“James.”

  My name, quietly whispered, rattled through my ears in the twilight of sleep without truly penetrating my mind.

  “James,” the voice repeated. “James, you need to wake up.”

  The voice was pleasant. Smooth, even if it was insistent about whatever it wanted from me. Calm, even, and controlled. The vibrations the voice made against my body as they whispered to me were soothing and calming.

  “James,” it repeated again, “Sam is already dressed and working on breakfast. You need to wake up or you’re going to be late for your meeting.”

  “What meeting?” I mumbled, my arms stretching out around the person trying to get my attention. I was still in bed; I could tell that much from the sheet over my body and the pillow under my neck. I could also tell the person talking to me was female, not just from how light their voice was, but from how well they fit spooned against my front. My hands found their hips and pulled them against me, their backside grinding against me lazily, and I sprouted a wing to wrap over the top of us, enshrouding them in my body.

  “First, your meeting with Aisling over the question of the labor practices you found questionable and offensive. And then, later, assuming you aren’t exiled from the land, Arjun and Asmara are meeting with you for dinner, to ensure that she still can live with you, as you’ve invited her to.”

  My arm snaked up from her hips, wrapping around her torso and pulling her more firmly against me.

  “But those meetings aren’t until Monday,” I whispered back, my face lowering until my nose was gently toying with the ridge of her ear, and my lips brushed against her neck. She shivered as I made contact.

  “James, it is Monday,” she replied firmly.

  “What?” I asked.

  “It is Monday morning, sir,” the woman in my arms repeated.

  The final word pierced the lingering fog blanketing my almost sleeping mind, and I took a sharp inhale as I opened my eyes. The midnight black hair my face was nestled into made it unmistakable whose backside my hips were pressed into and whose soft skin my fingers were digging into.

  “Shit,” I whispered. My heart was suddenly racing, and I wasn’t sure if I should apologize or merely start getting up and pretend nothing had happened.

  “Don’t apologize,” Zenya stated, as if she were reading my mind. “Being close to you is a reward beyond my station.”

  “Really not sure that I agree that being groped by a half-asleep dragon is a reward at all, Zenya.”

  “It is when I asked for it.”

  I winced. “Not exactly.”

  “I said it would be alright and that I was aware of what I was asking for, James,” she replied sternly. “I was literally and explicitly asking you to share your contact with me in lieu of sharing with your mates during the night. I’ve been in close quarters with people before. Incidental contact isn’t unpleasant for me when I trust the people I’m having it with, and when I’m the one who requested the contact, it would be my own responsibility if I wasn’t at least tolerant of it.”

  “I don’t like it,” I whispered.

  “You don’t like holding me?” she asked. There wasn’t the barely audible pain I would’ve expected Sam to only just fail to hide from me, nor the sickly sour, rehearsed voice Beth would have used at one point in her life. It was a genuine question, even if it was coolly asked. For Zenya to ask it, though, was enough to have the same effect.

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Good,” she replied, the warmth creeping back into her voice. “Because I enjoy you holding me in the night. I did ask for it directly.”

  “Even if my hands roam?”

  “Hmm,” she muttered as she thought. “Potentially especially so.”

  “Wanna explain that at all?”

  “Get up. Take a shower. I’ll meet you in the kitchen and explain there with Samantha. When I’m done, we’ll need to talk about how you’re approaching your meetings today, since she’s going to be a major presence in one of them.”

  “Yeah. Fair. Cool. Cool. I’m not awake enough to have a teasing conversation with you, let alone Aisling. Are there magical stimulants?” I asked offhandedly.

  “Yes,” Zenya replied, the warmth that had filled her voice just a moment ago utterly absent now. “Horrible things that ruin normal lives. There is a chance that, as a dragon, you wouldn’t be crippled by them, but I will say no more.”

  “Sorry,” I whispered, holding her firmly in a very different way than I had been only a minute before. “I just meant that I could use the boost that caffeine used to have on me. I’m not chasing anything more, and I’m not going to ask any more questions when it’s clear that even joking about it bothers you.”

  I lingered for a second, unsure exactly how what I had said had bothered Zenya. I knew she had a lot more baggage than even Beth had, but now wasn’t the time to press. She was right. I needed to get moving, and we had other things to handle.

  I kissed the back of her head impulsively as I started to get out of the bed, just as much for my own comfort as a gesture for her.

  The shower helped. The water helped wake me up. Zoey slipping in for a moment to rinse off after her morning run was a welcome surprise, too.

  The pancakes Sam wafted under my nose helped a lot, too.

  “Did I really sleep through everyone else getting out of bed?” I asked as I finished the first delicious, sticky stack of carbs.

  “Kind of,” Sam replied. “You were out hard when Zoey got up for her run. When Beth got up to shower, you held onto her arm as she tried to slide out of bed. When I got up, you mumbled about me coming back to our kingdom. And then, well,” she trailed off, raising an eyebrow at Zenya.

  “You clung to me,” the vampire finished.

  “It was adorable,” Sam added.

  “I’m certainly glad no one seems bothered by how close I got, particularly Zenya herself.”

  “I told you, I particularly enjoyed it,” she reiterated.

  “And you said you’d explain that.”

  “It’s the truth,” Zenya slowly stated. “Not what I’m saying; what you do when you’re almost asleep. At least, it’s a truth. In that moment, you wanted me there against you, desperately clutching me against you as though an inch between us would be the end of your world. In that moment, you aren’t doing it for me. You aren’t doing it because I asked for it. You’re holding me because you want me there. That makes it so much better. So, when your hands roam a little, with how gentle and caring you are with them, with how you are firm with them without being demanding or controlling, it lets me believe, for a moment, that I’m like them.”

  Sam’s eyes hardened and froze me as Zenya finished what she was saying. She caught me as I was going to find a way to bumble my way into offering Zenya exactly what she was saying she wanted.

  Of course, that’s precisely what Sam was pushing me to offer her. Just not now. Not in this conversation. Offering it right now, in response to what she said, would taint it. I would, in her mind, only be offering because she had said something. I’d have to wait — I’d have to keep her in a position where she wanted more, holding what she was now saying she yearned for just out of her reach — so as not to ruin it when she got it.

