This she did not looking at him.

Even so, this did not deter Chu speaking.

“That was well said.”

She ignored that and continued walking.

She also shot a look to Gal and Brix that shared without words she was in no mood for the mood she saw on both of their faces before she slapped the flaps back on her tent and entered it.

Gal and Brix, as they were wont to do, ignored her mood and charged in behind her.

“We must speak,” Gal stated.

“We must not,” she replied, throwing herself down on her pallet and casting her mind about for something to do, anything that would make her appear busy enough they’d leave her be.

She should be meditating before the ceremony.

One look at her friends and she knew there was fat chance of that happening.

“He’s pining for you,” Brix began, darting his arm out behind him to the tent flaps, finger pointed, indicating Chu, “in direct vicinity to you.”

“And?” she asked.

Brix’s brows shot up before they darted together.

“We must hear this story of what happened between you and him,” Gal declared.

“We need hear no story,” Brix put in. “He’s a Trusted. Trusted are trusted. He wears the green and red against the black on his mantle. He has Mars’s ear.” He tossed his hand to indicate Serena. “And he fights gallantly at her side not only for this righteous mission, but in protection of her person, and she walks by him without looking at him?”

“Maybe he hurt her,” Gal returned to Brix.

Brix made a chuffing noise, but then his eyes shot to Serena.

“You are strong,” he said.

“Even a strong woman can be hurt by a man,” Gal declared. “For the Green Man’s sake, Brix. Hurt comes in a variety of forms. And the worst of it is the kind that does not leave a bruise that can be seen.”

Brix’s eyes, still on her, went squinty as he demanded, “Did he hurt you?”

“Brix—”

She got no more out.

He made his own (correct) assumptions, thus turned on his boot as if to march out, she knew, to confront Chu.

Bloody hell.

Except he did not get to do such.

The tent flaps slapped aside and instead they were all confronted with…

Chu.

She cast her gaze to the ceiling of the tent, praying, Goddess, deliver me.

Chu’s deep voice sounding brought her attention back to the tent.

“I would have words with Serena.”

“And I would have Sinchella, the fairest maid of The Doors, take my cock,” Brix retorted. “But she prefers gnomes with a great deal more coin than I have, so there’s little chance of that. As there’s less chance of you speaking to Serena if she does not wish to be spoken to.”