"You dance well," he says. "I'm Krag. May I have the next one?"
I open my mouth to politely decline, but Kaelren's hand is already on my hip. Not gripping. Resting. The way a predator rests a paw on something it has decided belongs to it.
"No," Kaelren says.
Krag looks at him. Looks at the hand on my hip. Looks back at me. His smile doesn't waver. "I was asking her."
"And I answered."
"Kaelren," I say, putting a hand on his chest. "It's fine."
"It's not fine. He's looking at you like you're a dish he's considering ordering."
Krag raises both hands in a gesture of mock innocence. "I was only asking for a dance. No harm intended."
"No harm will be necessary," Kaelren says pleasantly, "as long as you walk away in the next three seconds."
"Kaelren." I press harder against his chest. He doesn't move. The corruption marks along his jaw have started to pulse, which is the fae equivalent of a dog's hackles rising. "Dial it down."
Krag, who clearly has more confidence than survival instinct, turns to me. "Your mate is quite territorial."
"He's not my mate, he's my..." I stop. He is, actually. Technically. As of a conversation in a war office that ended with a throne and several other things. "He's mine. And you should probably listen to him, because the last person who tried this lost the use of a hand."
Krag's eyebrows rise. He looks at Kaelren with renewed assessment, taking in the corruption marks, the silver eyes.
"My apologies," Krag says. "I didn't realize."
"Now you do," Kaelren says.
Krag leaves. Kaelren watches him go with the focused attention of a hawk tracking a mouse that has wisely returned to its hole.
"You are ridiculous," I tell him.
"He wasn't asking you to dance. He was testing the perimeter." His hand slides from my hip to the small of my back, pulling me flush against him. His mouth drops to my ear. "There is no perimeter. There is no test. You are mine, and everyone in this room knows it, and if anyone else walks over here and asks you to do anything that involves their hands on your body, I will make Fenric look like a gentle warning."
The heat that goes through me at those words is deeply inappropriate for a public setting.
"You're insane," I say.
"You like it."
"I hate that I like it."
He almost smiles. Almost. And then he spins me, and we're dancing again, and his arms are around me, and the music plays on.
Two hours later, the tavern is louder, warmer, and significantly more chaotic.
Peeble has found the Root ale. I don't know how a beetle drinks ale, and I don't want to know, but they are currently standing on the bar, delivering what appears to be an impromptu speech about the philosophical implications of cross-dimensional travel to a crowd of increasingly baffled fae. They are gesturing wildly with one foreleg while the other clutches the rim of a thimble-sized mug.
"And furthermore," Peeble announces, their voice carrying across the entire tavern, "the fundamental error in most interdimensional navigation is the assumption that time is linear. Time is not linear. Time is a drunk bee trying to find its way home. It goes sideways, it goes backward, it occasionally stops to pollinate something irrelevant, and it arrives at its destination only by accident."
"Is this a lecture or a comedy set?" someone in the crowd asks.
"It is wisdom disguised as entertainment, which is the highest form of communication. You're welcome."
I'm on my fourth ale, which means I have ignored Thalia's advice completely, and everything is warm and slightly tilted. Kaelren is beside me, nursing the same first mug he started with, because of course he is. The man faces existential threats with clinical composure and apparently treats root ale with the same level of caution.
Thalia has moved to the musicians' corner, where she's talking with the drummer, laughing at something he said, her hair loose around her shoulders. She looks her age for the first time since I have met her. Not the commander. Just a young woman in a tavern, enjoying the music.
