Beside me, he walked with a predatory stalk, his ears surveying the room. I fell into rhythm with him as naturally as breathing, and him with me. Dain didn't take strides long enough to make me stretch to keep up, though I knew he could have. Instead, he matched the length of his steps to mine as he led me up the long space between the two rows of banquet tables towards the head table.

We walked like we weren't sure whether we were going to murder or fuck the four Court representatives already standing in wait behind the table, which seemed like the appropriate balance to strike. The woman who must have been Raven Court's representative, with what looked like a glamor of seraphim-style black bird wings, looked at us with an expression of stark fear, her face drawn and pale. I suspected she was the one Dain had decided to transfix with his gaze as we came.

As we turned to pass by the head table to stand behind our seats, Dain reached out with one wing-arm and plucked the wine-glass out of the hand of, not the Raven Court's representative, but a stern-face man who bared his teeth in a silent snarl. Dain didn't go stiff or tense. He wasn't trying to be comfortable. He was doing it to be monstrous, to remind everyone at the table what he was capable of.

We came to a stop behind two chairs set to the right of the central one, and I glanced over at Dain in time to see him sneer at the room and down the glass of wine, tilting his head back to catch every drop. I made a disgusted sound and rolled my eyes; I couldn't help it. His lip lifted in an answering snarl and I heard the woman next to me try to stifle a snicker.

About to say something snide, I snapped my attention back to the doorway as the announcer cried, "Her majesty, Queen Nephinae Ronelis!"

"Not Sundamar?" I murmured to Dain, watching the Queen come in, moving like a serpent.

His soft growl rolled across me like distant thunder. "Did you truly imagine my mother would offer me her name?"

I hadn't imagined otherwise, but as soon as he said it I wasn't surprised. She saw him as something the gods had inflicted on her and wanted to see him dead. Why would she claim him in any way besides the necessary? That she'd claimed him as her son and heir was mysterious enough.