Page 63 of Nine-Tenths

Chapter Forty-Five

T he house does look like a castle from the back.

Where what Owain called the "new build house" ( only four centuries old) blends into the older Medieval manor and fortified courtyard, there's a grand gray-stone gateway topped with pointy gables and archer’s windows, bordered on either side with low round turrets, twinned with ivy.

"Thank you!" I throw my arms up at it. Yesterday's drizzle has let up, and this morning the stone glitters in the sunlight. "Finally. Something living up to the stereotype!"

Dav arches an eyebrow. "Are you disappointed I don't live in a drafty old castle, and sleep on a bed of gold with a princess I stole from a neighboring clan?"

"I mean, yeah?" I wrap my arms around his waist and slide my hands into his back pockets. "What's the point of having a dragon if you don't get the castle?"

"I note that you're not adverse to comparing yourself to a princess." He presses his cheek against my temple, nose buried in my hair.

"I know my role in this little fantasy."

"Fantasy?" Dav pulls back to catch my eye, his oblong pupils fattening with interest. "You didn't tell me it was a fantasy ."

"Not like that!" I protest. Then I reconsider. "Okay, maybe a little bit like that."

Laughing, Dav pulls me down the wedding-cake-tiers of the slope towards the water, a cute little babbling brook with artificial waterfalls, and unnaturally straight banks in a lush, carefully manicured lawn.

The whole back of the building is an Italianate Garden, charming and rigidly wild in that uniquely English way.

The carved dragon door is on this side of the building, which means that at one time this had been the main entrance.

I imagine the stream being something wilder and mightier in centuries past, deep enough for barges to sail up from the bay and deposit visiting dignitaries at the bottom of the hairpin stone staircases.

This door is carved with as much lovingly rendered detail as Castle Frank, but unfortunately most of the symbolism is lost on me.

I do catch that the dragon carved at the bottom of the doors, head twisted up to breathe fire from which the rest of the little figures and scenes rise, looks exactly like Dav.

"That your Mother?"

"Grandfather," Dav corrects. "The family resemblance is strong."

"Speaking of, how's your sister?"

"Much further along than I thought," Dav says. "Her shell is lovely."

"What's the nest like?" I ask, wondering if the egg is in a literal nest of blankets and jumpers that smell like her dad, or buried in gold, or is in the back of a secret water-lit grotto under the house.

Dav laughs and wraps his arms around me from behind, resting his chin on my head as his hands cup my hips.

He's slow and clingy this morning. I don't think he got much sleep. He was there when I woke up, but I don’t know when he came in.

I conked right out. I didn't even have the wherewithal to go poking around the room to see if we'd been put in Dav's childhood bedroom.

There must be embarrassing trophies, or crayon drawings, or, ooooh, even an old stash of the Regency version of porn mags…

"Just a nursery," he says genially.

"But like, what does she look like? Do we call the egg a she, or an it before it's hatched, or…?"

"You can call her by her pronouns," Dav says.

"How do you know it's a girl?"

"How do human mothers know?"

"You ultrasound the egg? What's the egg like, is the shell strong enough for that?"

"Wouldn't do it otherwise, would they?"

"True. How big is the egg, is it—?"

"Darling!" Dav laughs. "Would you like to come meet my sister?"

I turn to face him. "Is that allowed?"

"You're my Favorite. Of course it's allowed. This way."

Dav leads me back into the newer part of the house. But he's unsure about the way, and twitchy, too. "I could have sworn there was a door over… oh, no, it's there." I squeeze his hand. "I am too used to Fynyth. But this is no longer my territory. It's uncomfortable."

"Itchy?"

"Yes."

"Roman itchy?"

"Not that bad. It's a matter of familiarity," Dav assures me as we climb to the top of the house. "The longer you are welcome in someone else's territory, the less itchy it becomes. Onatah visits me frequently with few problems, you'll note."

One more thing to fix , I decide. We’ll be visiting her, too. Onatah can't be the only one experiencing discomfort for friendship.

We end up in one of the rooms graced with a pointy gable.

