Page 73 of Nine-Tenths

Chapter Fifty-One

" Enough !"The queen's wings snap out with a bullwhip-crack. The candles flicker. The windows rattle in their casings.

Leicester retreats to her side, hands free, at the ready.

Silence, thick and seething, descends on the hall.

I fold my hands in front of me, lower my eyes, bare the nape of my neck.

Theatrically submissive.

Because draconic instincts.

"I know you're scared," I say softly to the stone stairs. "And I know you were hurt by a human who took advantage of your trust and your youth," I add.

"You dared to tell him—!" the duke says, rounding on Dav in horror.

"He has a right to know why ," Dav says. He lays a hand on the small of my back, supportive, claiming. But not quieting. Not anymore.

"But you can't take that out on every other human under your care, ma'am," I press on, daring to put one foot on the base of the dais. I tilt my head up, pleading. "Please. You keep saying that your advisers tell you things, but what is your heart telling you?"

"That I am a great queen, ruler of a great empire," she husks, eyes locked on mine.

"An empire that hurts people cannot be great.

We're meant to be treasure, the most important jewel in your hoard, but empires don't value the individual life of each human.

Only the number of them they've collected.

Quantity, over quality. And everybody loses that way.

" I gesture to myself, placing my hands over my heart.

"Humans suffer because there are too many of us in one territory, the distribution of wealth is uneven, the economy is lopsided and unfair.

Indigenous dragons suffer because they're cut off from resources and cultural histories, suffer the trauma of their land and hoards stolen.

And the settler dragons suffer," here I gesture to Dav.

"Because they're forced to repress natural instincts to nurture and protect, taught—wrongly—that hoarding is better than helping . "

The queen wavers. I can see it in the way her wings twitch, her eyes lower.

"My father…" My breath hitches, lungs tight, but I swallow around the grief knotting at the root of my tongue. "He died in the pandemic. Tens of millions of humans died. And they didn't have to. Ma'am, they didn't have to."

"If you think dragons can stem the tide of plague—" the duke starts.

"You could have done something more than nothing, though," I shoot back. "I never got to hug him again, I never got to… to touch him. We weren't even allowed in the same room. He… he was alone and I never—do you even know what it’s like? For the ‘Lasts’ to come, like that ?"

"The Lasts?" the duchess echoes. I choke back a sob, trying to keep my composure. It would not be cool to freak out now.

"I mean… the quiet terror, and sadness, and pain of not getting to have the ‘Lasts’.

With not being able to plan a good 'Last’ that you won't regret.

The sort of ripping inside you that happens when you realize that you had the ‘Last’ already, and didn't know it at the time.

Suddenly. So you didn't set it in your memory, or-or choose not to argue over sour cream or be petty about the bourbon.

The most terrible part about being told suddenly that what you thought was just one in a series has been frozen as the ‘Last’, forever.

And you didn't know it was coming. And you hate yourself a little bit because you feel like you should have. Somehow. Irrationally. Illogically. And that’s what dragons can give humans… better ‘Lasts’. Planned ‘Lasts’."

" Fy Nhrysor ," Dav says gently.

I take another step up the dais, wipe my face dry. Her eyes are glistening, too.

Fuck, I don’t want to make the queen cry.

But I will if I have to.

I will if it works .

"You once told the world you would never marry because you were already married to your people," I press on. Just one step below her now. "But isn't this, the hurt that you let other dragons inflict in your name, isn't that spousal abuse?"

The queen's wings lower completely.

I don't dare look at anyone else.

It feels like the whole room is holding its breath.

The whole world .

"Are you not Elizabeth Regina?" I ask. "Are you not the woman who has the heart and the stomach of a king?"

The queen's mouth twists in a sad, sardonic smile.

"That is a speech from an age long past, Dragon's Own. There are no more wars left to fight."

"There are hundreds of wars left to fight, Ma'am," I counter. "Corporate greed. Climate change. Corrupt politics. Cancer. Mental health stigmas. Institutional racism."

"Auntie," the duke says. "He has a point."

"I asked you to be present, hatchling," the queen says waspishly. "But I did not ask you for an opinion, nor gave you leave to speak."

Instead of cowering or apologizing, the duke rolls his eyes fondly and pointedly folds his hands in front of him.

