A calculating look crossed his face, and something that looked like challenge entered his golden eyes. Hands on his reins, Dain eased his stag forward two steps to come next to me, lowered his shoulder, and stretched his wing-arm down, offering me his hand to use as a mounting block. I could see the cost of that action in his body, his hands white-knuckling on the reins and tension drawing the corners of his eyes and mouth tight.

I didn't hesitate, acting like putting my muddy boot in a man's wing-hand was something I did every day, and used him to launch my sore body back up into the saddle.

He drew his wing-arm back slowly, shaking dirt off his palm before curling it back up, holding it like a cat holds an injured paw. Dain looked at me with stress and something like fear in his face, his ears turning like he expected an attack to come from the woods at any time.

Of course he did, I realized. He'd been punished, over and over, probably from infancy, for ever using his wing-arms for anything. I supposed he was lucky that the Queen hadn't mutilated him when he'd been born, amputating his tails and wing-arms, cropping his ears into an elfin shape, and leaving him with scars instead of scales and horns. The grim thought made me wonder why she hadn't done it. Human doctors still did unnecessary surgeries on intersex kids to "fix" them, and I didn't think that sort of cruelty was necessarily a human trait.

"You're strong," I said, putting some admiration into my voice.

Dain's expression sharpened. "Don't try to mislead me, mortal girl," he said, his voice cutting. "I'm used to catching deception from people far more skilled with their tongues than you."

"You have no idea what I can do with my tongue," I said in an arch tone.

His eyes widened, ears lowering and tilting forward and stance shifting enough that his stag moved under him, sidling before he controlled it.

I smirked at him, and was rewarded by a heated glare. "Anyways, I wasn't trying to mislead you. You did something nice for me, and I can't thank you, so I thought I'd compliment you instead." I shrugged as if I didn't care, though I was surprised by my own disappointment. "Experiment was a resounding failure, so I suppose I'll have to find some other way to give you positive feedback."

"Are you trying to train me like a dog?" Dain asked, in a casual tone but with narrowed eyes.

"Humans domesticated wolves, o moon-called Beast," I said, and waggled my eyebrows at him. "Who knows, maybe one day you'll fetch my slippers and put your head in my lap to ask for pets."