  The moment of silence allowed Zenya to continue speaking. “I’ve been wanted before. It felt like a curse then. I’m tall, my skin and eyes are fair — even in a major city today, I know I stand out in a crowd. In a group of peasant girls along the Dnieper, it was even more pronounced. I was wanted, but it wasn’t for me. I was a toy. A doll for them to play with and then put back on the shelf when they got bored.

  “You’ve got three mates and another asking for your hand. It should remind me of where I was. But instead of capricious, self-interested girls who only want your attention because of what it could mean for their future, for their families, and who simultaneously resent the actual process of getting your attention while being jealous that I receive it simply because of how I look, I found here four loving, caring, sharing, attentive partners, all working together.

  “It’s the inverse of where I was a hundred years ago. I’m caught in the orbit of a powerful family, but I’m wanted for me, not just for what I look like. I’m asked what I would like to do instead of being given orders. I’m given attention instead of being expected to share myself with others on demand. I don’t need to eat, and yet Sam goes out of her way to make food I enjoy. I don’t need to sleep, and yet I’m given space in a bed that belongs to those who do.” She laughed, though clearly at the absurdity of her subsequent realization rather than in humor. “When you walked into my room the other day, I had a flashback. It wasn’t anywhere near the same situation — computers didn’t exist then — but I was using something that was supposed to be for work instead for my own enjoyment. Instead of being reprimanded for it, you recognized what I was playing and tried to comfort me over an aspect of it that could’ve been personally bothersome.

  “All of that, James, is just to say that your hands on me in your sleep isn’t something I’m ever going to complain about.”

  “Nor will any of us,” Sam firmly added, putting a hand on Zenya’s shoulder.

  “You don’t know that — it’s only been a couple of nights — but I appreciate the sentiment. It’s good to know that I’m not treading on anyone’s toes.”

  “You can tread on James’ toes,” Beth offered as she brought her plate back in from the bedroom. “You’re just about tall enough that standing on his toes puts you at the right height to—”

  “Thank you,” Zenya replied, cutting Beth off, “But that’s more than enough time that we’ve spent on me.”

  “Aisling,” I said, to which both Sam and Zenya nodded.

  “Yes. What do you want from the meeting, James?”

  “I don’t know. Assurances that it’s a lot less objectionable and a lot more in her control than I think it is.”

  “And if you don’t get those?” Sam asked.

  “‘When,’” I grumbled. “When I don’t get them, I’ll let her know that I’m displeased and we’ll follow your plan. I mean, if it isn’t awful, if my fears are assuaged by the conversation, then I won’t feel compelled to participate. Perhaps we’ll look into a skilled carpenter or architect, for a house we can build for ourselves. But, if it’s all above board, I won’t need to pull someone out.”

  “Reasonable,” Sam replied.

  “So our plan is mildly disgruntled?” Zenya asked.

  “Cautious objection?” I offered. “Knowing I’m very unlikely to actually have my distaste abated, well, frankly, not only am I personally displeased with this, but it’s time that I use some of the weight Aisling has given me. I’m in a weird spot where I know so little about the world but have been treated like a princely son of a despot — with both fear and begrudging respect — that I probably need to start wielding some of that.”

  “Why?” Sam asked, though she already knew the answer.

  “Because, primarily right now, I believe it’s the right thing to do. But, at least for the developing scene of the rest of our lives, because establishing the precedent that I will do something if I find things I don’t like will prevent headaches in the future.”

  “Speaking to Aisling privately isn’t precisely doing much, James,” Zenya stated calmly.

  “No, it isn’t, but I’d also be insane if I just started trying to put all of my potential leverage down immediately on her neck without ever giving her a chance to respond to my demands, let alone know I was displeased in the first place.”

  “So you’re not expecting a resolution today,” Zenya suggested.

  I laughed. “No, I’m fully expecting to be rebuffed, potentially harshly, and to be told that this is good for the realm as a whole, even if it’s incredibly exploitative for the people who most need the realm’s support. Even if Aisling is cooperative and sympathetic to my position, I wouldn’t expect any change to occur as a result of this meeting — at least not on a timeline shorter than years, if not decades. And when that happens, I’ll follow Sam’s advice, make an appearance as the evil dragon they expect looking to add a servant to my house while actually trying to see who most I can help with Juliana’s money, and then have voiced my moral objection to the powers that be, establishing my entry to the political scene here, while doing my best to subvert the system I loathe for the benefit of someone who needs it.”

  “That’s our game plan, then,” Zenya said. “We’re there to make your voice heard, to get your objection lodged, not to actually change anything. We can approach the situation with a slight level of animosity, as long as we convey it in a manner that ensures Aisling is aware it’s directed toward the system, not her personally. We change your position from her pet dragon to an active member of the realm.”

  Sam nodded, and I confirmed, “Let’s do this.”

  ~*~*~*~

  “James, this needs to be quick,” Aisling said without looking up from the document she was tracing her finger over. “I don’t have time today, or this week, really, to handle your whims directly.”

  “You can either make time for me or you’ll be making time for cleaning up the ashes of things I burn to the ground when my questions don’t get answered,” the dragon and I replied together. Antagonistic wasn’t what I had planned on opening with, but if she was going to open with dismissiveness, I wasn’t merely going to take it. It wasn’t great to already be off script, but when the script said “Don’t be a pushover, James,” I was sticking to it in a different way.

  The banshee queen’s eyes flicked up to me, pausing for several seconds on me specifically before moving on to measure the three of us as a group. When she had drawn whatever conclusion she felt she needed, she sighed and gestured to the chairs around her desk.

  “Let’s get this over with, I suppose,” she said with some disdain. It was clear to me that it wasn’t truly directed at us for having questions — it was, in truth, at whatever other calamity she was handling that made her have no bandwidth for handling me. She collected the documents she had been looking at and set them off to the side, opening a drawer from her desk and pulling out a single sheet of printer paper.

  “Evgenia informed me that you desired to discuss the presence of the Ether Congregation in my realm,” Aisling cooly summarized the information on the sheet she had just picked up. “Why do you need to speak to me, James? Surely they can answer your questions, too.”

