The Divine Gambit Ch. 15

"So," the diminutive woman started, "You have two things you need to talk to us about?"

"The first is minor for you, probably similar for Sam, and fairly impactful for Ev. I need to talk to her about the consequences later, but she already knows. You're both legally dragons now, in the eyes of the powers that be."

Sam nodded into my neck and, without opening her eyes, said, "Makes sense, given the craziness about your magic changing us."

Beth looked at me in confusion, asking, "But what does that actually mean, though?"

Thankfully, Sam answered because I didn't really know. "He's our political representative now and the protector of our rights against encroachment from other magical beings. Which he already was. So nothing changes, except there's a wizard out there annoyed to not have influence over James through us."

Beth snarled at the idea of someone else using her to get to me. I confirmed Sam's speculation, "He made a big stink at the meeting about how he deserved to interview and evaluate you to ensure I wasn't exploiting two helpless witches. The words he used were more polite than that, but his tone was more aggressive. I told him he could inquire with you directly, so expect messages or something soon."

Beth and Sam simultaneously groaned and then giggled at their synchronicity. "I'm sorry. I wasn't sure how else to handle being put on the spot like that. Aisling was laying into him, and he wouldn't take 'No.'"

Beth's face illuminated rapidly as an idea filled her head, and then she sultrily asked, "If you're our representative now, does that mean I can seduce you for political favors?"

While I blushed, Sam exhaled sharply before saying, "I think you already did, harlot, and you roped me into it, too." She added quietly, "Not that I'm complaining."

"So, if the two of us are now dragons because of your strange magic powers, why's Ev?" Beth astutely asked.

"This is not to leave this room or to be repeated again, understood? I don't agree with it, and I won't stand for anyone else saying it. Not that I think you will, but I don't want you to think these opinions are mine."

Beth nodded, now staring at me gravely, while Sam said, "Of course, James."

"I talked to the ghoul lord who was the head of the Vampire house at the dinner meeting last night. He was pleasant to interact with on the surface and fairly easy to talk to, considering my other company was Antonin. But he had given Ev to Aisling years ago, hoping she would take to law work like a moth to flame. She didn't. Now, Aisling has passed Ev to me because she doesn't know what to do with her. She's being pushed onto me because no one else sees her as having value. They see her as damaged. Irreparably broken. Unfit for purpose. They just don't want her." Surprisingly to me, neither woman reacted strongly, and through our bonds, I understood why.

Beth didn't just empathize with Ev's position of being an unwanted tool that outlived their usefulness; she sympathized with her. She was intimately familiar with being objectified and otherwise undesired. That was a space where Beth had lived for several years. Sam didn't have the same emotional understanding of what I had said, but she had expected my answer. She had spent years working as an aide and junior handler for the regional courts -- this sort of dehumanization and cynical asset evaluation was something she didn't just see occasionally, rather, she was very much expecting it.

Sam asked, "And what do you think, J?"

"I think she's been incredibly valuable to us, even as just a second opinion, and offering her services as my personal, professional assistant is invaluable. I wouldn't have known to go to Marjorie's to get suits for the court session, and now I've worn it twice. But that's beside the point -- at the end of the day, she's a person. I don't know exactly how she's been hurt, but she deserves a place where she can feel safe and pursue her happiness, unburdened by the constant scrutiny of a freshly assigned authority figure. Being passed off like a regifted paperweight is not how I want the world to treat anyone."

Sam nodded in sage agreement, Beth smiled gently, and the redhead in my lap said, "Alright, so you should wrap up with us so you can hash things out with her. If that was the lighter topic, what's the next one?"

"When I met with Zoey yesterday, she was painfully apologetic over her behavior. I think the next time she sees you, she'll apologize for the interrogation you endured. She explained her behaviors, her thought process, and what was happening to make her act like she did, which I accepted."

Beth looked confused, "That's nice and all, but what's the heavy part?"

"How do you two know this is the more intense topic?"

They answered simultaneously, "You started with the other one."

"Okay, well, it's kind of layered. It doesn't sound that bad, and then my mind kept adding to it, and I kinda broke down on her in the staff room. I had a panic attack or something that certainly felt like one."

