Page 45 of Nine-Tenths

Chapter Thirty-Four

" L et me get this straight. We fuck," I hiss, pushing him back with my hands balled in his fancy lapels, forcing him to meet my eyes. "And it cures death ?"

"Aging," Dav corrects, glancing around cagily. If he tells me to keep it down I'm really gonna stomp on his foot. "And when I pass—"

"Babe, I am not ready for the discussing-funeral-arrangements stage of the relationship—"

"When I pass, and you're no longer, ah, being serviced, you'll pass, too."

That slaps into my solar plexus. It takes me a few tries to get enough air to ask: "I'll die when you die?"

Dav cups my face, eyes skimming over my features, memorizing this moment. "Yes. Within a few months, your lost time will catch up to you. Most Favorites simply go to sleep and never wake up."

"And until then, I'll be twenty-four forever?"

"You’ll age, but slowly." A fond look steals across his face, and he brushes the hair that's come loose from the mask behind my ear. "I look forward to seeing how handsome you are with some gray here, in a century or so."

A century.

Fuck.

"And, uh… how many of these centuries will I… enjoy?"

"I don't expect to be in my dotage for at least another four or five hundred years."

"Five hundred," I repeat, suddenly feeling floppy.

I prop myself against the wall, wine sloshing through my veins.

"Dav, sweetie, honey bunch, cutie claws…

I'm not mad, but I'm over this thing where you don't tell me big, important, fundamental truths until I stumble into them. It’s not awesome and it makes me feel like you think I'm stupid. "

"No," Dav says quickly. "You're one of the most clever people I know. But… I suppose I'm afraid."

"Of?"

"That you'll leave."

My first instinct is to deny it. But to be fair, every big life-change he's sprung on me, I have reacted badly. Maybe it would be different if he told me in a calm, rational discussion, instead of after I've fucked something up. But then again, yeah, maybe not.

He looks sad, so I kiss him until the expression is replaced with dozy contentment. He tastes like champagne and those sticky molasses candies that always stick in my molars.

"Does it scare you?" he asks when we come up for air.

"Yes? No? Only, it’s kinda hitting me that…" I take a deep breath. It punches out as a shuddery kind of thing. "I'm going to have to watch Hadi, and Stu, and Gem get old and die, and man, I do not like that. At the same time, science-wise, it tracks. So, yeah, happy Halloween, eh? Helluva trick."

"I was hoping you’d consider it a treat," Dav says wistfully. There's an expression curling in the corner of Dav’s mouth that I want to lick.

It's a…

Holy shit.

It's a Peter Pan kiss.

I cup his face in my hands, and run my thumb along the edge of his mouth.

"Colin?"

"You have a kiss," I whisper. "Right here."

"I'm sorry?"

"Like Mrs. Darling."

"Ah," Dav says, catching on. "Are you sure it's not a thimble?"

"May I have it?"

"Always." Dav tilts the side of his face to me. "Forever. It's yours, my boy who will never grow old."

"At least not for a long time, I hear." The gooey, hopeless romantic center of me burbles with delight at this happy, sociable Dav. This Dav who is… is filling out his skin. Uncrunched.

"Shall we dance?" Dav whispers.

Oooh, he has good timing. Waiting until I’m all compliant and kiss-drunk to ask. Cheater.

"I don't know what I'm doing," I protest.

"Please," Dav begs, sending an honest-to-god pout my way. I let him pull me into the paired-off line up. "I do so love a dance."

"We never used to get Niagara off the floor," an older dragon to his left says. "And a good thing, too, for he kept all the Favorites well amused. Let us old codgers catch our breath. Glad to have you back, Niagara."

"Glad to be welcomed back, my Lord Toronto," Dav says, shaking his hand gregariously. But he's tense around his eyes.

Ha! I think sourly. " Glad to be allowed off his territory finally, more like.

Skulking by the bar, Simcoe glares like he could knife Dav in the back with the power of his disapproval alone.

Laura’s petting his hair back from his cheek gently.

They don't look like they're lovers—ew, I do not want to think about that.

Their body language is more like a mother, gently soothing her son. Yuck.

I'm lost in my thoughts when the Lord Toronto's partner, a handsome middle-aged dragon who is as comfortably rotund as the Lord Toronto, leans in conspiratorially to me and says, "We’re glad to have you too, son. Wonderful that Niagara has overcome his little difficulty."

"Little difficulty?"

"Wretched tragedy, what happened to Miss Woodley," she says. "All the same, you needn’t fear, he knows better now."

What?

"Watch my shoulders, Mine Own, rather than my feet," Dav says, and that’s a tight Customer Service Smile if I’ve ever seen one.

"Right, uh, sure," I mumble, blindsided by the dance starting. Lord Toronto bumps into my arm. "Sorry!"

"Quick, to the right," Dav chokes.

"Right, right," I mutter, and trip along to follow the line. Dav holds out his hands, and leads me through the patterns. When we come together for a turn, our arms curled around one another’s waists. "What are they talking about?"

"Oh!" Lord Toronto says, when we collide again. Not my fault this time, I don’t think. The asshole is trying to eavesdrop. "Has Niagara not given you his full name yet?"

"My Lord," Dav warbles. "Now is really not the time."

"Nonsense," Lord Toronto laughs. "If one can’t gossip on the dance floor, then where?"

"No, I know his middle name," I say, earning a startled, hurt look from Dav. "It was on the news. What does it matter?"

"A dragon’s middle name is not given at birth, Mine Own," Dav says. "It is earned."

"So? What’s so special about George?"

"I don't suppose I could expect you to know your draconic histories," Lady Toronto says, as we weave in a circle. "But even you must know of Georgius of Lydda."

"Yeah, the Dragonslayer."

"The vicious soldier who used his faith to betray Christian dragons to the Romans. A murderer of his own," the insensitive cow sniffs.

I turn to Dav in horror. "Murderer of his own?"

Poor Dav, I think as the dance brings us back into orbit. My sweet, kind, generous man, with his heart large enough to hold the whole world... and this is what they tell him he’s worth? And the news had used his full name like it was nothing . Like it wasn't a shard of hate stuck into Dav's heart.

"And this is just something people banter about? Like common gossip?" I grit out.

"It is common gossip, Mine Own," Dav says, valiantly attempting to keep calm.

I'm overwhelmed with a righteous, unselfish rage on Dav's behalf. They talk about this injustice so easily , so cruelly. "That’s not fair! You were a soldier —"

"Oh, no, not on the battlefield," Lord Toronto corrects me. I despise him. "His first Favorite."

I stop.

Step out of line.

Dav lets me.

" First Favorite?" I echo dumbly.

I feel like I've been concussed. Everything around me has stopped making sense.

And then, all of a sudden, it does .

This is what he meant by I’ve done it again.