"Why not Secret Missives?" Zhiolas suggested. "No holds barred, any question on the table."

"Fine by me," Alluin said, lifting his wine glass. "Your highness?"

"I'm willing," he said, lifting his hand up to beckon a server without even looking. "And you, Leah?"

"I'll be real, I'm happy to play more-or-less anything, as long as someone tells me the rules." I laid my hand on Dain's thigh, just above his knee, and started strumming my fingers on him.

"We go in a circle, whispering questions into each other's ears," Alluin said. "You have to answer out loud, and if someone wants to know the question, they have to drink for it. We can switch directions each round, and Dain and I can glamor our voices into each other's ears."

"I'm game," I said cheerfully, as the human server came over. I waited until Dain and Zhiolas rattled off their orders, and Alluin asked for a bottle of wine, to ask, "Any chance you have something like an IPA?"

The man grinned. "Actually, yes," he said. "Fresh from the liquor store and pilfered away to Faery. I think we've got a Sierra Nevada hazy and some Lagunitas. Do you have a preference, your highness?"

Drat. They recognized me at the garrison, too. I guessed I was thigh-to-thigh with the infamous Beast of Phazikai, so it wasn't actually that hard to identify me. Dain wasn't exactly the kind of guy it would be easy to overlook. "A thousand blessings on you and your family," I said with a grin. "Lagunitas sounds great."

"You've got it," he said, and sketched a bow to the table before heading off.

"Casual," I said, quite pleased.

"Well, it's the garrison," Zhiolas said with a laugh. "Respect in the army is earned, and camaraderie is accorded far more importance than bowing and scraping."

"It's unnecessary," Alluin said with a shrug. "If I give a command to a soldier, I expect them to obey without hesitation, but when we're off-duty?" He took a swig of wine. "The lowest hunter and the greatest General can have eternity cut short with the same sword. They forget that, up in the palace. I'd never face the High Court again if it wasn't for our prince."

"If I could avoid the High Court, I would," Dain said with dark amusement. "They would surely prefer it, too."

"I wonder why that is," I said perkily, and got flicked on my ear for my trouble. I snapped my teeth at Dain's fingers and heard either Zhiolas or Alluin make a strangled sound of laughter. I suspected Zhiolas.

"Careful," Dain purred. "I bite back, and my teeth are sharper than yours."

"I hear it's very pleasurable," I drawled back before I could stop myself.

Dain went still in the way he did when startled, and Zhiolas made a sound that in a mortal man might have been unkindly labeled a cackle.

"She has your mark," Alluin said, laughter in his voice.