Page 77 of Nine-Tenths

I hate to be stingy with my description of what happens next but first, I mostly read romances, okay? The fight scenes in those are usually a few shots fired in a field, or a few passes of a sword. I don't have the experience or language to describe it.

Secondly, it happens so fast that I'm not even sure what I'm seeing.

Dav lunges. After that, it's a swirl of tails and wings.

Talons sparking off of hard scales. Tails twined together, and suddenly Dav is doing some sort of roll wrapping around Simcoe, squeezing , choking.

Simcoe snarls, fangs flash, and Dav roars in pain.

He shakes Simcoe off. Blood drips freely from a wound under his arm.

"Dav!" I cry, and I'm not sure what I mean to do, what I can do, but before I move, a dragon appears at my side. They lay a restraining hand on my clothed shoulder.

They're dressed in some sort of uniform that includes gloves and I think, oh my god, they think I'm going to throw myself into the pit, and…

This is part of duels, I realize. There's one of the liveried dragons standing beside Laura, too. To keep the Favorites from interfering? Or from doing something stupid? Or is it to protect them from attack while their dragon is distracted?

Fear and disgust curdle in my guts. I despise that owning people is so codified that there's someone assigned to keep me out of it. As if I was a fragile little bit of decorative spun sugar. As if I don't have a right to fight for the man I love, the way he's fighting for me.

Dav pulls himself to his feet, shakes to resettle his scales, and a thin spray of blood arcs across the pit.

It splashes against the stone, hot enough to steam.

Dav reorients himself, coils his tail behind him, eyes on his enemy.

Only a twitch of his ear—oh, lord, his pretty soft ear is torn —in my direction betrays that he's heard me as I suck back a sob.

Simcoe licks my lover's blood off his chops.

"What…" I don't dare to turn away from the fight, but I have to know. I tilt my face up at the uniformed dragon at my side, eyes locked on Dav. "What happens to the Favorite of the losing dragon?"

"If they're lucky, age catches up with them, and they drift away," the guard replies.

"And if they're not lucky?" I ask shakily. Simcoe and Dav start pacing around one another in slow, serpentine circles.

"Forfeited to the winner, sir," they say.

Horror slams into my chest. " No ," I gasp, whipping back around in time to see Simcoe look up at me, that bloody leer back in place. "That's barbaric—"

Dav catches Simcoe looking and lets out another furious roar.

Too busy gloating, Simcoe is caught off guard when Dav charges, a whirlwind of teeth and claws.

I've never, not once in the time since we've known each other, in the years since he sat in the café and watched me, not-creepily , seen Dav like this.

This?

This is the trained soldier.

Around the room, the sounds and the smells of the fight seems to be getting every dragon worked up. Beside me, the guard is panting harshly through their nose, scales sprouting out from the side of their face.

Every dragon's eyes burn as they lean forward. They're all waiting for something. Something brutal. Something bloody. Something final.

Not to Dav. Please.

Simcoe and Dav lunge apart and clash together again, and again.

Dav isn't the only one bleeding now. The stone floor of the pit grows slick with ichor and torn scales.

The next time they separate, both dragons take a moment to breathe.

Dav stalks back and forth, licking gore from his fangs, tail lashing.

His low rumble builds into a ripping snarl and subsides again.

Every pore of my skin tightens, hair literally standing on end. And yeah, okay, watching Dav fight for me is getting me horny, not gonna lie. Dav stalks around to the far side of the pit and lifts his snout in my direction. His pupils blow wide and, yeah, okay, fine, fuck.

Sure, let the whole room know how bad I want to bone you right now, why don't you.

My fucking competence kink, I swear.

While Dav wriggles and shivers, agitated and ready to end the fight, Simcoe is panting hard, several gashes torn in his hide and one of his wings dangling the wrong way. He's leaning against the wall of the pit, one of his forelegs twisted, but a curling sneer pulling at his mouth.

"So easily distracted," Simcoe growls. "You've always been lead by your prick, you witless—"

The rest of Simcoe's insult is drowned out by the crackling roar of Dav spitting fire. It's not like the wide, orange flames he's been huffing up until now. The fire is so intense that it's yellow-white, a thin stream aimed at the side of Simcoe's ruined face. It's focused , it's…

It's the method of fire-spitting he'd developed to roast coffee beans.

Simcoe lets out a high, hissing shrill of pain, and tips over backwards in his effort to scramble away. If I never see another melting eyeball in my life, it will be too soon. My boner is well and truly wilted.

Simcoe writhes up the wall, but the dragons along the benches shove him down. He screeches again when Dav pounces on his back, ripping at the roots of his wings.

"Mercy!" Simcoe shrieks through a ruined mouth.

"Mercy!" Dav echoes scornfully. "Like the mercy you showed me when I was grieving Charlie? The mercy you showed your father when he was ill? The mercy you showed to Mine Own, when he was scared and new to our world? Pah!"

"Mercy," Simcoe begs again, too far gone on pain to actually hear what Dav is saying. He wriggles and cries, trying to get out from under Dav, but Dav bears him to the ground, sinks the wicked talons on his hind legs into the meat of Simcoe's thigh.

Fire sparking, preparing to strike that final, fatal blow, Dav stops.

Stops.

And looks to me.

The room holds its breath.

Waiting for me to speak.

Waiting for me to pass sentence.

Waiting for me to sob, and beg mercy, and end it peaceably.

Well.

Fuck that .

I look across the room at Laura. She's standing now, the closest she's come to showing any loyalty to Simcoe during all of this. Her hands are locked around the back of the bench in front of her, mouth twisted in a grim line. Slowly, just once, she blinks.

Once for yes.

Two for no.

I wait for a second.

It doesn't come.

"Go on," I say.

Small noises slap against the vaulted ceilings. But nothing so vulgar as a gasp of horror.

"No skin off my nose," I add, when no one says anything else.

When no one moves. "And it's not like he doesn't deserve it.

" I shake off the guard. They let me. I take a step forward.

I'm not stopped. I take another, then another, and just like that, I'm at the top of the human-sized steps that lead down into that horrible, blood-stained pit.

"If you want to do it. If this is something you want , then I'll support you. "

"This is your life, your choice as well!" Dav says.

"I know." I want so badly to reach out to him, put my hand on his hide.

But Simcoe is still trying to fight, muscles jumping, intact eye rolling, tongue lashing.

I'm not actually stupid enough to jump in there like a romance novel heroine when there's still a chance Simcoe would crush me with his tail.

"And I love you for asking me. But my choice right now is to follow your lead. Mine Own."

Dav's whole body shivers, eyes closing briefly. Then Dav rears up, throat sparking and clicking. Decision made.

"Alva!" Simcoe shrieks.

Dav spits . This close, the heat frizzles the hair on my face, slamming into me like a brick wall. It's so much like that morning in the kitchen that my scars twinge. Hold it together! I don't tell myself to take deep breaths, because they'll taste like charred flesh.

When Dav stops blowing, Simcoe is…

Simcoe is screaming, high and thready.

But he is alive .