I wasn’t sure there was time to enumerate all the reasons.

I decided to prioritize.

“You’re a man.”

“I’m your betrothed.”

“That makes you no less a man,” I pointed out.

“Where you go, I go,” he declared.

“Forever?” I asked, my voice pitched higher.

“That is what marriage is, Elena.”

My night was not improving.

“We’re not married yet,” I noted.

“Let’s call this practice then,” he drawled.

“Cassius—”

“You can let me in,” he declared. “You have that power. Am I correct?”

Oh goddess.

“Not any Nadirii can let in a male,” he continued. “It has to be by agreement, sanctioned by the queen, and accomplished by a coven. But the direct royal line can. This is true, right?”

It was.

A nifty trick my many-greats grandmother had given us for reasons she wrote in her diaries had to do with emergencies.

As far as I knew, only one former queen had used it, and that had been to let in a contingent of Go’Doan to assist in healing efforts when an epidemic was threatening our sisterhood.

“Elena,” he said in a warning tone.

“Cassius, I can’t just let you in. Like you said, it has to be sanctioned by the queen.”

“You can send a bird, informing your mother we’re coming. She won’t object.”

“She might.”

“She won’t.”

She wouldn’t. She was very much all for Cassius and I being a Cassius and I.

“She might,” I repeated, though not very convincingly this time.

“Does everything have to be a struggle with you?” he asked.

Truly?

“Does everything have to be a struggle with you?” I asked in return.

He fell silent.

I was beginning to feel somewhat pleased with myself that I might have gotten the upper hand (rightly) when he changed strategies.

“I wish to see your home,” he said quietly. “Meet Dora, finally. See where you live. Where you were raised. Be amongst your people. As dire as it will be, I’ll be giving all of that to you.”

As dire as it would be?

Before I could recover from his quiet, cajoling tone and ask about that remark, he carried on.

“Has True seen your home?” he inquired.

“This isn’t about True,” I replied.

“Has he been in your home?”

I decided not to answer that.

“He’s been in your home,” he muttered.

“You really must stop pushing True between us,” I advised.

“A man has the mother of his future children under him in their bed, there’s another man who has more of her and will always have more of her if she keeps things of herself from her lover that she’s given that other man, then that man will always be between them.”

I could not argue that.

Though True was not between us because I wanted Cassius, Cassius, Cassius.

I couldn’t tell him that either.