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Chapter Thirty-Five

L aura catches up to me as I'm stalking out of the ballroom.

"And how are you enjoying your first Draconic fete?" she asks, trying to manners-away the scene that turning on my heel and storming away is causing.

"You mean, now that I'm aware that I'm immortal because Dav and I get freaky?" I snarl, grim, and sweaty. "I can’t believe I was so starstruck that I missed the part where you should be dead ."

"Ah," Laura says, keeping pace.

I crane around just once to meet Dav's eyes. He’s standing in the middle of the dance floor, still and bereft, surrounded by chatting little sycophants. I can hear them all laughing about our hashtag—"Alvalin! How modern!"—utterly missing how tight and miserable he is.

I want him to come after me, to soothe, to explain.

I don’t want him to touch me.

I don’t know what my feels are doing.

And I’m not sure where I’m going, just that I know it has to be somewhere Dav is not right now.

"Oh, and that I just found out what his middle name means," I add, slaloming around a glittering rainbow of brocade-clad gawkers. " And that he had a Favorite before me? Who is dead ? Oh, no, I’m fine. Totally peachy keen!"

"Perhaps we should have a word in private," Laura suggests a bit desperately.

She corrals me into the cool, refined quiet of a library.

And just like that, I am alone in a room with Laura-McFreaking-Secord, heroine of the Battle of Beaver Dams, the woman who walked all night to warn Dav and the other British officers of a planned American attack after they’d occupied and used her house as a secret base.

A woman I should, by all right, respect like crazy, and right now just hate a little bit.

I want to scream. I want to break something. Instead, I cross to the window, shove up the sash, stick my overheated head out into the cool night air, and do Gem’s stupid fucking yoga breaths.

The Don Valley spreads out below me, wild and wooded, the moonlight glimmering on the rushing river.

Obviously, I like that there's a forest in the middle of the city, with just a bridge connecting Old York to the rest of Greater Toronto Area through the undeveloped greenery.

Entering the historic capital of Upper Canada feels like you're stepping back through time.

I just hate that the attitudes of everyone here are still stuck in that era, too.

Laura sits in one of the artful magazine-spread-perfect chairs by the fireplace and patiently waits for me to get my shit back under control.

When I feel like I can talk without hurling, I join her, perched on the edge of the chair, too revved up to relax.

She matches my posture as if we were Regency romance heroines in each other's confidence. Which, in a way, we kind of are?

"Don't be upset with Alva," Laura says. "He’s always kept his secrets close."

"I’m not," I choke out. I’m mad at the fuckheads around Dav who think his personal tragedies are titillating bon mots .

Laura chuckles, and I'm struck with the impression that she's quick-witted in a calculating way, hidden under biddable charm.

I hate to admit it, but I can see how it would work with Simcoe's Father Knows Best bullshit.

I bet she rides herd on him and he doesn't even notice.

I wonder how that works, when Simcoe has a wife.

The fact Laura is alive means she and Simcoe have to swap spit at least semi-regularly. Eugh.

"I'm sure you've noticed that there's a, hm, let's call it an aversion to transparency, among dragons."

I snort. "That's a polite way to say it."

"It's uncouth to discuss such things as The Gift openly, in much the same way humans tend not to explicitly discuss the sexual part of their marriages when they declare love for their spouse."

"Then how does anyone… I mean, you, how do you make a decision of whether you want to be a Favorite? How can there be informed consent if there's no information ?"

Laura chuckles again. "'Informed consent.' How modern."

"It's only fair to know what you're getting into before you get into it." I point to the black velvet ribbon around her throat, with the Flame-Laurel-Maple Leaves-Hand-with-Dagger motif set in a cameo at the hollow of her throat. "Did you know what that meant before you put it on?"

"Of course," Laura says.

"I didn't."

Her expression softens. "Alva grew up in the heart of the British court, did you know that?"

I had once chided myself for wanting to make out with someone who, for all I knew, might actually be a Prince. It makes my stomach lurch to hear Laura lay out that whatever his position is in the puddle of blue blood, it means that he's important enough to basically grow up in a palace.

Damn.

Oblivious to my inner turmoil, Laura goes on: "His Excellency was raised on the periphery of nobility, so his manners are much more forthright.

When he offered me the position of Favorite in return for the service I rendered to the crown, he explained what it meant, what I would gain from the position in terms of support, wealth, and health.

