Page 37

Chapter Twenty-Nine

W hen I come to, we're in a different room. A glance out the night-darkened window makes it clear it's been a bit since I…

Since I what?

Swooned like a fucking maiden.

Onatah was right: I am the princess.

My throat tightens again, and I—

Five things I can see: the back of a light brown, worn-out leather sofa to one side of me.

A hideous popcorn ceiling, yellowed with age and tobacco.

A brass-and-amber glass lamp hung in the corner.

Orange shag-carpeting that has been worn flat.

Wood-panel walls that I think are original, and very lived in.

The leather is buttery under my hand, well-cared for despite its age. My hair, when I run my hands through it, is sweat-dampened. My toes, when I wiggle them, are wrapped in hands, on a lap. There's a knit blanket, heavy across my belly, anchoring me to the world.

I hear soft music, something slow and jazzy. The soft, cautious cadence of breathing that's not my own. The creak of the house settling around us as the night cools off.

I can smell the cedar chest that the blanket must have come out of, and a faint whiff of smoky-amber of a dragon in human form. When I reach out, brace myself on the arm of the sofa, grab for the back of his neck, it's Dav I taste when he submits to my kiss.

"How are you?" Dav asks, when we part. He tugs at me until I'm leaned up against him.

I’m fragile in a way that I can't name. I want to burrow into Dav, live between his heartbeats, safe and unseen. Unjudged. I want what we have. But I don't want it the way that we have it. And I don't know how to tell him that, because he's so happy .

He showed me something beautiful, and breath-taking, and incredible. And the sheer scope of the truth that I was the one who got to see it, the meaning behind my access to his most intimate confidences, it scares the fuck outta me.

But isn't that what Dad used to say?

"I loved your mother so much it scared me shitless, Colin. She walked up that aisle and I swear to god, it was the most terrifying thing I'd ever seen in my life, Helen in that white dress."

"Then why did you go through with it?"

"You know how there's good pain, and there's bad pain? Like a massage, and dropping a hammer on your foot?"

"Yeah."

"This was good scared. I didn't know what was coming, but I knew that we'd do it together, and that made it worth it."

"I'm fine," I tell Dav.

"I thought—when you fainted… that I—"

"I'm not afraid of you. Okay?" I crane my head up to meet his eyes.

He looks unconvinced. "Then what was it?"

I squeeze the hand in mine. "Don't worry about it." Dav makes a noise that I haven't heard in a while, the annoyed click-growl. "Can't we just…not do this? Please. Just for tonight."

"Very well," Dav says, but doesn't sound happy about it.

This room is nothing like the museum-quality drawing room downstairs.

This one is filled with old leather furniture and worn-out pillows.

There’s a jumble of remotes in a bucket on a glass coffee table.

There's also a stack of romance novels—the exact same line of historical draconic romances that I'm not ashamed to say I have a delivery subscription to.

I'd guess Dav got them specifically for me, except the spines are all cracked. Someone's been reading them.

At the top of the pile is the book form the hospital: The Azure Ariki's Royal Bride .

Below that are books set during the failed American Revolution, the retaking of New Amsterdam by the Dutch, the Mexican conquest of California and Texas.

All books set right around the same time Dav came to Canada to helm the Loyalist efforts against the fractured American forces.

"Shall I read to you?" Dav asks, when I pick up The Scottish Duke's Reluctant Wife .

"Isn't this treasonous?" I waggle the book at him. "An English dragon reading a romance about a Scot?"

"I'm Canadian, remember," Dav says playfully.

"Besides, Raibeart Rìgh and Elizabeth Regina are mostly friendly, at this point.

They meet once a year for tea on the Wall, you know.

He's getting on, for a dragon, and David Beithir is by all accounts quite smitten with Anne Coronam Reginae.

. So that bodes well for continued good relations. "

"And a union of the British Isle via their heirs?"

"Heavens, no—two draconic monarchs marrying? Never. Anne shall have her Wales and England, David shall have his Scotland, Mann, and Iceland. And nothing short of a bloody coup would unite them at this point. And never for a moment suggest that Domnhall Mór-rí the Third ever succeed Ireland to British rule to his face, or he will take his great-great grandfather’s sword off the wall to threaten you. I have witnessed it."

"Do they each have, um, an Own?" I ask, picking nervously at the book’s spine. I figure if all this royalty nonsense is going to be a part of my life now, I should get it figured out, right?

