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Dav reaches for me, probably to haul me back behind him, but then stops himself, forces his hands behind his back, waits in parade rest.

Trusts me to handle this.

"Your Majesty, how can loving my fellow citizens of the Empire so much that I am risking my own wellbeing to bring them these truths be treasonous?

" I gesture at my case. "How can wanting to improve the management of the land, of the resources, of the people , be treasonous?

How can wanting to make my queen personally happier and better connected to your vast hoard, treason? "

Dav is vibrating next to me, he's so keyed up.

But the queen?

She laughs.

"What a flattering little gem you've found for yourself, Alva," the queen says to him. For the first time she sounds like she does actually hold the fondness for Dav that Paulette spoke of. "How well you've coached him."

"Oh, no, ma'am," Dav demurs, gasping for air like we’ve been physically sparring, instead of just verbally. "Please believe me, there’s no telling Mine Own what to say or think. He is as stubborn as he is kind."

I try not to be annoyed at the way they all chuckle, like I'm some toddler who's just done his first, flopping cartwheel and expects applause.

"This is what I was trained to do," I say instead, yanking us back on topic. "In a school that's named for a general who defended your territory, I was taught to find ways to make the world a better place. How can using that education be a bad thing?"

"It is not the education, but the daring that I condemn.

You requested an audience and we did not grant it," the queen says.

Her voice drops low, a dangerous rumble which is likely meant to scare me.

If I was smarter, I'd probably take the warning.

But I'm too damned pissed off. "Some would take that as an answer. "

"A non-answer is just cowardice," I offer boldly. "If you just consider what we suggest, I'm sure you—"

"Do not presume to know what I shall and shall not do," the queen interrupts, bristling. Leicester puts a calming hand on her shoulder, but otherwise doesn’t intervene or presume to take attention or power away from her. All the same, the queen heaves a sigh and gentles. "My mind is not made up."

"But someone has been trying very hard to make it up for you," I point out.

"The Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada has a big part in keeping your empire running, and an even bigger investment in clawing in as much power as he can hold.

His territory is massive. And from everything I've learned, it's much bigger than he can reasonably be expected to manage.

He knows what he stands to lose—what every Empire-building dragon stands to lose—if we can get you on side.

But I promise you, there are benefits ."

"That's enough," Dav says, reaching out to take my arm, but I shake him off, take a step forward. Leicester matches it, getting ready to restrain me in case I like, I dunno, decide to be completely suicidal and lunge.

"Lost territories and insolent humans? No," Elizabeth Regina sneers down at me from the height of her dais and her position.

"Well then, what about taxes?" I counter. "Do you know how much you could save on public single-payer health care alone if you let dragons set up a monthly barbecue?"

"My advisers assure me that it's not feasible to—"

"Oh, your advisers ." I cut a look at Leicester, who scowls. If the queen’s going to bite my head off for being insolent, then there's no point in holding back.

I'm headless either way, right? "Lots of old white conservative money-hungry pricks who've never made the welfare of the people they boss around a priority.

It's easier for them to let us die of preventable diseases, to conjure wars, to think up an economic structure so ludicrous that the people who are supposed to be their responsibility are starving and oppressed, by design !

Yeah, that sounds like they're fantastic advisors. No, totally, keep listening to them."

"You brazen—!" the queen starts, but I don't care. Leicester is already halfway down the dais to me, hand on the pommel of, yeah, yup, he’s totally wearing an actual honest-to-god sword.

Whatever. Fuck it, fuck him, and fuck her .

"Literally the one job that dragons have is to look after humans!

Isn't that it? That's what everyone keeps telling me, that's its evolutionary biology, it's in your DNA, it's your stupid draconic instincts!

And my job is to give my whole entire fucking self to the dragon who owns me! In return for my freedom—"

"Mine Own, it's not slavery —"

"—it's his job to take care of everyone else!

But you won't let him!" I throw my hands up in the air, and the duke and duchess both flinch back.

"You won't let any of them! So what the fuck is the point of this arrangement, then?

What's the actual worth of any goddamned Favorite, huh?

" This I direct at Leicester, who has frozen, wide-eyed, where he stands.

"Nothing, that’s what! What good are you stupid lizards if you refuse to do the one thing you are biologically designed to do . "