Next to me, Dain snarled in an empty threat, downing his entire glass of mead. "I'm not drunk enough for this," he muttered, a growl hitching his words. "What horrible thing are you going to ask me, my estimable General?"

Alluin smirked and covered his mouth to glamor his words into Dain's ear. I felt Dain go tense, his thigh bunching under my hand and his arm tightening across my shoulders. Curious, I looked over at him, to see his lip raised in a snarl and his ears pinned back.

Gently, I bonked my head on his arm. "Relax," I said with a smile. "We're all friends here."

He let out a shuddering breath and did. "She can do as she likes, but I would want to take out my frustration on him in the fighting courts."

"Yikes, two in a row," I said, and took another long pull from my beer. "What's the question?"

Dain didn't say anything, so Alluin settled back against the booth's leather couch with hooded eyes and an expression of satisfaction. "What he would do if you had sex with Zhiolas."

"Leah, you're lovely, but it is not worth the risk of evisceration," Zhiolas said with a laugh. "Our prince isn't known for his restraint, though I'll admit that he's not known for his jealousy, either."

"I can have nuances," Dain grumbled, raising his hand to flag down the server again. "What do you want to know, Leah?"

I studied him for a long moment, trying to decide how I felt about him being possessive, then leaned forward to torture my prince a little bit more.

22. Foolishness

Chapter 22

Foolishness

We got a little bit drunk.

Dain could put away an astonishing amount of alcohol, going through mead like water, while Alluin drank his way through a bottle of wine, Zhiolas consumed a series of increasingly bizarre cocktails (who even puts tiny pickled octopuses in alcohol?), and I lined up beer bottles. By the end of the evening, I felt like I'd known Zhiolas and Alluin for my entire life, and knew an incredible amount of information about their sex lives, kinks, and wildest adventures.

Zhiolas once fell over a thirty-foot waterfall trying to impress someone he had a crush on. Alluin had a thing for tattoos and piercings (I told him he ought to try clubbing at a human gay bar in the alternative scene). I admitted that I hadn't lost my virginity until I was twenty-one. And Dain answered a question from me with something like shame on his face, saying that he'd always wanted to have someone tie him up and enjoy him.