Dav blinks down at me, neck adorably scrunched. "I forget that what is common knowledge among my family is not amongst yours. Elizabeth Regina's most favored is, of course, Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester."

"Oh, of course," I say, wracking my brains, but I'm coming up blank. It's not like I read the royalty gossip magazines I've been splashed across.

"Anne has her Grey Brydges. There was Castlehaven, for a time, terrible fellow, and none of us were surprised when she bit his fool head off.

David is rarely without his own Elizabeth, and Raibeart's is, ah…

Isabelle? Isabella? I've forgotten. And I regret I have never been close enough to the Irish court to be introduced to their king’s Favorite. "

Putting aside the part where the heir to the English throne bit someone's fucking head off , a sinking feeling grows in my stomach. "Are… is everyone in the royal family straight?"

"Heirs must be got."

"But… it's okay, right? This isn't going to be a thing ?" I gesture at the invisible connection binding us together.

"It's different among dragons," Dav says softly. "It's less, oh, defined, shall we say?"

"But you are gay, right?" I ask, leveraging myself up on his chest so I can meet his gaze dead on.

"I'm in love with you, " he says, which isn't an answer at all.

"So pan, then? Or bi?"

Dav draws me in for a sweet kiss that I let him have. "I'm yours."

No, the grumpy thunder cloud in my head corrects. You're his.

"Shall we read, Mine Own?" he asks, reaching for the hospital novel.

Labels aren't for everyone, anyway.

I let myself be coddled because he so clearly wants to be coddling me. As he reads, I wonder if he’s going to dodge this question too or—

"Oh," Dav says softly, breaking stride. "That sounds lovely, doesn't it?"

"What?" I ask, realizing that I hadn't been listening at all.

"The Ariki's choice of token. He gave her a hair-bead. Though not quite in keeping with your fashion sense," he teases. "I think something more traditional for you, yes? How about a golden cuff?"

"A cuff," I echo, brain finally catching up to what he means. He's talking about something to replace the pin. Something to mark me as his.

Owned .

"No. Not a cuff."

Too much like manacles .

"A Favorite may wear a ring, but—"

"Too soon," I croak, struck by the other connotations of a ring.

"Right. As you say," Dav concedes, and if he's sad to hear it, he's turned his face away so I can't tell.

Over morning coffee on the patio, Dav takes something out of his pocket and puts it on the table between us. For a wild, gut-clenching second, I think it's a ring box. A tiny blip of rage follows because we had literally just talked about this and—

It's a phone.

It's my phone.

"Uh." I take a sip of my coffee. It’s not bad , but it’s certainly not dragon-roasted.

"Call your Mum."

I stare at him for a moment. "I know we're kinda working on the together-forever-thing, but I didn't think you'd start nagging me this quick."

Dav rolls his eyes at me, fond and exasperated. "You have hundreds of texts, Colin. Talk to everyone. Tell them you're okay."

I pick up my phone, frowning now. "You snooped?"

"You have lock-screen alerts on, and I only picked it up because I thought you'd left it on the nightstand by accident."

"Sure." I thumb it open. The easy morning calm crumbles into a shameful sinking in my chest when I see how many calls I've missed.

"It wasn't an accident, then?" Dav asks gently.

"Maybe," I twist out, flipping the phone over in my hands, fiddling. "I don't know what to tell them."

"The truth. I'm back, and you're spending some time with me to reconnect."

"I barely understand how I feel about all the paps stuff, how do I explain when I—Christ, Dav, I just… There's gotta be like, I dunno, Royal Watcher social media bullshit—"

"Tell them it's all bullshit, then." I look up at him, eyes on his mouth, loving the sound of curses in his old-fashioned accent. "Tell them the news has it wrong," he adds.

"Even if the news has it right?"

"The news never has it right," Dav says gravely. "Call them. It's a fine thing, to have a family who loves you."

I inhale at that, try to make it sound like a non-committal sound, when it was really a gasp of horror. Of course. I'm a selfish prick.

My family may pester, but Dav's literally whips him.

"Fine." I stand up to put some space between my…

lover? Fiancé? Boyfriend? I have no idea what I should be calling Dav now.

To him, I'm his Favorite. For me, he's my…

there's gotta be a dragonish word for what he is to me now.

Dav watches from the patio, and I know his ears are sharper than human ones.

Walking away from him is really only giving me a sense of privacy, but I can live with that.

The first person I call is Dr. Chen's receptionist.