The balcony it lets out onto is just large enough for two humanshaped folks, or one dragonshaped one.

The stone balustrade is covered with deep claw marks, and I'd guess this is where generations of Tudors have made their first, fumbling attempts at flight.

Oh man.

Flight .

I've seen Dav in his dragonform a few times now. Sometimes he'll transform and flop all over me like a blood-warm, scaly St. Bernard. But I've never seen him as a crimson blur against the high, bright blue of the sky. I want to see that so bad. It'd be cool.

The rest of the room is exactly what Dav called it—a nursery.

A bucolic scene of idyllic Welsh countryside, replete with fuzzy lambs frolicking in the meadows and hedgerows, is painted on one wall.

It looks like something one of the great Romantics might have created.

As dragons do have the ability to annex anyone whose talents they value, it's possible that maybe one of them did.

There's a rocking chair, a changing table, a low bookcase already crammed with well-loved board books and new stuffed animals.

The floor is covered with soft, fuzzy carpets that look like they might be the end result of those lambs on the wall.

The only way in which this nursery is different is that there’s no crib.

Instead, tucked into a recess built right into the chimney stack, separated from the hearth by a thick brick wall is, yes, a nest. It's low to the ground so any tumble from the deep arched alcove won't damage an egg or hatchling, but not so low that anyone can kick the egg by mistake.

Dav pulls me over to sit on one of the poufs piled around the opening.

The fire to the left of the nest is limpid, and Dav gently works it to get the flames leaping again.

Inside the alcove, a bundle of fragrant straw and woolen fluff holds the lady of the hour snuggly in place. There's a sort of prop under all the stuff, like a breakfast egg-cup, but porcelain and intricately painted to match the mural.

As for the egg itself, it looks perfectly, well, normal .

It's oval, and about the size of a newborn baby. Propped up on its fat bottom, it’s creamy white, shot through with marbled veins of gold and red.

"It's… she's beautiful."

"You can touch her, if you like. She should know your smell."

"She can smell me through the shell?"

"At this stage of development, yes. And hear us, too." Dav turns his face to his sister. "Can't you, wy bach ."

" Wy bach ?" I repeat, deciding I better start on that Welsh language tutoring sooner rather than later. Dav winces a little, but clearly decides that now is not the time for a pronunciation lesson.

"Little egg."

Dav takes my hand and, gently, presses my fingers over the dome.

"It's… leathery." I pet down the side of the shell, and under the faintly pebbled texture, make out the subtle bumps of Dav's sister, curled up against the casing. "And damp."

"Yes," Dav says. "We're not birds. Our shells aren't brittle.

She'll rip her way through when she's ready.

There's water in the stand down there, do you see?

Oh, hold on." From a small gilt hook on the side of the hearth, he fetches an ornate porcelain pitcher that looks like a watering can with a long, thin spout.

It's painted to match the little cup that the egg is sitting in, and now that Dav's brushed aside some of the nesting, I can see that there's a trough in the side of the cup.

Dav tips the spout against the trough, and the alcove fills with lavender-and-milk scented steam. "The bath was getting low."

"Do you have to do this for the whole time? Keep up the fire, fill the cup with water?"

"Yes."

"How long?"

"Oh, just a few decades," Dav says offhandedly, refilling the pitcher with fresh water from a huge metal cauldron on the hearth.

He sprinkles more dried lavender into the pitcher from another matching porcelain bowl on the mantle—clearly it's an all-together baby-baking set—and sets the pitcher back on the hook.

"She's had a trio of minders all this time, from Mother's hoard. They have apartments through there."

He points at a cleverly disguised door in the middle of the mural.

"Have we kicked them out?"

Dav sits beside me again and pats my knee. "They'll have heard us coming up the stairs and made a discreet exit. Probably taking a moment to catch up—they sleep in shifts."

"Intense."

Dav shrugs. "It's not the same people for three decades. Mother employs nursing students from Cardiff University."

I scoot back to let Dav have his turn with the egg, petting the shell and murmuring in Welsh.