Sam opened her eyes for the first time since I carried her into the tub, and Beth inhaled before asking, "Why didn't I feel anything?"

"I think I just shut down entirely. I don't really remember anything that happened while I was in my head. But, the first domino is that Zoey wants, well, desperately wants children."

Beth didn't react, but Sam visibly winced, relaxed, and then winced again, this time exclaiming, "Wait, but, Antonin suggested she was getting old?"

I nodded, "Exactly. That was where my head went next. Her biological clock isn't just ticking; it's a thumping concert bass speaker, and she needs to do the deed last year to have any hope of seeing her kids graduate high school."

Beth squirmed in my lap, looking thoughtful, and added, "So we'd be raising surrogate teenage half-sons-and-daughters in her memory? Yeah, that's kind of dark."

Sam, however, was watching my face intently, "No, that's not it."

I shook my head. "No, that was just the second step. The third was that I'm immortal, unaging, magically preserved for eternity. And my children, unless they're also dragons, won't be. Thinking of burying them, looking like a twenty-year-old kid at the funeral of my elderly children, was pretty awful as well, but it wasn't the final card. That was --"

Sam blurted it out, "Us. You won't have this emotional bond with your children, probably, based on my inclusion. But you do with us. And after fifty years of hearing our thoughts every day, literally experiencing the world through our eyes, when we pass, it won't even be like having your soulmate pass. It will be that your soulmate passed, and a huge part of you died as well. Oh god, J, I'm... Fuck, that's so awful to think about."

Beth shared her feelings without saying anything, a hauntingly defeated expression on her face.

"Sorry, I wasn't sure if I should've shared that, but I figured you deserved to know it. I was really just trying to get your thoughts about Zoey and her predicament."

Neither woman spoke immediately, both still struggling to move past my previous thoughts to decide their opinion on Zoey. So we sat in the heated water, soaking in the bath and the silence. Beth stirred the water absentmindedly with her free hand as the thoughts stirred in her mind, no clear answers coming to either of them.

After several minutes of thought, Sam broke the reprieve. "I think you have to do it."

"Have to? That's a strong response." Not that I expected anything less of Sam.

"If you say no now, there is no alternative. You'd be making the decision for her. If this is something she really wants, I think the three of us have to work to accommodate her unless one of you has a real concrete reason for rejecting her. And, make no mistake, it would absolutely be a rejection of her, not just the idea, if you say no."

"That's the thing, I wasn't completely convinced that she wanted children. My read was that she thought she might want children and that if she waited any longer, the possibility would be gone, and it would be something she would regret for the rest of her life just because. Beth, do you have any thoughts?"

"I don't know. I hadn't thought about kids before this week in my entire life. And I certainly didn't think about raising them with our tribe, rather than just the two of us. I'm not against it. Actually, I think I could be on board, if Zoey apologizes to us and stops fucking us around."

"That's basically what I told her when I had calmed down. That I wasn't against the idea, but I needed to get to know her first. Sam?"

"It sounds like Team Girlfriend is getting a breeding bitch." Sam winced as the words came out of her mouth. "That was too harsh, wasn't it? I just -- She's a wolf and wants offspring. I didn't, oh, hmmph."

Beth and I took it as she intended, a light-hearted comment infused with some of the insanity of the situation. I wouldn't repeat it, but it wasn't exactly wrong.

The three of us lingered in the water for another hour. I thoroughly enjoyed having time to solely sit, not having a pressing engagement to rush to or having Antonin instruct me on something so crazy I couldn't even imagine it being real. Sitting, holding Sam and Beth, and talking idly about absolute nothingness was incredibly rejuvenating.

Of course, eventually, we got up and out and dried off, the girls falling into cotton pajamas while I slipped on a pair of shorts. They must have gotten up early to plan to wake me up because even after our lounging in the tub, it was only around 9:30. I still had lots of time to prepare myself to talk to Ev about her future.

