“Sorry,” Lucas said, shrugging dismissively. “I had my reasons.” He didn’t feel like dealing with this, and he couldn’t afford to waste time on it. All it took was a single quick glance to know that neither was a healing class, and he felt confident that, if push came to shove, he could kill them both where they stood. It’s good to be a boss, he thought as he puffed out his chest and refused to back down from whatever intimidation play Malik was trying to make.

“And why is frumpy with them?” Valerie asked, shifting her glare to Nick. “What happened? He killed you, and you scampered back over to see if he’d do it again?”

“I think the better question is: Why wasn’t he with you? Were you only keeping him around to fill the roster?” Lucas asked Valerie. Then, turning to Malik, he added with a sneer, “Or was it that you were worried he’d be a third wheel and ruin the mood?”

“There’s no reason to be hostile, brother,” Malik said.

“I think there are plenty of reasons,” Lucas countered. “I think that, right now, you want to kill me where I stand. If so, the feeling is mutual.”

“Lucas, just let them pass,” Nick advised cautiously. “We don’t want a confrontation. Let’s just go get our quest reward.”

Lucas looked over at Nick and saw something very familiar: his sister-in-law’s shirking and shrinking from any sort of argument or push back when she was in college. He remembered very well that the apparently now-pushy Liu had, at one point, been a meek wallflower, and Lucas had stepped in to stop her from being bullied on more than one occasion. He’s the same as she was: no friends, but plenty of enemies. Weakness invites that kind.

“I think the boy has it right, brother. You should learn that you don’t want to make a confrontation. Let’s go get our reward and stop wasting time with this backstabber.”

“I’ve already apologized, even if you chose not to accept it,” Lucas said. “But now, I think that you’re going to pay me the lip service that I’m due and say that you’re sorry to Nick too. Then, you’re going to lower your heads and walk away. If you don’t want me to kill you again, that is.”

Malik puffed out his own chest in response to the threat and leaned in toward Lucas, attempting to appear as threatening as possible. “You think I’m scared of you? You’re just a nobody—a nothing, a negative, a zero. You trying to intimidate me?”

“Don’t think you can push us around just because there’s only three of you and two of us,” Valerie warned. “You’re only alive because the guards would have stopped us from stabbing you in the back.”