  “And I’ll get a line of polite bullshit in response, if not an outright sales pitch. I’m young, hilariously young in comparison to you, but I know better than to expect an honest answer if I ask a corporation what value they provide to the greater population.”

  “Why now?” the queen asked me.

  “One of the other dragons did something I found offensive during our meeting. I verbally ejected them from the meeting, not that they actually desired to attend it. They sent me an apology that included a voucher for services from the Ether Congregation or one of their partners. A voucher for a person, Aisling. The Congregation had reached out to me before, and I took a glance at what they were offering and ignored it. I hadn’t been here long enough to want to stick my nose in things. But now I’ve been nudged into acknowledging their existence a second time, and so, I have come to you to try to get answers.”

  “What do you want to hear from me?” Aisling asked. From the tone of her voice, it was clear that part of her question was sincere. There was a portion of her that genuinely wanted to know what she could even say that would resolve my issues.

  The other part of her wanted me to know how absurd I was being, and wanted me to squirm a little. We both knew there weren’t actual answers.

  “You know what they do,” she continued. “You’re young. You’re not from this world. You grew up with different expectations. You were right the first time — go home, ignore them, live a little longer.”

  “I can’t,” I replied automatically. When she raised an eyebrow at me, I continued, “Not without some kind of assurance.”

  “What can I offer you that would actually help, James?”

  “Look me in the eye and tell me honestly that they’re closer to a modern recruitment agency in my world than a slavery ring,” I replied. When she merely blinked and sighed without saying anything, I continued, “How is this legal? How are contracts of potentially hundreds of years of indentured servitude permitted? I understand that they used to be more normal, but why do you still permit them?”

  Aisling sighed. “They’re legal because they have never been made illegal.”

  “Aren’t you queen? Aren’t you the Seat here? What does that mean? No one has bothered to explain how the government actually works — I’ve seen hundreds of agents of bureaucracy without understanding the actual systems. Who makes the rules? Do you have branches like the U.S. government I’m familiar with? If you aren’t in charge of what is permitted here, who do I need to complain to?”

  “I’m the Seat as long as no one overthrows me,” Aisling replied carefully. “If I make sweeping changes suddenly, powerful people get nervous. If I change how I act suddenly, people get nervous. If I change the rules on them after decades of consistency, powerful people tend to decide that changing me would be a more attractive option than changing their behavior. And unlike in the world you come from, being changed from this position doesn’t mean being ousted after one term and forced to go on a retirement tour of speeches at second-rate universities around the country while the people with power quietly snicker behind closed doors at the ones among them who ever backed me. There are no retired Seats.

  “I make the rules. I am the law. But that means I have to be able to enforce the law, too, James. Suppose I declare them illegal without the other Seats cooperating and without the power players in this country changing their operations beforehand. In that case, they’ll merely puff up their chests and continue as they were. How do you think the war on drugs is going, James? Has it convinced everyone that recreational drug use is universally self-destructive and therefore personal use has dropped to near zero, or has it merely made organized crime syndicates trillions of dollars annually?”

  “So you can’t simply declare them illegal, given the delicate balance of political power, and even if you could, there would be a number of them that continued anyway. See, that I can get behind. I can understand that. But the second half of that argument is that you are actually regulating them to keep them as safe as you can for the people under your care. Can you tell me what you’re doing to keep these organizations controlled?”

  Aisling sighed again. “I really don’t have time for this, James, but I’ll humor you since you are young.” She opened another drawer and pulled out another piece of paper. On it was a list of something. It looked like a bibliography to me.

  Zenya took the piece of paper from my hand and started looking it over as Aisling explained. “That is a list of decisions from my court and of legal provisions that pertain to your question. You’ll find a number of policies there that should help, at least somewhat, calm your weak stomach.”

  Zenya scribbled something on her notebook as she looked over the piece of paper, but I responded before I even saw what she had written down.

  “Aisling, I believe you when you say that there are restrictions placed on owners, at least in theory, but I’m asking you how much they’re actually enforced. Reading the wording of a bunch of statutes won’t help me understand that you don’t have anyone checking for them, or that people caught in this web can’t call for help. How would someone who isn’t given access to your court even know that they’re being wronged? Are you — and, no, I don’t mean you individually, but someone acting with your authority — monitoring all of these cases individually? If you’re saying that you’re comfortable allowing it to continue, that means you’re taking the appropriate steps to prevent abuse of your leniency, right?”

  “I’m doing what I can, James.”

  “What does that actually mean, Aisling?” I asked, feeling my voice grow raspy with irritation, and Sam’s magic soothed me slightly. “Are you in control of regulating these agencies and doing it with intent, are you merely doing it loosely because it hasn’t been a concern of yours before, are you not doing it at all — what’s your perception of what you’re doing?”

  “I’ve passed statutes in my courts that correspond with protections given in Western Europe,” she cautiously replied. “They’re unlikely to satisfy you, but they’re as far as I can push them without needing to expend an unreasonable amount of political capital in favors and bribes and assurances to those who profit from this. You have a list of them there. There are several regional agencies who are tasked with ensuring the statutes are followed, but they’re flawed.

  “First, they aren’t particularly well funded, and I don’t have a good solution to that problem. The most obvious solution — a tax on the transfer price or final contract amount — only leads to those values being underreported or completely unreported, as both the buyer and the agencies conspire to avoid a tax that only goes to paying someone to watch them for wrongdoing. I don’t have an infinite energy generator to simply pay for things because they’re just — I do need there to be some degree of public sentiment supporting it.

  “Second, and more problematic, is that I can’t actually prevent the organizations from getting people inside the regulatory body and influencing it that way. There are undeniable benefits of having the regulations written by people who have first-hand experience of how to exploit them, and so I do seek out those who have worked in some of the agencies or in related fields, but keeping some amount of separation there is quite challenging and having the organizations essentially regulate themselves by having their employees on my payroll writing whatever they want won’t work. There are only so many people who experience that and react with distaste rather than contentment with the money in their pockets.

  “Finally, as you say, it’s impossible to ensure that someone who is genuinely in the process against their will has access to the resources they need. It’s also rather hard to prove that someone who is in the process against their will is truly involved against their will. A claim of a forged contract condemning someone to a life of servitude appears very similar to someone who willingly signed one and is now making a complaint to see if they can obtain the benefits without having to fulfill their end of the agreement. So there are resources available, but they’re slow and not exactly decisive, and that’s when someone does know enough to access them.”