My husband James had died in the Battle of Queenston Heights.

I had my children to think of. I accepted.

But Alva… in the world of his childhood, one didn't speak of such things because everyone around them already knew. "

"Nobody, like, sits them down and explains the birds and the bees, uh, or the tokens and the gifts, because everybody just grows up with it?"

"Yes, exactly. Well put."

It feels so dumb to preen under her praise simply because she's like a national icon, but I puff up all the same. "So Dav hasn't explained, not because he's hiding, but because he just forgets he has to tell me."

"If it makes you feel any better, Alva's first Favorite reacted much like—" Laura stops guiltily.

" First Favorite," I echo. "You’re the second person to mention that tonight."

Laura slows to a quiet, contemplative pause. "You didn’t know."

Whoever they are, they’re dead , I remember, all in a rush.

Or they’d still be here. They’d have The Gift and they…

I won’t be jealous of a dead person. I refuse.

Whatever happened, Dav doesn’t talk about it and it must have been awful.

I won’t let this fuck anything up. I can’t, I won’t believe that he killed her. That’s not who he… oh god.

"Why… why would Dav keep that from me?" I ask, feeling the tenuous grip on my temper slipping.

Only, only he hadn’t, had he?

I’ve done it again , he’d said.

"Wretched tragedy, what happened to Miss Woodley," she ventures evenly, neutrally. The cadence and tone are the exact same as the way the lady dragon on the dance floor had said it. By rote. Like it's something said often, around here. "I dislike that Alva will carry it for the rest of his life."

I don't think she means it as a warning.

Still sounds like one, though.

The crown princess bit the head off of her abusive Favorite. Dav could have—

"Did he kill her?" I ask, voice trembling.

"No," Laura says, gently. "And yet, yes." Her mouth does a complicated thing and I get the sense that there's a lot she wishes she could be saying, and isn't. "It was… an accident. You’ve met Alva’s neighbor? Miss Hino’Hawank?"

"Onatah? Yeah."

Oh, no, please, don’t say she had anything to do with it.

"Miss Woodley… Charlotte," Laura corrects herself sadly. "Was adventurous. Curious. She and Alva travelled widely, visited many territories, and one day there was an accident. A cliff."

I press a hand to my chest, relief splashing hard into my veins. Dav isn’t a murderer. Thank god . It’s followed swiftly with a deep grief for a woman I’ve never met, but was loved by the man I love. "How come they blame Dav, then?"

"The unnatural death of any Favorite is a cause of the deepest shame for a dragon.

A Favorite is a dragon's greatest treasure.

They must be guarded as such. For Charlotte to have died as she did is already a terrible stain on his name.

But that she died on the territory of another dragon—a non-British dragon—is the ultimate dishonor. "

"So they branded him a murderer?" I gasp. "All because she, what, she fell? How is that on him?"

"Oh no," Laura murmurs. "Much worse."

"What's worse ? Do you mean the whipping, ‘cause that’s—"

Laura glances at me shrewdly. "Do you know what it was, exactly, he was whipped for ?"

I'm startled by her casual acceptance of such a brutal act.

A different era , I remind myself. She was born centuries ago, and she's lived with the dragons long enough that beating the shit out of someone seems acceptable.

"For… breaking taboos, um, about labor?" I hedge, still not sure how much she knows about… all that.

"You mean roasting the coffee beans? No," Laura says, sweeping aside all cautious tip-toeing around the topic. "It was you."

"Me?"

"Part of his punishment for Charlotte's death was that Alva was forbidden from taking another Favorite for a century. Yet, here you are, a decade too early."

"But… but that's not fair! I kissed him —"

"It doesn't matter, Mr. Levesque. He shouldn't have put himself in the position where it was possible."

"But… but you can't punish love! That's ridiculous!"

"It's already happened," Laura says. "Frank was furious.

But the Draconic Parliament conceded when Alva pleaded his heart.

He swore you were in love, swore that despite not being of titled family or without the proper education in a coterie, you were loyal, and clever, and devoted to him. That it would be cruel to deny you."

"We'd only dated for like, a month," I warble.

My god . The promises he's made. And there's no way he could have been sure. I wasn't even sure myself, not then.

"But you looked for him," Laura says. "Calling. Sending letters. Posting on the Internet. You looked for him, and that was what changed Parliament's mind. You appeared to be equally invested."

Holy shit.

What I did actually made a difference.

It mattered .