My deal with Dain required my presence pretty frequently, which at least gave me things to do besides scurry in circles in my room like a mouse trapped in a bucket. I went to open court each week, sitting in an ornate chair next to Dain's throne, listening to petitions and occasionally being asked for my opinion by either Dain or the Queen, especially on matters that involved humans. I sat at Dain's right hand for formal dinners every four days, and had the grotesque experience of eating my first bug to keep from insulting a visiting dignitary from Peregrine Court. I danced at revels deep into the night, though Dain never joined me on the dance floor. On a few occasions, we attended other court functions together, walking through gardens at each other's sides or riding out on horseback next to each other.

Some of it was frustrating and frightening. Dain hadn't been exaggerating when he said that the entire High Court despised him. The courtiers were beyond leery of him, and with good reason; he didn't even tolerate snide comments from them. The one time I heard someone make a snippy comment about what a tawdry sight it was to see a dog locked up with his bitch, I didn't even realize she was talking about me and Dain until he flung her out of the room hard enough that she bounced off the wall, snarling at her to hold her tongue, or lose it. People responded to such tender care by making life difficult for him at every turn—but I suspected they must have been doing that from the beginning for him to respond to them with such prejudice.

Even the servants got in on making it difficult for the crown prince to move through the world. Kamharida and the other servants went out of their way to make sure that I had the things I needed, and they went out of their way to always be far, far away from Dain, regardless of if he needed things or not. He had to dress and groom himself, because forcing someone to help meant worse than no care. He gave explicit instructions and followed them up with force to get the things he needed, whether it was seeing his stag tacked correctly or having food delivered before it was stone cold.

Most of the time all of that didn't backwash into my life, but sometimes it did, and for all that Dain's temper seemed to have a hair-trigger when it came to people treating him like dogshit, when it came to me he had less than zero tolerance. I kept to my policy of not bringing anything I noticed to Dain's attention at first, figuring that nobody needed to get beheaded for mere rudeness, but I couldn't hide everything, and not everyone had the self-preservation to keep the sniping out of his sight.