27. Courtship #2
“You bastard,” I spat, knowing the barb would hurt and knowing that everyone overhearing would take the resulting backlash at face value.
“This isn’t about me. This is you being a fucking coward.
” I jabbed him on the chest with one finger as he growled.
“Talk to her! Or, here’s an idea, fuck her and get it over with!
Dain grabbed me by the shirt and hauled me nose-to-nose. “Don’t you dare talk about her like that,” he said in a low snarl, his whole body taut, as if he was on the edge of drawing his sword.
Ah. Actually-angry Dain. Not a good place for me to be. “Verisimilitude,” I hissed at him, dropping my ears in submission. “Loud and showy, not killing Zhiolas for doing you a favor.”
His ears pinned back, the faintest of blushes coming to his cheeks. “Fuck you!” he shouted. “Go fuck your gods-damn husband and get that over with.” Dain sneered at me and shoved me backwards. “Come back when you’ve had Alluin’s dick up your ass and maybe I’ll listen to you!”
I staggered, tripped, and fell ass-first into a boxwood hedge. I bared my teeth at him. “Maybe you should take a dick up your ass sometime,” I said in a mocking tone. “Teach you a little humility!”
Dain growled, a ground-rumbling sound that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. “Are you offering, Zhiolas?” he asked in a sneering tone, his voice pitching louder. “Are you going to fuck the Beast of Phazikai to prove a fucking point? Or are you too much of a coward to even try?”
Oh, gross. I guess we’re going there. “You are perhaps the last person in the world I’d fuck, and I fuck all sorts of questionable people!” I shouted back. “If you insist on thinking with that pierced club you call a cock, go stick it in your soulmate!”
He yanked his sword out of its sheath with a ringing sound. “Do you want to say that again, asshole?” he yelled, using his battlefield voice. “Go ahead! Insult her again! See what—”
“Sundamar,” Queen Ronelis said, her cold voice cutting across the yard.
Dain froze, the snarl still on his face and his sword pointed at me.
Thank fuck, I thought, wilting back against the boxwood.
I’d picked probably the worst possible topic to have a fake shouting match with Dain about—at least if I valued my life and limbs, which I did.
Venting our mutual frustrations might have been pleasant if we hadn’t been doing it in a way that was all-but-guaranteed to instinctually piss each other off, but here we were. Alas, I supposed.
“Come here,” the Queen said, her icy tone of command not changing.
A tiny smirk touched Dain’s face. “Grateful,” he signed with one hand as he sheathed his sword and turned away.
I huffed a laugh, though I appreciated the gesture.
For all that I knew that it was for show and that we’d both agreed to try not to view each other’s words as attacks, some of the things Dain had said hit me hard, as I was sure my words had, as well.
We knew each other too well to do otherwise, and nobody would have believed it was a real fight if we’d been yelling about flowers or his taste in home decor.
As Dain stalked over to get dressed down by the Queen, I picked myself up and made my escape. Royal retribution was not high on my list of desired outcomes.
I couldn’t get Dain’s taunts out of my head as I rode back down towards the garrison.
Most of them hadn’t been that barbed—neither of us had any desire to fuck each other, and people had been teasing me about co-owning a house (and everything else) with Alluin ever since he’d signed that writ—but I couldn’t get over the fact that Dain had called Alluin my husband.
Dain was fae, just like me. We couldn’t tell outright lies.
Maybe I could have regarded him calling Alluin my husband as a metaphorical stretching of the truth, but Dain had outright said that I was married to him, which meant that Dain regarded us as married.
The thought itched at me more than it had any right to do.
Dain thought lots of things. Some of those things were stupid.
Dain thinking that Alluin and I were married might very well be one of those stupid things.
Unfortunately, I was impulsive and somewhat obsessed with Alluin, and I’d spent the past ten months or so gestating an overwhelming desire for Alluin to put me out of my misery via kissing me until I forgot that I absolutely didn’t deserve him.
Instead of going home, I rode directly to the garrison, left my doe with a hapless recruit, and beelined for Alluin’s office.
He was alone, thank fuck, so when I burst in the only person to startle was the one I’d come to talk to. His ears perked. “Zhi! You’re back!”
I planted my hands on his desk, panting from my rapid ascent up the tower. “Are we married?”
Alluin raised a single brow at me.
My stupid cheeks started heating. “I mean, I know we’re not married-married,” I said.
“It’s not like we’ve done any betrothal contract negotiations, and unless I was really, really drunk at the time, we haven’t done any of the marriage bindings I know about.
No one’s tied our wrists together and it’s not like you’ve put your name on my shoulders, and I definitely would have remembered if we got matching nose piercings, but Dain said we were married—shouted it, actually—and he has to have a reason for that, right?
Don’t you think?” I finished, going a little shrill.
“You’re babbling again,” Alluin said in an amused purr. He laced his fingers together and rested his chin on them. “Would you like me to answer before you work yourself entirely into a tizzy?”
I blushed harder, my ears dropping in automatic embarrassment. “Um. Yes. If you don’t mind.”
“We are not, strictly speaking, married, and I, personally, don’t consider us married,” Alluin said, a statement that made me feel far too much disappointment for a man who was, strictly speaking, only Alluin’s friend.
“That being said, given that we live together and pool essentially all our resources, by a number of more permissive definitions, one could consider us married, especially since there’s a contract involved.
I think mortals call it ‘common law’ marriage. ”
With a sound of protest that approached a whine, I dropped myself down onto the couch opposite his desk. “I don’t like that answer.”
“I suppose you could divorce me by moving out and refusing to touch any of our assets, though I won’t take kindly to it,” Alluin said drily. “Is it truly so awful for someone to consider us married?”
I paused in my over-dramatic melting to frown at him. “Why would that be awful for me?” I asked, completely taken aback. “You’re the most incredible person I’ve ever met. You might as well ask Dain if he’s offended when people assume Leah’s his lover.”
Alluin’s ears lifted and cocked forward, the edge of tension in his shoulders replaced by hunting-hound interest. “That’s an interesting comparison,” he said in a mild tone that I didn’t trust at all.
“Is it?” I asked, slouching the rest of the way onto his couch. “I kind of assumed most people who know us have been doing that this whole past year.”
He wet his lips in a careful motion. “You do realize that you’re comparing us to a pair of unbalanced soulmates who are almost certainly going to balance as trueloves sometime in the next three weeks or so, right?”
My shoulders hunched and ears dropped, anxiety twisting in my gut.
It didn’t matter if I wanted Alluin as my truelove.
We weren’t soulmates. We couldn’t be soulmates.
I could only be my foolish, bumbling self, and I was terrified of asking for what Alluin might only give out of loyalty.
“You know what, this was a bad idea, I think, which does seem to be my normal state of being, so let’s forget I said anything,” I said, all in a rush, shoving myself up from the couch.
“Steak for dinner? I can likely pick some up at the market on the way home.”
“Zhi,” Alluin started, something akin to fear tensing his brows.
“Great. I’ll try to manage supper at six,” I said brightly, and made my escape.
We didn’t talk about it over dinner. Alluin seemed worried, but he didn’t ask, and I couldn’t bring myself to blurt out how much I wanted him to want me. I felt like I was drowning, trapped under a plane of clear ice, and I didn’t know how to ask for help.
That night, I curled up in my own bedroom, sick with anxiety and longing, wishing that Alluin would knock. He didn’t, as I knew he wouldn’t. But gods, how I wished he would.