"Please," I say again. "Let us explain. Pedra deserves to be heard. That's all we ask."

The queen takes a breath, opens her mouth, and—

The door to the chamber slams open, the crack of wood against stone as loud as cannon fire.

"Your Majesty!" Lt. Gov. WorstTimingEver bellows from the threshold, puce-faced and rumpled. "Don't listen to these… bumbling, selfish fools !"

"Governor," the queen snarls, eyes flashing.

Leicester draws up beside her, a literal human shield, in an instant. The queen flourishes, drawing all of that terrifying dignity back around her. As hastily as deference allows, I back down the steps, retreating to Dav's side.

It's everything I can do to keep from stomping my feet like a child.

I was so close .

Simcoe mistakes the queen's irritation for an invitation, and strides up the aisle. Before anyone can say anything, a guard steps out of the shadows behind a pillar, placing herself between Simcoe and the rest of us. Simcoe draws up short when it's clear that she has no intention of moving.

"Out of my way, human!" Simcoe snarls.

"You do not give the orders here!" the duke snarls back.

Simcoe didn't expect to be scolded.

I didn't expect it, either.

For a moment, we all eye one another, reassessing where we're each standing in this melodrama. Some of us are on the back foot when we expected to be on the front.

"Your Majesty," Simcoe says. He gestures at the guard, clearly expecting the queen to tell him it's okay to walk around her, or push her over, or even do violence.

"I find I prefer you and your insolence on the other side of a barrier for the moment," the queen replies, low and dangerous. Leicester chuckles. "Were you not to wait in the hearing chamber, sir?"

Hearing chamber ?

"The Court of Peers," Dav says, and then shivers once all over before taking a deep breath and forcing himself to regain his calm. "I see."

"I don't," I admit.

Dav shakes his head. "It is a court."

Not a royal court. A legal court.

Shit.

Shit .

"But… we haven't…" I look back up at the queen.

"You can't be serious . So that's it, then?

" I ask, and yeah, okay, it's probably pretty rude, but my ire is too hot now for me to cower.

"That's all we get? You won't even let us talk and now you're, what, going to persecute us for even attempting to make the world a better place? "

"Yes!" Simcoe snarls with glee. The smooth demeanor of the social facade he'd struggled to keep up on Halloween cracks around the edges. "I came to investigate the delay—"

"A queen may take as much or as little time as she likes," Leicester corrects him.

Simcoe stops.

Swallows hard.

"Of course, Your Lordship," he simpers.

The queen hums thoughtfully. "However, now that you are here, perhaps it is time we joined the peers."

Simcoe grins triumphantly, and my hopes curdle.

"Your Majesty," Dav says desperately. "If there is to be punishment, please leave Mine Own out of it. All that he's done has come from a place of honest idealism and ignorance."

"And whose fault is it that he is ignorant?" Simcoe sneers.

"I take full responsibility," Dav says hastily.

"This is why you choose a Favorite from a coterie," Simcoe presses. "One that's trained already. First that girl, and now this. It's nothing but scandal after scandal with you, boy—"

"Hold on," I interrupt. " You chose Laura Secord."

"Hmm, yes," the queen says. "Interesting double standard, Sir Francis."

Simcoe flushes angrily but says nothing.

The queen descends, the duke and duchess at her heels, Leicester behind them. "Let's not keep the peers waiting."

We're led to something that's less courtroom and more fancy sports arena.

Opposite the grand entrance doors is a gloriously appointed box for the queen, with less ornate but equally elevated chairs on either side of her, already filled with Favorites and dragons in either scales or flesh.

Those wearing humanshape are as elaborately dressed as Dav, right down to the slutty, Pride-tastic eye makeup to highlight their wide array of flame-colored irises.

The floor is sunken in four concentric rings, the lowest of which is maybe triple the size of a boxing ring and made of bare stone.

The next up is carpeted in a rich maroon, studded on either side with two clusters of tables, chairs, and a stone prisoner's box directly opposite the royal one.

Simcoe strides to the left-hand table, where there are several other dragons already waiting, and Dav leads me to the other.

I set down the briefcase, relieved that my self-sacrificing idiot didn't march himself straight to the prisoner's box.