Or, I thought I did, anyway. She was conspicuously absent from the dining room when the three of us finally left my bedroom. Cynthia was there, preparing ingredients to make cinnamon raisin French toast with Beth. She smiled warmly at the girls when we entered, but when she looked at me, she gave me her best Aisling impression as the warmth drained from her features, giving me a stern expression that offered no sympathy. She coldly asserted, "We're talking after this. Sit."

Her antipathy towards me wasn't directed at anyone else, but unless she had completely flip-flopped her opinion on Sam getting involved in the space of two days, I couldn't deduce what I had done. It didn't help that she was one of the only people I couldn't smell, making conversations with her always starting from the back foot. It really made me appreciate how much sensing emotions helped me navigate other interactions and how directly sharing experiences with Beth and now Sam deepened our relationship.

The motherly redheaded matron pleasantly worked with Beth to make breakfast, sharing her experience and knowledge benevolently. Cynthia seemed to genuinely appreciate the opportunity to fulfill maternal duties for someone, even if they were more like step-mother-in-law duties technically. Beth certainly enjoyed having someone else who cared, investing time in teaching her things because they felt she was worth attention. It was good for all of us that Sam didn't resent Beth for growing closer with her mother -- she regretfully acknowledged driving a wedge between herself and Cynthia but was happy her Mom had the opportunity to do the motherly things Sam had never wanted. The benefits for everyone else were plainly apparent.

In the end, breakfast was served, the four of us ate, everyone complimented Beth, and she beamed while trying to redirect the praise to Cynthia. Cynthia shooed the other two away when Sam offered to clean up, asserting that she and I would do it. When they had left the common area of the apartment, and the door to my bedroom had clicked shut, Cynthia turned to me with her authoritative expression and started speaking. My dragon quaked under her visage in a way that Aisling's affectation would never equal.

"What were you thinking, James? What could possibly compel you to do such an oafish thing?"

"Unless you're upset about Beth and I incorporating Sam into our lives, which I thought we had your blessing to do, you're going to have to explain what the issue is."

She handed me the egg-and-flour-covered plate some of the prep work had been done on to rinse while explaining, "No, my daughter is getting more than she dreamed was possible by being tangled up in your trainwreck of circumstances, and I think she's happy for the first time in years. I wouldn't dare try to take that from her. What I'm asking you about is why you demanded Ev stay up all night researching contract law in Pennsylvania? Is there something happening today that I haven't been informed of? Why did she need to do that last night? Have you agreed to something with someone?"

"Umm." I was so blindsided by the question that the dim utterance was all I was capable of.

"I hope you have a good explanation for this," she said archly.

I sighed, "I have an explanation, but it's not a good one."

"Get on with it, then. I'll decide if it's good."

I paused for a few moments, trying to figure out how to start, and then realized I had been scrubbing the already rinsed plate with a washcloth for much longer than necessary. Setting it to the side and moving on to the next, I explained what I thought had happened.

"Okay, so, first things first, I didn't ask her to do it last night. I didn't really even ask her to do it. But... You know she was legally transferred to the House of Dragons, right?" Cynthia nodded, watching me intently as I continued. "She was waiting at the door when I got home from the meeting, which is where I was told the three of them were being officially placed under my care. Not that it's an issue, but a heads-up before it was official would've been nice. Anyway, she was insistent that our positions had changed and was acting uncomfortably deferential, and I just wanted to go to bed. I told her we'd talk today, and she asked what she should do until then. I wondered if she had a contract for us; she didn't think she needed one anymore, and I told her we absolutely did.

"I'm assuming I misunderstood something about her shift in behavior if she stayed up all night to work on it. That's not what I intended, but she also didn't react positively when I suggested just waiting. It was like she had to have a task to complete, so I came up with something on the spot, but I really wanted to discuss things with her today before she got to work on it."

The frustration Cynthia had been exuding faded as I explained what I had done. "You didn't encourage her to stay up all night working on it?" she asked.

"C'mon, Cynthia. I know Sam paints a picture of a highly idealized version of me, and I'm not the saint she thinks I am, but has anything I've done suggested I would do that? I'm occasionally oblivious and ignorant of this entire world, but I'm not intentionally exploitative. Why would I release the previous contract holding Ev to my control only to suddenly start using its control?"

