The Queen stopped in front of the table and scanned across those of us waiting for her. Her eyes landed on Dain and my interlaced hands, and then looked up at me, with a faint trace of a mocking smile. I gave her a tiny shrug and a "what can you do?" sort of look, and her smile turned into something more catlike and pleased. She came around the table, paused, and sank gracefully down into her chair.

The rest of us followed, me a beat behind, and the banquet began.

Having never been to a banquet before, I couldn't exactly say what the differences were between fae banquets and human banquets, but I could take a few guesses. For one, I doubted that humans often ate live scarab beetles which had been chilled and laid on ice, but which sometimes managed to come to dazed wakefulness and take to the air, blundering about the room. Nor did I think that it was particularly common for intense interpersonal interactions to occur on, at, or under banquet tables, including but not limited to sweeping dishes off the top to make space for your lover as you fucked him, leaping over dinner plates to attack someone with a sword, or what I suspected was someone giving a woman incredible head under the table.

Everything seemed to happen in its own little world, with no commotion spilling outside of the immediate vicinity. Aside from picking up her wine glass to prevent it from being spilled, the woman next to the fucking couple didn't seem to even notice, the sword-fight somehow managed not to interfere with anyone's meal, and the woman having such a good time might as well not have been there at all. The only time even the beetles interfered with my meal was when one beaned me on my head and fell into my soup.

Dain ate that one, crunching the damn thing whole while I attempted not to look as if I might puke at the thought. I was pretty sure he was taking his time on purpose, and definitely sure when he licked his fingers afterwards.

He had a forked tongue. I tried not to appreciate the thought of what that tongue might be able to do to me too much, and made a mental note to ask Kamharida for perfume or something to baffle his nose against the scent of desire.

As the banquet part of the evening drew to a close, and music started to drift through the room, Dain turned to me. I looked over at him automatically, and in front of all those people, Dain very deliberately used his wing-hand to tuck a loose tendril of hair behind my ear, then dragged his sharp talons along the underside of my jaw, forcing me to lift my face towards him.