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“Imagine what?” I asked, already bracing.

“Imagine deciding not to stay here. Not being able to get hopelessly lost in your own naughty little thoughts every time you catch sight of your King’s mouth.” He sighed, the picture of tragedy. “A waste. A genuine tragedy.”

I slapped him on the arm hard enough to make him yelp.

“Ow! What was that for?”

“I think you know,” I warned, making him grin.

Atlas didn’t seem to care that I just assaulted his brother. Not when I turned firmly back to my plate and found him smirking down at me, as if happy that I had been caught obsessing over his mouth and fingers.

Which was why I tried ignoring the matching twinkle in both brothers’ eyes with everything I had. It was also when a familiar shadow dropped into the chair on Atlas’s far side, all easy sprawl and broad shoulders, snagging a roll from the nearest basket before he’d even properly sat down.

“Late,” Atlas observed without looking up, “as always.”

“And yet always worth the wait,” Aster said around a mouthful of bread, propping one boot up against the table leg in a way that would have scandalized every noble in the room had they dared to look.

Atlas glanced sideways at his brother, one dark brow lifting.

“And I see you’ve chosen your company carefully,” he observed dryly. For Lazaros had planted himself on my far side, the two of us paired on Atlas’s right, leaving Aster to sprawl alone on his left.

“Naturally,” Lazaros replied, entirely unrepentant, settling back with a smug grin. “Given the choice between the most beautiful woman in the kingdom and my brooding lump of a brother, I know exactly where I’m sitting.” Naturally, the compliment made me blush even more.

Aster reached over and clapped Atlas soundly on the back. “Lucky for you, then,” he said. “You’ve still got me.”

A laugh burst out of me before I could stop it, and Atlas slid me a long-suffering look that only made it worse. I twisted to peer around Atlas at Aster. “So, I take it you’re not exactly a fan of these things either?”

Aster fixed me with a look of such profound, weary suffering that I nearly laughed.

“Give me a battlefield any day over a room full of nobles. At least on a battlefield, you know who’s trying to kill you,” he grumbled.

“Spoken like a true romantic,” Atlas murmured.

It was right about then that a peal of bright laughter drifted over from a nearby table. I followed Aster’s resigned glance to find a cluster of court ladies arranged in a glittering knot, every one of them gazing at him over the rims of their goblets. They were a strange and lovely assortment. One with skin that shimmered faintly opalescent in the candlelight, another with delicate curling horns threaded with gold, a third whose hair seemed to drift as though underwater. And every single one of them was watching Aster as though he were the next course.

One of them lifted slender fingers in a coy little wave, and Aster groaned and slumped lower in his seat.

Atlas, the wretch, laughed outright. “It must be terribly difficult,” he said, “being so in demand.”

“I seem to recall a certain general before he became king who could not cross a courtyard without half the court swooning into his path.” Aster shot back, then arched a brow and nodded in my direction. “Though I don’t suppose you have to trouble yourself with any of that anymore. Do you?” His gaze flicked pointedly to me.

“No,” Atlas said, and the warmth in the single word made my stomach flip. “I don’t.”

“Lucky you,” Aster muttered, dragging his goblet closer. “Some of us still have to dodge the lot of them.”

“You could tell them you’re spoken for,” I pointed out, and was rewarded by the way his jaw tightened, just slightly, the only crack in all that easy armor.

“The only woman whose attention I’d welcome,” he said gruffly, “is a world away, and far too busy telling me what an idiot I am to wave at me across a banquet hall.”

I grinned, thinking of Tiff, and decided I liked him even more for it.

I had just turned back to my plate, finally, properly intending to eat, when I felt it. A warm, heavy hand settling on my knee beneath the table.

I froze, fork halfway to my mouth.

Atlas, to all outward appearances, was the very picture of a king at ease, leaning back on his throne, listening to some dignitary three seats down with a polite expression of interest. The only thing out of place was the hand currently sliding exhaustingly slowly as it inched up the silk of my skirt.

I reached down and shoved at it.