Trill raised an eyebrow. “You want my uncle to find my come under his desk?”
Molun opened his mouth, closed it, and a wrinkle formed between his eyes. “Wraith take everything! Now we’re going to have to clean up.”
Clearly, Molun hadn’t thought this all the way through.
Trill cleaned under the desk, because he was the smallest and fit best, but even Molun helped organize all the papers after Arvus and Trill picked them up. (Trill had noticed that Molun hadn’t had any difficulty taking Trill in that position over the desk, and he was delighted by how much steadier and less pained he was on his feet these days. It was far from perfect, but it was so much better.)
Molun was still pouting by the end of the clean-up.
Arvus tugged him into his arms. “Are you saying it wasn’t fun to play with us, baby? Are you wishing you hadn’t bothered?”
Molun made a noise of outrage. “Of course it was fun! You two are the best!”
“So why are you pouting?” Arvus wanted to know.
“On principle?” Molun said, not sounding entirely certain.
Arvus scoffed, Trill snorted, and Molun grinned.
“All right. I don’t know why I was pouting. That was so much fun!”
“And now we need to get some actual work done,” Arvus pointed out.
Molun instantly pouted again, making them all laugh.
They did go their separate ways after that, though. Arvus had a shift guarding the Princess, Molun was set to review castle security with Delana and Onadal, and Trill liked to spend his spare time admiring the Warriors and Mage Warriors who trained in the quadrangle.
In the afternoon, Trill went out to a few pubs. Molun wasn’t worried anymore that Trill was having sex with other people—the thought still didn’t appeal at all, which was weird—and since Trill was still regularly healing Molun, he needed to get his energy from somewhere.
It wasn’t as fun as having sex with people, but it was definitely a worthwhile trade, getting to spend this time with Molun and Arvus, even if it meant feeding the boring way.
It was early evening when Trill, Molun, and Arvus met up again in their room before heading down to dinner.
Molun had been reading in front of the fire, and it was he who said, “You know, the longer I think about, the weirder it seems that Cormal suddenly decided to do a surprise inspection now.”
Trill started nodding immediately. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but there had definitely beensomethinggoing on withCormal’s energy when he left. Whatever he was doing, Trill was sure that it had been tied up in his feelings for Kinan, and he didn’t see how a surprise inspection would have anything to do with that.
“He needed to do one at some point,” Arvus pointed out calmly, not seeming at all worried. “It’s his first as Summus. It wouldn’t be unusual to want to put his own mark on it.”
Molun shook his head. “He just seemed… off.”
Arvus now looked faintly amused. “Paying a lot of attention to Cormal’s moods, are you?”
Molun wrinkled his nose at Arvus and turned to Trill. “You believe me, don’t you?”
Trill had only seen Molun try to get one of them to gang up on the other when it was a game for sex or for something silly. Thankfully, it seemed to amuse Arvus as much as it amused Trill.
He nodded.
“See, Trill believes me!” Molun said triumphantly, turning back to Arvus like that settled the matter.
Very reasonably, Arvus asked, “What do you think he’s doing if he’s not doing that?”
“I don’t know. But it’s too early for the winter inspections.”
“There were no fall inspections given the upheaval of… everything,” Arvus pointed out. “And possibly he thought that you would lock him out of the castle if he left.”
Molun groaned. “That’s such a good idea. Why didn’t I think of that?”
