is what makes me a Marquess, as much as my military service.

And when you saw it all yesterday, and called it good, and innovative, and clever, without realizing I did it all to your specification, it was the first time I've been proud of it in a very long time. "

"What's not to be proud of?"

"It employs hundreds, and feeds a community, I see all that. But I also see… what it used to be. Who it used to belong to. This should be Onatah's."

"Your estate?"

"And beyond—the Dutchies of Windsor and of Toronto, Lord Hamilton’s holdings, the lot.

The whole peninsula, really. From the Grand River in Upper Canada to Glenwood Lake in Dutch North America.

Before… before us , before this terrible, all-consuming need to subjugate the world, this was the territory of Hinon the Great Thunderer, the Serpent Behind the Falls. "

"What, like the Maid of the Mist?"

Dav does laugh, now. "Onatah tells me that the colonialist interpretation of Lelawala is, ah, shall we say 'sensationalized'?"

"So, what, Simcoe stole all this and gave it to you?"

"The polite term is 'to annex'," he sneers.

"The fighting with the Americans wiped out or pushed off the Indigenous dragons, and the elder Simcoe was…

opportunistic. I was gifted this piece of it and charged with the protection of a vitally important location against Jefferson's 'mere matter of a march'," Dav says.

He scoffs an unimpressed lick of flame. "For spearheading the Presidential Mansion incident. "

I goggle at the thought of Dav being the one who set the match to the former American capitol building to solidify the Canadian victory. Or, probably, being the actual match himself.

Who knows what would have happened if he hadn’t been there, and the Americans had won the war, or even if there'd been a stalemate.

Maybe big chunks of the country would be American, now.

Though I can't imagine New England or, like Pennsylvania, or any of the bits of Regina and Alberta that border the Mexican Empire as being American .

To me, America will always be rippling wisteria, mint juleps and sweet tea, peach orchards, and that thick drawl.

"I could have declined…" He stops, stares out wistfully towards the Falls.

"Why didn't you?"

"It was offered in such a way that I was put in a rather difficult position, and could not say no. I thought I could manage the territory in absentia , but… no dragon may hold more than a single territory, per Elizabeth Regina's law."

"And you chose Canada over an ancestral estate back home?" I guess.

Dav wriggles, uncomfortable. "My word means something to me, even if Simcoe's did not to him.

I signed that treaty on the battlefield.

I promised to protect the interests of our allies—" he breaks off with a frustrated draconic hiss. "I just didn’t realize that I would need to do so after the war’s end, and against my own side.

I accepted protection of a March, but it was not this one that needed safeguarding.

Onatah's territory would have been stolen if I was not here to act as a stopper. "

"You don't know that."

"Believe me, Mine Own, I do." He squeezes me tight against his ribs. "I think worst of everything, what I despise most is that they forced me to become some sort of archetypal white savior. It's distasteful. Although, there is one benefit."

"Which is?"

"If I had gone home to St. Ffagan's, I would never have met you." He sends me a sloe-eyed look.

"You romantic goober."

"I gave back as much as I could before Francis protested. Everything from the Escarpment to the riverbank remains mine, regrettably."

"The Falls themselves?"

"No. It would be abhorrent to control her grandfather’s Nest. Onatah's territory starts at the river.

But it's less than half of what it was." He snorts.

"The government, they say she should not have it, because she doesn't know how to use it.

That because she declines to urbanize , and factory farm, she is wasting the land.

" He spits out 'wasting' like it's acid.

"They do not see her natural agriculture, or the sustainability of their lifestyle.

The deep community they have. All they see is what I lost . "

"Sounds frustrating."

"They speak about it as if I'm weak. As if it's a matter of will, or physical strength, or wealth.

Just because I'm strong enough to take it doesn't mean I should .

I barely have any contact with the general public supposedly under my care as it is.

What would I do with more ? A dragon oughtn't have everything simply because they can .

" He juts out his chin, stubborn, jaw clenched.

"This is what rots empires. Rome fell to ruin because there's simply a limit to how far from the home nest a dragon's influence—both good and bad—can reach. "

I think back to our book. "Is that why the Dutch couldn't get a foothold in Aotearoa?"

"Part of it," Dav says airily. He's doing that thing where he tells the truth, but not all of it.

"Your, uh, your opinion on this stuff… is that the thing?" I ask softly, resting my cheek on his shoulder. "The thing that they're mad about? The 'I did it again', thing?"

Dav kisses the tip of my nose. "No. I promise, I will tell you when I'm ready. But no. This is just something else that has not made me popular."

"Then why'd you do it?"

"We Welsh dragons have long memories, and we recall what it means to be conquered and stripped of one’s language and culture. England colonized Wales long before they built their ships and left the island to steal an Empire."

"But your last name is Tudor ," I point out, a deliberate dig at his earlier jibe.

"Ah, well, one can't choose one's patronym."

And then Diego comes and kicks the bottoms of our shoes and tells us to quit being such lazy Draconic Overlord stereotypes, and get to work.