  As Aisling explained her position, I glanced at what Zenya had written down. She had underlined almost all of the documents on Aisling’s paper and in the margin of the page written “U.S. Cit + Realm Mem ONLY.”

  I glanced at her and mentally asked what she meant, before wincing internally at how embarrassed I would be if anyone else knew what I had just done. Thankfully, the second of time it took for me to get past that feeling also gave me enough time to understand what Zenya had written down.

  “Aisling,” I said when she had finished her description of the problems with the system as it was. “These court decisions of yours, would they apply to people outside of your realm?”

  She shook her head. “No, of course not.”

  “Do the statutes have wording that limits their protections to U.S. citizens?”

  “No, they apply to U.S. and Canadian citizens, and those visiting with the appropriate travel visas through my court. The dragons and their entourages received them.”

  “Aisling,” I said patiently, “do people who are brought here as temporary laborers get those visas?”

  “No, they receive a temporary work permit tied to their employment contracts.”

  “And they definitely aren’t immediately eligible for citizenship in either country, right?”

  “Correct.”

  “So what you’re saying is that there are some, though not fully effective, guard rails in place for people who are citizens of the countries your Realm covers and who have either sworn fealty to your Realm or who have been granted temporary residence.”

  “Correct,” she repeated.

  “And that’s supposed to make the sour feeling in my stomach about the legality of this exploitative labor system.”

  “I was hoping so,” she continued.

  “But I’m supposed to ignore the part where the stomachable part of their purpose is to connect international, inter-Realm, niche, specific labor, with the express intent of relocating people who have encountered problems in their lives to places where they won’t encounter those problems anymore? Their entire business model seems to rely on crossing borders and the guardrails designed to keep them mostly operating in a way that isn’t inherently offensive explicitly don’t apply to those people.”

  “It would be convenient for me if you did,” Aisling replied dryly. “James, what do you want me to do?”

  “Maybe expand those statutes to include everyone physically residing in your realm?”

  “How, James? Even if I were as personally invested in this as you seem to be and I wanted to get it done, I would either need to get a majority of the Heads of the Houses on board to ratify it, or I would need a petition to be raised in my courts for me to rule on it. I don’t have the political capital to spend on this without abandoning another dozen problems that I’m working on, and I can’t simply create a case to rule on.”

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  I sighed and sat back in my chair. “What can I do to make it happen?”

  “What?” Aisling asked, seemingly surprised for the first time since we walked in.

  “I understand what you’re saying. It’s not that your hands are tied, but it’s too expensive for you to act freely, and you don’t have the right stimulus to act reactively. What can I do to make what I want happen?”

  “Grow up,” Aisling replied, though it lacked the dismissiveness the words themselves typically carried. “Genuinely. Settle yourself here, mature as a dragon physically. Make yourself visible as someone investing in staying here. That will give your complaints to me weight as attempts to improve your home rather than merely demanding favors.”

  “How do I do that without coming across as an invader?” I asked. “I’ve tried. It’s not frequent that I have favorable first impressions. No one seems to give me the benefit of the doubt initially, and then there’s not much I can do to get it afterward.”

  “I don’t have an answer for you, James. Time alone is perhaps the answer. People seem to have forgotten how I arrived, after all. Either that or they think I’ve grown soft with time. Regardless, I have a number of other concerns to deal with and you’re too young as of yet to understand them fully, let alone help me with them.”

  “Do you want to try me anyway?” I asked, unable to help myself from asking for problems to solve.

  Aisling chuckled. “No, James. Go home. Read the laws with Zenya. Do what you feel right with yourself, and then come back with something you can challenge in my courts. Or wash your hands of it entirely and stay away from the world of politics.”

  “Somehow,” I replied, “I don’t think that’s an option that’s going to be available to me for much longer.”

  ~*~*~*~

  “He said what to the Seat?” Asmara asked incredulously.

  Arjun and Asmara had come by after my meeting with Aisling. They hadn’t changed their minds in their several days of touring the countryside of the Northeast — something Sam made sure to tell Arjun that he needed to do again in early October, to see the leaves start to change to their fall colors. He teasingly informed her that he had seen autumn leaves before, but that it would be a justifiable excuse to come back in almost a year’s time, to reconnect with his daughter in person and get to see how the world had changed around my sudden existence.

  Then Arjun departed, having another meeting to attend with a potential supplier for his hotel in Hawai’i. I invited him to stay for dinner, but he declined, suggesting that it would be better for Asmara to have time alone with us while he was still in the country, so that she could better understand what she was getting into before he departed for good. Not that living here was truly a permanent decision, but it wouldn’t be a simple undertaking to have her move back to her home with him after having been here.

  What Arjun didn’t say was that he was nervous about whether she’d even be permitted to return once she learned what a normal existence in our world was (and I suppressed a chuckle, because I was still working on figuring that out myself), and if she was, if she’d even want to. So, he felt it was best to give her time alone with my family to figure out if she was really going to be okay living with us for the long term.

  After a more emotional goodbye than I had anticipated — he said he was going to return at least once more before he left the country — Asmara joined Beth in listening to Sam, Zenya, and me explain what had happened in my meeting during the morning over lunch.

  “He said she needed to give him her time or she was going to spend it cleaning up the pieces of the things he broke,” Sam repeated.

  Asmara stared at me in open-mouthed horror for several seconds — just long enough that I started growing worried that she would regret her decision to come here.

  “And you still are allowed to reside here? We don’t have to leave?”

  I chuckled. “She wasn’t offended. Not really, anyway.”

  “What possibly made you say such a risky thing to her?” she asked, still wide-eyed.

  “I needed answers,” I said plainly. “And despite having scheduled a meeting with me, she was trying to dismiss me immediately. I wasn’t actually telling her that I was going to follow through with what I said, not really; I was just telling her that I wanted answers from her because I could only get them from her.”

  “But what had you so riled up in the first place?” she asked, enraptured by what I was saying.