I don't mind waiting. It's nice to see him so content, so relaxed.

We've spent way too much time stressed out and snapping at each other lately, and it's good to be reminded that we do actually like each other's company.

That what we have is worth everything we're going through to keep it.

When Dav's done, he leans back, and I shamelessly crowd onto his pouf, half in his lap. This will likely be the last time we'll get so much alone time for a while, and I want to make the most of it.

"Oh, hello," Dav chuckles, and scoops an arm around my thighs to hold me in place. "No funny stuff in front of the baby."

"No funny stuff," I agree. "Just… I missed you last night."

"I was there."

"Not until after I was asleep."

"I had things I wanted to discuss with Mother, and it was the right opportunity—"

"No, no. I get it. I'm just saying… I missed you."

Dav melts like the big softie he is, and pinches my chin between his fingers to hold me still for a kiss.

"My hopeless romantic," he accuses, as if he isn't the one who picks flowers out of his own garden for the vase on the table by our bedroom fireplace.

"Mm-hmm," I agree. "Still angling for that happily ever after."

"Working on it," Dav says, and kisses me. "Although."

I jam a finger into his chest. "Don't you dare change your mind."

"What? No, of course I’m not. I keep thinking…" Dav trails off, staring at his sister.

Oh my god.

No.

"If you tell me you're already thinking about getting me with egg, or whatever, you can just slam the brakes right on down, buster." I thwack him.

Dav laughs. "Draconic biology is not that different from humans, Colin. I cannot get you pregnant, and if we were to agree to add children to our family, it would not be without many months of conversation."

"Good."

My brain rewinds a bit.

Did Dav just call us a family?

I guess we are. Him and me.

How about that.

"So what are you thinking about, then?"

"Will you let me tell you, or will you interrupt again?"

I pinch my fingers in the air in front of his nose. "Smart ass."

"I’m clever, yes," he says smugly. "As for my ass—"

"Not in front of the baby," I remind him.

He gets thoughtful again. "Are we doing the right thing?"

"Changing the world?"

"Changing her world." Misery tugs at the corner of his mouth, tangling up in his Peter Pan kiss.

"Babe, look at me." He does. "Do you think we're changing it for the better?"

Dav hesitates for only a second. "Yes."

But he hesitated all the same.

"Are you sure ?"

He scratches at his chin. "It will be different. Harder. She'll have to work more than I do. But I think she will be… happier than we are." He squeezes me tight against his side.

"Did you tell your mum?" I ask. "Is that why you were up here so long last night?"

"I couldn't accept her hospitality, and not explain what we intend."

"What did she think?"

"She was upset at first," Dav admits softly. "She didn't understand what was so wrong . Then she told me …" He clears his throat, crackling out a small cough. "She says Da… there was a girl in the village. Da was set to marry her."

"She didn't know?"

"Of course she did."

"Then why—"

"Because it didn't matter ." He arches his eyebrows significantly. "My mother picked, and my father was Collected."

"Your poor dad."

"Don't start imagining my mother snatched him away in her claws and ravished him against his will. But they met at a time when… if a dragon showed interest, you said yes. Because it would never occur to you that you were allowed to say no. Do you understand?"

I lay my ear against his waltzing heartbeat. "Yeah."

"And he's happy," Dav rushes to add. "They're each other's best friend. Mother's instinct was bang on. But I never knew that when they met, he would much rather have inherited his father's smithy than become a dragon's consort. I never knew ."

"So after your mum was upset, then what?"

"She understood. She… wanted to know what we were thinking. What we were planning. And then she… she wanted to help. You'll have noticed she wasn't at breakfast."

"Yeah?"

"Mother has gone to Whitehall to petition the Queen for an audience on our behalf."

"Oh. No. Totally. Petitioning the queen in person." I choke on my tongue. "Of course."

Dav grins at me. "I have no doubts that we will be given an audience, you saucy thing."

"Saucy, am I? Gonna do something about it?"

Dav leans in, but instead of kissing me, he bites the tip of my nose and says, in a grumbling purr: "Not in front of the baby."