"I didn't think so, but when I asked why she was still awake and poring over documents at three in the morning when I went to the bathroom, she said it was a task you had asked her to complete."

"Yikes."

"So, naturally, I wanted to know why you had that poor woman working through the night. A communication issue is something I can understand, although you should always be cognizant of what you're saying to her. She doesn't view you as an employer but rather as a feudal lord who owns her. Be careful with your words; You have to say precisely what you mean. I know your intentions are benevolent, but as you can see, that alone isn't enough."

I nodded, "The road to hell and all that. I understand, and I will try to clean up all of my messes. I actually really appreciate you checking in on me like this. Keeping me accountable is something no one else seems comfortable doing."

Cynthia smiled, and for a split second, she looked identical to Sam, causing my confused heart to flutter, before she spoke and the illusion shattered. "Of course, James. Someone has to look out for my daughter and soon-to-be daughter-in-law. Otherwise, I think they might just jump headfirst into the first trouble that came along."

Even though I knew she was teasing me, I felt compelled to respond, "You know I'm looking out for them, too, right?"

Her smile grew even more prominent as if I had fallen directly into her trap, and she tutted back, "James, you are precisely the trouble they jumped headfirst into."

With a self-satisfied smile on her face, Cynthia left the kitchen, leaving me to put the dishes on the drying rack. Which gave me a few minutes to consider how I wanted to approach Ev. My impulse was to start with an apology, but after some consideration, I decided against it. I didn't think she would understand what the apology was for -- She didn't seem to believe what she had interpreted my offhanded remarks to mean was wrong in any way. She thought she was just doing her job and that nothing was out of the ordinary.

When I knocked on her bedroom door, I was surprised to see how different it was from mine despite being furnished with the same initial furniture. She had the same closet, bed, and desk, but there were no indications that they had been used. It looked like a stock photo of an example room the apartment complex would post online, showing the bedroom layout without any personal touches. The only noticeable difference between hers and mine was the presence of double-layered blackout curtains, drawn and covering the window entirely. All of the natural light was blocked, and the ceiling fixture was illuminating the room instead.

On the desk, instead of the laptop Beth, Sam, and I had been provided, she had a full desktop tower. Three monitors were arranged in front of her: two landscape-oriented ones stacked vertically on her right and a portrait-oriented one on the left. On the vertical monitor, she was rapidly reading through a document of some kind, making an occasional note of something important. A text editor was open on one of the horizontal monitors, with a formatted half-finished paper visible.

"Hey, Ev? Can I talk to you now?"

She turned to look at me before wincing and forcibly blinking her eyes several times, adjusting to looking away from her screens for the first time in too long. Once she had adjusted to see who was talking to her, she bowed her head and answered, "Of course, James. Please, come in."

As I crossed the room to sit at the second chair she pulled out for me, the vampire began apologizing, "I'm sorry to report that I'm not yet finished with the contract, James. I didn't know that you wanted to talk in the morning."

"That's perfectly fine. It's only one of the things I wanted to talk to you about. I first wanted to cover how you felt about being placed in the House of Dragons. Is that something you actually wanted? Is there anything I need to do for you now?"

She shook her head skittishly, "Oh, no, of course not, James. I mean, yes, it's something I wanted because it will make things easier. And, no, I wouldn't dare impose on you anything like that."

I narrowed my eyes, certain to have found a thread I could tug on, hoping to understand Ev by drawing it out. "What do you mean, 'impose'?"

"You're the head of the household, the leader of all dragons in the region, even if all others are honorary. It's not my place to ask for things from you, but to provide my labor to your House."

"Ev, isn't a representative supposed to represent their constituencies' interests? Shouldn't I be advocating for your growth and well-being?"

She shook her head, "You're not just a representative, though. You're the head. You haven't indicated a preference for a specific title, but 'King,' 'Lord,' 'Master,' and 'Arch Wyrm the Magnificent and Grand' have all been used in the past by your peers. Your job is to settle disputes between your subjects and outsiders and to ensure your subjects have places to provide value for you and that their talents aren't needlessly wasted. You've been more than fair with me, and it wouldn't be right to ask for more."