  “Well, a company contacted me in the past offering services I found objectionable. Juliana then purchased some of their services in a misguided attempt to apologize for the experience in our meeting.”

  “Where she simply assumed that Lady Beth was your servant because of how she had fed you.”

  “Yes. Somehow, Juliana assumed that because I was having one of my mates do that instead of a servant, I needed staff, too, and so she put a purchase in on my behalf. I just need to go and meet with them to decide who I want,” I explained dryly. “I had tried to ignore the existence of this corporation before, but now I feel somewhat involved, and I wanted to go to Aisling to get an explanation for why it existed. I got one, but it didn’t leave me feeling any better.”

  “Why?” Asmara asked genuinely.

  “Because it’s all performative,” I said, though the confusion on Asmara’s face said she wasn’t familiar with the word. Throughout the conversation, I was surprised at how good her English was, though given that her father had lived in England for nearly 40 years, maybe I shouldn’t have been. She wasn’t exactly a native speaker, but she also wasn’t exactly a second language speaker, either.

  It was just another way she seemed to be stuck in the middle of two worlds.

  “The protections she put in place, the things that she explained that were supposed to make me feel better at their existence and operation in a world I’m not a part of, were all for show. They sound good on paper to someone who hasn’t closely examined the situation. They aren’t particularly strong in the first place, but, more importantly, they protect someone who doesn’t exist.”

  “What does that mean?” she asked again.

  “The decisions she’s made to minimize the gradient of power these contracts create apply to people who are both citizens here and members of her realm. The contracts are done to connect people internationally. The person to whom the protections apply doesn’t actually exist. It’s all for show. They were written to make the people who wrote them feel good about themselves without actually changing anything.”

  “And she can’t actually change them right now,” Sam added.

  “Why not? Isn’t she the Seat?” Asmara asked, making Sam giggle at the kobold unintentionally repeating my words.

  “Yes, and technically, she could make the change with a decree today. But if she were to do it

  today, she’d have three possible outcomes awaiting her. First, most troublesome but least likely: the people running the corporations outright revolt. Again, minimal chance, but it’s not zero. Second, the people running these operations downscale somewhat and move the now questionably legal dealings into the backrooms. The total volume is reduced, but that’s accomplished by basically nixing all of the unproblematic usage and hiding the offensive ones. The protections now aren’t great, but they’re better than having no protections at all because the process is outlawed entirely instead of being overseen.

  “The third potential outcome I see is that the organizations running these operations just continue doing so in flagrant disregard for her ruling. Either they find minor ways to skirt a decree, or they don’t even bother and challenge her to come and enforce it. She made it sound like she has a number of other things on her plate right now that need attention, so she can’t simply declare something new that will take parts of her workforce without sacrificing somewhere else. And, let’s be honest, if she does it anyway and then can’t enforce it, we’re just in the second situation with even worse optics — she ends up looking impotent and inept at a time when she’s saying she has other fires to put out. So she can’t simply acquiesce to my desires on this one. There isn’t any leverage I can apply to change her mind. I just have to wait, either until I have more personal power or until her situation gets better.”

  “So what are you going to do?” Asmara asked.

  I shrugged. “Wait a week and then go and ask what she has that needs doing? I can’t say the idea of chasing more personal power is particularly appealing, so seeing if I can expedite the situation’s improvement would be better.”

  “No, what’s your plan for Juliana’s terrible apology?” Asmara clarified.

  “Oh. Well, Sam had an idea that I don’t entirely hate,” I answered, which made Asmara turn to look at Sam. “I’m just not fully happy with it, either.”

  “Juliana already paid a deposit and agreed to cover the entirety of the cost of hiring someone as an apology to James, right? She’s not going to get her money back even if we back out now. James — and the rest of us, to be fair — isn’t exactly enthusiastic about using their services in the way they’re intended, at least with his own money. However, given Juliana’s attempt to apologize, we have an opportunity now to use her money, which the company is going to get most of either way, to subvert the system.”

  Asmara furrowed where her brows would be. “What do you mean?”

  “James can ‘hire,’” Sam started, making finger quotes around the final word, “someone with Juliana’s money, but since we don’t actually need anything from them, he can look for other factors beyond their profitability or usefulness for our family. Essentially, James can use Juliana’s money to pay the debt of someone who the system would undoubtedly not treat well, preventing someone else from buying them, hopefully putting them on a track to getting out rather than being stuck inside it.”

  “And, perhaps, if I understood Aisling correctly, I could work with them to attempt to create legal complaints that she’d have to acknowledge. She didn’t outright tell me to file injustices, but when she tells me to simply let time pass and that she can’t act without complaints from the public, well, I imagine complaints coming from a Head of a house carry some weight. Not that everyone will agree with me, of course, but it does get my foot in the door.”

  “Wow,” Asmara replied.

  “You’re really entertained by all of this, aren’t you?” Beth asked with a smug smile.

  Asmara shrugged sheepishly, tucking some of her mahogany hair behind her silvery-scaled ears. “It’s like a real-life drama playing out before my eyes,” she explained. “I’m sitting at a table with a witch, a vampire, and a woman with enchantment imbued in her body, eating the most delicious food I’ve ever had in my life as a dragon describes how he had an argument over the laws of the land with the literal Seat and how he and his are going to undermine a system he doesn’t like from the inside. It doesn’t feel real, you know? It’s like I’m getting to watch the live filming of a daytime drama in real life.”

  Beth and I nodded in agreement immediately, though I realized a second later that both Sam and Zenya were nodding, too, both glancing in my direction.

  “Is there anything we could do to make it more real?” I asked. “Do you want to look at the remaining rooms and see if you have any preferences between them?”

  “I think I wanted to talk about what would be expected of me,” Asmara replied cautiously. “This happened a lot faster than I could have ever imagined possible, and I still don’t know what my role is here.”

  I smiled hesitantly, mostly to give myself a few seconds of stalling time. I didn’t have an answer. I had been optimistically hoping that she would have her own answer when she got here, given that it had been her desire to get us here.

  “For now,” I tentatively started, “just to settle in and see what parts of your normal daily life are here and which parts are missing, which parts you want and which you prefer here.”

  She nodded slightly but clarified, “But, around here, in your home. There will be household duties to be shared that I will need to help with, won’t there?”

