“Enough, Drogan,” Bastien boomed, rising from his seat to loom over the group. Lucan took advantage of the distraction and slid Drogan’s full cup in front of himself.
Rikard could fight his own battles. He held up his hand to stop Bastien’s intervention and took a softer tack. “I didn’t ask to be Nadir. I do my duty, as we all do. I do not scold you for guarding the gates, do I?”
“It is one thing to do your duty and another to haveaffectionfor them,” Drogan roared. Apparently, the softer approach had not worked. “You spit in the face of every gargoyle who has laid down their life to defend them. You shame yourself, mingling with these dirtcrawlers!”
The tavern had gone quiet around them. Even Lucan had stopped smiling, his fresh cup of mead untouched.
“There’s no need for insults,” Bastien rumbled, frowning. Always trying to make peace. Sometimes there was none to be made, though.
Rikard’s mouth twisted, his tongue sour. “In case you haven’t noticed from your high perch, I’m a dirtcrawler myself these days.”
Lucan laughed at the dark joke, but nobody else did.
“I won’t be at your mating ceremony.” Drogan stood, and Rikard eyed him warily, bracing for any sudden movements. “I won’t meet your bride. And I won’t pretend to be happy for something that disgusts me.”
He left. The tavern door banged shut behind him, and the chatter rushed in to fill the silence that followed his explosion.
Bastien set down his cup carefully. “Well. That will make the moths talk.”
“Another bottle,” Rikard said to Lucan, who readily obliged. He was shaken by Drogan’s complete rejection. They had fledged together, trained together, deployed together. They’d roosted side-by-side in Meravenna until they were sent to different fronts. They’d both lost people in the war.
All their shared history should have brought them together. But Drogan’s grief had grown into something no longer recognizable, while Rikard’s had scarred over.
“He’ll come around.” Bastien kept watch on the closed tavern door like he thought Drogan might walk back through it at any minute. “He wouldn’t miss your mating ceremony.”
Rikard shook his head. “I’m not so sure.”
“Once he meets your tantalizing human, he’ll change his mind,” Lucan said, topping off all their cups again. He refilled two for himself, having taken full possession of Drogan’s discarded one. “If she could charm you, she’ll charm all of us. Tell us of her charms, would you? Does she have some special little human tricks we should know about, if you know what I mean?”
A sudden possessive impulse snaked through him. Perhaps it was the mead, but he didn’t like the thought of Lucan ogling her. “Keep your eyes off my mate,” he grumbled.
“Lucan only meant that it’s easy to villainize someone when you don’t know them.” Bastien tipped his head back and took a long draught from his cup, his wide wings flexing slightly to steady his tipsy bulk. “I confess my surprise. I didn’t know you were looking seriously for a mate.”
Rikard snorted. “I wasn’t. My mother was the determined party.”
“Yet you found one yourself. What drew you to her?”
Rikard considered the question. He could not tell his friends the truth, that their arrangement was purely practical. No one could know, not even these two. He searched for something close to it, something that was notuntrue.
“She has a very appealing form,” he said, thinking of the pale swell of her bosoms revealed by that pink gown. Lucan grinned at him across the table. “And her manner is tolerable. She does not annoy me,” he clarified when Bastien raised a brow.
Bastien smiled. “Your compliments could use some improvement.”
“What they could use is another drink.”
Lucan quickly topped off his mead for the sixth-or-was-it-seventh time. “My opinion is that you’ve been starved for company. I hope you don’t tire of her, because once you bite”—he snapped his teeth a few times, grinning wickedly all the while—“you won’t be rid of her. She’ll be rattling around your skull for the rest of your life.”
“I’ve had excellent company,” Rikard objected, motioning at his friends, hoping to shift the topic away from the nonexistent mind bond he’d “share” with Hanna. Yet another lie within the lie, but at least it was not one that would be tested.
“I meant company in your nest.” Lucan slid closer, elbows on the table, eyes bright with a collector’s greed. “So. How does it compare? I need details. Gargoyle females have a certain... resistance to them. But human females look soft everywhere. Are they as yielding as they look?”
“Sample them yourself,” Rikard deflected. “There are plenty who would be happy to do anything you ask for the right price.”
Lucan leaned closer. “Can they take a knot? Because the proportions seem challenging. Most of them seem a size too small.”
“Lucan.” Rikard fixed him with a look that had silenced junior gargoyles on the training field. “If you continue this line ofquestioning, I’ll have Bastien break off your pretty horns so I can use them as throwing darts.”
Lucan’s grin only widened. “I’ll take that as a yes, then. Good for you. And what about the tail? I’ve always wondered if they could tolerate—”
