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My sister raised her eyebrows. “My condolences on your runaway bride, but it wasn’t us. We slept the whole night through. I was too exhausted to do anything untoward with somebody’s future wife.”

“You see?” the genius said, turning to his mother.

“That’s what they say,” she replied. “I don’t know if I believe them.”

The genius put his hands on his hips and stuck out his chin. “Well, even if they let her out—which they didn’t!—what do you plan to do about it? I’ve sworn they’ll come to no harm.”

She deflated at that, her fire dying down. “I suppose it’s bad manners to go back on your word.”

“That’s what I’ve been saying!”

“Perhaps it’s just as well,” the genius’s mother said. “That girl was nothing but trouble.” She waved a hand in the direction of the bed. “Force one of these humans to marry you, then. I’ve been telling you, they’ll be just as good, and their laws can’t possibly require a magic cow. There’d be no humans left if they all had to do that.”

I very much disliked the direction this had headed in. “Wait, what happened to doing us no harm?” My voice rose to a squeak at the end.

Her dim eyes narrowed and the flames on her head grew a full foot higher. “Are you implying that marriage to my son is some form of harm? Because that would be insulting. Guests who insult their hosts lose the privilege of protection.”

“It doesn’t matter anyway, Mother!” the genius protested, reaching up to lay a hand on her shoulder. “How many times do I have to say it? I can’t marry them. These are man humans. Their lower garments have two tubes instead of one. Their hair is short.”

“Very short, more’s the pity,” my sister murmured. I silently prayed that she would shut the hell up.

The genius’s mother shrugged off her son’s hand and strode over to Yudit. She bent down and shoved her face forward, coming so close that Yudit began to perspire from the heat of her fire. My sister didn’t flinch, smiling benignly while the enormous woman peered at her.

Then the genius’s mother closed her eyes and took a deep sniff.

“Sweat. Last night’s sweetbreads. And…the tang of steel.” That nose must be sensitive indeed if she could smell Yudit’s dagger and most recent meal. Her eyes popped back open. “Very well. I believe this one is a man human.”

My sister couldn’t restrain a smirk.

The genius’s mother made her way over to my side of the bed. When she bent down to look at me, it felt like a furnace had been thrust in my face. I tried to stay relaxed. In that heat, it would be easy enough to convince her of my masculinity if she thought human women didn’t sweat.

She inhaled my scent. “This one had a bath not long ago. Smells like lye soap, mostly.” Then she sniffed again, and frowned. “But also like the one you kept in the dungeon. Like flowers.”

Oh, shit. Shit shit shit.

When Yudit moved to the side of the gargantuan bed, she’d strayed too far from me. The flowers on her side had wilted. The ones next to me were overfilling their vase, blossoming stalks spilling out onto the floor.

“It’s not me,” I began. “It’s—”

“Lots of humans smell like flowers!” my sister shouted hurriedly. “Men, women, it just depends on, um…”

“Your rank in society.” My smile became pained. I knew Yudit was trying to help, but I truly wished she hadn’t. Now we’d sound like liars if I didn’t play along. “I’m a knight. My brother there is only a squire. The woman in your dungeons must have been high-ranking, too.”

“She was. Still is, I mean,” the genius said. “She’s also very pretty. So perhaps we could go out and search for her, instead of wasting our time here?”

His mother didn’t seem convinced. “I know I’ve heard of some connection between flowers and female humans. They like to get them as presents, or they suck out the nectar and collect the pollen on their leg hairs. One of those.”

“Nope, nothing of the sort,” Yudit said.

“There’s more than one pretty human in the world, you know,” the genius’s mother told him, ignoring Yudit. She poked me in the shoulder. “Is this one pretty?”

“Well…” He gave me a speculative look that I very much didn’t like. As if he was checking to see just how attractive an iguana I might be. “I suppose, if this human really were a female human…”

“Nope!” Yudit said. “He’s a man. A hideous man. The ugliest man I’ve ever met. As a fellow human, I would know.”

The genius’s mother scowled at her. “You might not be a truthful human, so—”

“Mother!” the genius cut her off. “Don’t be mean to our guests. There’s a very easy way to resolve this. A simple test to tell male and female humans apart.”