  I glanced at Sam and Beth, hoping either of them had an answer that would suffice.

  “You still eat, yes?” Asmara asked.

  “Yeah, but Sam does most of the cooking because she figured out how to best imbue the food with mana. Cynthia, her mother, tried a few times to replicate it, but even using my mana from crystals, she can’t seem to get it to work, and when I try, I seem to oversaturate the food. All that’s to say that, while we’re trying to find an alternative so that Sam doesn’t have to, it probably won’t happen until after you learn how to use your natural mana. I am curious, though, given your heritage, what kind of effect you’ll be able to produce with the food, but for now, it’s probably best left to Sam, at least for the larger, communal meals.”

  “Then, laundry?” Asmara asked.

  “One of Zenya’s closest friends—” Sam started, drawing a curious glance from Zenya, interested to hear who else could possibly be on the list to justify the phrasing. “— is a seamstress and somewhat skilled enchantress, too, so almost everything we own is both self-repairing and self-cleaning. It does take a touch of mana every now and then, but James has more than enough for all of us.”

  “I thought you were being polite before,” Asmara replied. “I thought you were just trying to say that you didn’t need a homemaker and weren’t looking for another wife.”

  I winced. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to mislead you.”

  She shook her head. “No, I’m very much not feeling misled. You told me that my mundane skills weren’t going to be particularly useful and that you had those areas of your life covered. I’m just left wondering if— Hmm,” she cut herself off. “I’m afraid I’ll offend you if I say.”

  “If you’re saying it with true intentions, it can only hurt if it’s true,” I replied. “And that would be my actions or decisions hurting me, not you pointing it out.”

  “I’m feeling a little nervous that you’re avoiding giving me anything to do as a part of your house to keep some distance between us, and I’m wondering if coming to you initially asking for more was a mistake that I’m going to end up regretting for a long time because I may have actually gotten it if I hadn’t said it the way I did.”

  I sighed. “Let’s leave that kind of discussion for the future, alright? Maybe, when you’re allowed to have the agency in your own life, you’ll realize I’m not what you want. Maybe when you know me as a person instead of a title and a comparison to your father, you’ll realize I’m not what you want. Maybe, as a part of learning and growing into the world you’ve been denied, you’ll meet someone else.”

  “And maybe I won’t,” Asmara replied.

  “Maybe,” I acknowledged. “But I can’t trust it until you’ve tried and had time and experiences and gone one way or the other. I can’t trust what you’re saying now because maybe it’s the truth, or maybe it’s the impulsive desires of a girl who knows no better and sees this as a bridge to get things she wants instead of being something she wants intrinsically. I can’t discern the difference until we’ve had a lot more time together and you’ve had some magical training to let you have your own autonomy, and then you’ve gone out and tried to live some of your life.”

  I realized I had grown somewhat annoyed as I spoke, and I wasn’t sure how my agitated speech would color my words, but she only replied, “That’s actually very reassuring; thank you,” with a polite nod.

  “What?”

  “You told me what I could do, James. I need to try to live, to learn about our new world, to come to know you as a person, as well as meet others in the world here. You didn’t tell me it was out of the question — you simply said that it’s hard to trust my words right now, not because you think they’re untruthful, but because the truth could hide many potential reasons, and not all of them are what you want. I’m content now knowing that you truly don’t have expectations for me here — you gave your word to my father that you would sponsor me in exchange for his discretion, and you’re doing your best to meet that, regardless of my initial request.”

  “No, James wasn’t trying to put you off,” Sam explained, “we just generally don’t have much that needs doing right now around here. James is looking into ways that he can establish himself more in the world, just like you will be, and, once that happens, I’m sure there will be a little more to be done around the house as our attention moves elsewhere. Particularly because that’s likely to coincide with us moving into a home of our own, instead of using one provided by the Seat, and it won’t be as finished as this place is for a while. Of course, we will ask that you keep the common areas tidy as you use them. My mother uses the far bathroom early in the morning on weekdays and Zoey likes to use the master bath to shower with James after her morning runs on the days that she sleeps here but, otherwise, there aren’t really any expectations Now, if you’re feeling a bit lost in the transition right now, why don’t we go look at the remaining bedrooms, just to see if we can get you a bit more grounded? You can see which one you want to claim for now.”

  “For now?” Asmara asked.

  “Well, after you’ve spent some time here, you might decide you want a different one,” Sam replied cautiously. “And, well, James has been pretty insistent that Beth, Zoey, and I have one ourselves, but we don’t actually use them, except to store things, so if you want one of those ones, we can shuffle around.”

  “Are there any real differences?” Asmara asked as she stood up to follow Sam down the hallway.

  “With the heating and the way the sun falls on the building, a couple of the bedrooms are warmer than the others.

  “Oooh, let’s start there,” Asmara said.

  As the two of them walked down the hallway, I found myself releasing a breath I hadn’t known I was holding.

  Beth chuckled and said, “She’s going to be a problem, you know.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “She’s got a crush on you.”

  “She did literally ask to marry me,” I replied. “If she didn’t, I would be even more concerned about that request.”

  Beth shook her head. “She wasn’t acting like this when we met her, in front of her father. I’m not convinced she even knows she’s doing it, but she’s been giving you bedroom eyes the entire time she’s been here.”

  I shook my head. “She was just interested in the story of our meeting.”

  “I don’t think so,” Zenya interjected. “While I’m sure she wasn’t lying about how interesting hearing you interact with Aisling was, I think she would’ve found a story about how you purchased coffee this morning just as engaging.”

  “She’s got a crush on you,” Beth repeated with an assured nod. Then, through our bond, she added, “And so does everyone else who’s here right now.”

  “Well, I stand by my statements. I’m not going to avoid her, but let’s give her some time and space and let her come to grips with living here. After a month or two, when she’s learning where her talents lie and what she’s interested in doing in the immediate future, when she knows me as more than a person in a story that she’s heard, maybe I’ll be able to listen to it.”

  “And what if,” Beth replied, “— just hear me out on this one — what if what she decides she wants to do for the rest of her life is you? What if she gets a really good glance at the rest of the outside world, sees how unfriendly to dragons — and dragonkin, too — it is, sees how welcoming everyone here is, sees how hard you’ll work to make sure she has what she wants, and takes the oh so obvious conclusion that she is already where she wants to be.”

  “C’mon, Beth, I’m sure she’s going to spread her wings and find things that she wants to do over here.”

  Beth nodded smugly. “Okay. Do you want to bet on it?”

  “No, I don’t, and I thought we had discussed this already. Sam asked me to keep my mind open, and I will. I’m not actively looking. I have three mates that I don’t deserve.”

  “James!” Beth replied harshly.

  “I don’t, alright? I haven’t done anything. I simply got handed all of this by something no one can understand. You, Sam, Zoey, being a dragon, being powerful and potentially influential — I didn’t ask for any of it. I don’t want a lot of it. I don’t want to feel like I have to go and talk to Aisling about changing the laws because I can’t stomach the ones I’m made aware of when someone tries to apologize to me. I don’t want to feel like I should help Asmara move halfway around the world so that she can have the life she deserves to have, simply as an agreement to keep her father quiet about the questions I have about what I am. I don’t want to feel like I have to go to Antonin’s lectures and learn whatever he wants me to learn, and to talk about paying favors he owes to other people to get the things that I want done. I’m just — I’m tired of feeling like a pawn on someone else’s chessboard, but every step I take seems to just confirm that I’m not the one in charge of all of my own decisions at the moment.

  “And I’m not saying I’m not happy here. I’ve had some of the happiest moments of my life here. But I’ve also held Zoey when she’s cried over her doubts about not being able to have a child, and I’ve pulled a pound of silver out of Zenya’s back that’s been there for a hundred years, and I watched uselessly as your heart got torn out and stomped on by your mother, too. I know not every day is going to be sunshine and rainbows, but I’d take some calm, quiet, relaxing ones.”

  “Eighty years,” Zenya whispered.

  “What?”

  “The silver hadn’t been there for a hundred years. Eighty is probably closer to the truth. A hundred years ago, I was still working for the Countess as a maid. She hadn’t even turned me yet. I hadn’t yet caught her eye.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?” Beth asked.

  “No,” Zenya replied. “Not here, anyway. Not while Asmara should be coming back and getting her belongings to move into a room. Perhaps later, when James is holding me, I will tell you about how it got there.”

  “You don’t have to,” I told her as I stood up. “I don’t want you to feel pressured into telling us things you aren’t ready to.”

  “We’ll see, James. We will see how I feel.”

  “Seemed like you felt pretty good this morning,” Beth added cheekily. “Felt good enough to him that he didn’t even want to get up.”

  “It was quite a pleasant experience,” Zenya confirmed. “I won’t complain if it happens again sometime soon. Like tonight, perhaps.”

  “Right, well, I’m going to see if Asmara has picked a room yet,” I replied, excusing myself from the room by picking up Asmara’s hefty suitcase and avoiding confirming that I did absolutely enjoy Zenya against me.

  Of course, while I was leaving one awkward conversation, I was merely walking down the hallway toward another.

  “I’m assuming, now, that wasn’t a bluff in the discussions, either,” I heard Asmara say to Sam.

  “Oh, no, definitely not. It was quite a surprise to me the first night, let me tell you.”

  “I thought you were his mate,” Asmara replied in confusion.

  “I am, but I wasn’t initially. I experienced a few from his times with Beth — and one just from my mother testing his dragon — before I was truly involved with him like that.”

  “So, I shouldn’t be surprised if—”

  “I’ll try to let you know before it happens the first time,” Sam said quietly. “I don’t think it will tonight, as Zenya has started sleeping with us.”

  “Wait, he’s not—”

  “No,” Sam confirmed. “Not as of now. I don’t know if either of them is fully in tune with where they stand with each other or where it’s going, but, for now, she is simply enjoying being held by him at night.”

  “I bet she is,” Asmara replied wistfully.

  Feeling guilty over hearing so much of a conversation that I wasn’t meant to be privy to — even if it was happening in my home — I knocked on the door frame of the bedroom they were talking in.

  “Have you decided on a room?” I asked. “I brought your bag.”

  “This one will do; thank you,” Asmara replied. “Sam said it’s likely to be the warmest one in the apartment, which makes sense for me, at least for now. I’m going to unpack what I brought with me, for now, and then see what I need to ask my father to send and what I’ll want to replace for myself.”

  “Yeah, that makes sense. Let me know if you need help with anything.”

  “I will,” she replied with a warm smile. “Is there anything you think that I should know now? I know you and my father had a tentative plan for me — to get me introduced to magic — but I don’t know how that works.”

  “To be honest, I don’t know how it works, either. I’m going to be doing a favor for Antonin, the archivist for the Seat and my personal magical instructor, tomorrow. I’m hoping that, in addition to the instruction he gives Sam, he’s able to give you the basics. If not, he should be able to connect us with someone who can provide the initial steps.”

  “James didn’t have to go through all of this,” Sam added.

  “Right, because he’s a dragon,” Asmara assumed.

  “Partially,” Sam confirmed. “But, also because he wasn’t aware he was a dragon until a few months ago, and, crucially, neither did anyone else. There were simply too many questions raised about how he came to exist for him to go through the normal screening and appraisal process the rest of us went through. Actually, my mother and I are probably the only ones here who had to experience it.”

  “What about everyone else?” Asmara asked.

  “Well, Beth, like James, was a mundane until he awakened. The enchantment on her is something his third part did that we’re still trying to understand. Zoey’s a were, so she had a slightly different path, with physical examinations instead of magical. Zenya I’m not sure about, but it sure sounds like she wasn’t exactly turned in a controlled environment with a lot of planning. She is older than the rest of us combined, and I’m not sure exactly how rigorous the process was at the time, especially considering the nation she was born in was going through a civil war as a result of the First World War when she was turned. Even if there were normal processes, she didn’t get them.”

  “And now she’s here, anyway,” I said, trying to put a positive spin on it. “Strange paths brought all of us here, but now we’re here.”

  “Shall I accompany you tomorrow, then, James?” Asmara asked. “To meet with your advisor and shadow Samantha.”

  “I think that makes sense,” I replied.

  “We’ll leave you to your belongings, then,” Sam concluded.

  In the hallway, I pivoted from my plans of returning to the kitchen, pulling Sam with me into the bathroom.

  “I need a shower, Sam,” I said.

  “Need to wash yourself clean of the eavesdropping you were doing?” she replied sternly, though she joined me in disrobing.

  “Kind of. I didn’t mean to. I appreciate you giving her a heads up about that. Would’ve felt strange coming from me.”

  “Cumming from you is going to feel strange, you’re absolutely correct,” Sam replied as the water started to hit us. “Now, tell me what’s really bothering you.”

  “Nothing.”

  Sam’s blue eyes stared into my soul harshly. “You know I already know, right? Don’t lie to me.”

  “I’m frustrated with how little I got done with Aisling this morning.”

  “You thought she’d give you more input on her decisions?”

  “No. I got exactly what I expected, actually. A bunch of silver plating on something unpleasant, political misdirection designed to make me think a problem was solved when it was mostly just covering it up, and polite words that told me she can’t actually do anything despite being the highest power in the land. And I believe her. I believe there’s not much she can do, and I believe that I haven’t been here long enough to apply leverage like that. But it’s frustrating that I can be presented with something that’s so clearly wrong, and no one else is willing to even lift a finger about it. I hate how hypocritical she’s being about it.”

  “Hypocritical?”

  “I guess it’s not even her, really. But, clearly, someone somewhere with more influence than me feels that it’s a problem, right? There are a bunch of laws providing some protections for a very select group. They were written for a reason. Someone sees that the system can exploit people.”

  “Have you considered,” Sam said hesitantly, “that the people pushing for those protections are the ones exploiting the system?”

  “What?” I asked.

  “The people who pushed for those protections in place are likely the ones capitalizing on the system. The statutes are written in such a way that the general public doesn’t think they’re a terrible idea on the surface — after all, why should we word our laws to protect people who don’t live here — but so that they leave a wide open loophole for someone to exploit. They feel so poorly designed as to be intentionally pushed by someone who knew how to make it appear as though they were protecting people without actually doing so. A lobbyist or a house head with corporate interest pushing a bill that will make it harder for further protections to be in place because there already is the appearance of protections currently, but that leaves their existing operations completely untouched.”

  “That’s,” I started with a sigh. “That’s really cynical of you, Sam. Feels like something Beth would think without sharing with me.”

  “I’m no less disillusioned about the state of the world than she is, James. She had plenty of reasons to grow dissatisfied with life, but she wasn’t on a first-name basis with the people who failed to help her have a chance to get where she wanted to be. She hadn’t had dinner with the regional authorities and had to stomach the ‘No, I’m sorry. There’s nothing I can do for you’ with a smile so fake it said I didn’t have enough money to change their opinion, and a handshake so limp it said they were disgusted I asked anyway. I don’t know if you’ve picked up on it, but I actually hate the magical bureaucracy even more than you do.”

  “I know. I appreciate you coming with me anyway.”

  “You didn’t end up needing me,” she said softly.

  “I didn’t need the magic. Not much, anyway. That doesn’t mean I didn’t need you. Your presence alone helped.”

  “I’m glad,” she replied. “And I’m glad you’re going to try to change it. Even if it’s not for me directly, you’re doing what you think needs to be done.”

  “Maybe. I don’t think I’m doing enough. I’ve been here long enough.”

  “C’mon,” Sam said, tugging me out of the shower and drying me off lovingly. I was somewhat surprised when, instead of guiding me back to the dining room or living room, she brought me to bed. I was less surprised when Zenya and Beth joined me a minute later. Sam nestled into the right side, Zenya curled into my left, and Beth climbed directly on top of me.

  “Better?” Sam asked.

  “Yes, but not really, just emotionally.”

  “Girls, James needs to accomplish something,” Sam said as though I weren’t there.

  “I agree,” Zenya replied. “He feels like he’s stagnating. He isn’t, and I don’t think he is, but he’s struggling in his own mind. At every other point in his life so far, he’s had at least some kind of short-term goal to aim for. Finish this assignment, do well on this test, get this grade by the end of the year, and so on. Now, despite making incredible amounts of progress on large endeavors, he has lost the little goals, the rhythm of daily and weekly accomplishments to make him feel like he’s making progress.”

  “What do you think he can do to solve that?” Beth asked.

  “I don’t know,” Zenya replied. “I’ve put out feelers for the things that the other dragons suggested — just very open questions about the potential for meetings. They’ve either been politely declined or have stalled without a definitive answer.”

  “Should we go and handle this apology from Juliana?” Beth suggested.

  “Soon, but perhaps we should wait and give Asmara at least a few days. We both wouldn’t want her to feel so ungrounded — at least more than she already is — and with whatever we decide to do about who we’re presented with by the Congregation, we want them to come into something that feels stable,” Sam replied. “Even if James makes progress on moving us into a place that’s ours soon, we should want the people who are going to be living there to be relatively stable.”

  “I’m glad that James is going to work with Antonin tomorrow,” Zenya stated. “I’m glad you’re going with him, to learn the magic from Antonin, but I think doing something physical that’s out of his rhythm of the gym and the limited flying practice he gets is going to be good for him. And I hope that he manages to make some kind of connection with Antonin’s cousin. Maybe there will be something else that comes out of it. At the very least, getting some experience doing things with his dragon body will help him know what he needs to learn for working on his own house, whether he needs to hire specialists and what he can do himself.”

  “Our house,” Sam interjected. “Not his, ours. Including you.”

  Zenya bowed her head slightly, acknowledging Sam’s words, but the redhead continued insistently, “No, Zenya, I mean it. You’re a part of our family, too. You have a voice here, you’re entitled to your opinions, and I want you to know you can share them with us.”

  “I’m aware, Sam; I’m simply not used to actually doing it. I’m not used to having people who will listen.”

  “But—” I started, before being immediately cut off.

  “Yes, James. Everything about our relationship is very far removed from everything else I’ve experienced in my life. I think, perhaps, that it is time I gave you some insight into why that is.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I corrected you earlier, about the silver I had embedded in me,” she replied. “I think I should tell you about how I came to carry it and why I have such a strong reaction to wolves.”