Her pearlescent gaze flicked to the empty flagon Maddek held. “More mead, perhaps?”
The barmaid scurried off. Maddek bowed his head, shoulders shaking as he laughed. Never had he seen anyone move so quickly.
A mock scowl twisted Kelir’s lips. “How humbling it is to know that the prettiest woman in the village can be lured away by a pair of moonstone eyes.”
“Not the prettiest,” Toric corrected softly, color high and gazing into his drink as if all the treasures of Luren might be found at the bottom of it.
Maddek’s laughter deepened. So the young warrior had taken a sweet liking to Yvenne? And she was oblivious. Her gaze had begun flicking around the common room as she tried to determine the woman’s identity.
Chuckling, Fassad shook his head. “That is truth. If she were not already claimed, Kelir and Ardyl would be upon her like raptors.”
Now Ardyl grinned, cocking a pierced eyebrow and tilting her head as she studied Yvenne’s profile, as if looking at her anew—not as Maddek’s bride but a potential lover that she and Kelir would share between them. Her confirmation of Fassad’s claim lay in the long drink she took.
A contemplative frown appeared on Yvenne’s brow. Abruptly she looked across the table at Banek. “You always tell the truth?”
Though any Parsathean might have taken offense at such a question, Banek only nodded. “I do.”
“Am I ugly?” she asked.
The older man began to laugh—before suddenly quieting, as if realizing her question was not in jest. “No, my lady,” he said. “You are not.”
Despite his response, a frown still pleating her brow. “My older brothers said I was, but they often lied and only spoke to hurt me, so . . .” A shrug finished that. “I have never clearly seen my own face—nor did I have many visitors to my tower. Hardly enough to judge beauty.”
“Is for the best,” Maddek said gruffly. “Such judgments serve no one.”
“Perhaps not.” Those pale eyes met his. “But I was told you were handsome, and so I think you must be the standard by which I judge. Though it also seems there is beauty in everyone I see. I thought Toric must be speaking of Danoh or Ardyl, for there have been times these past days when I have not been able to look away from them. But I cannot truly judge, for I have stared as often at all of you. And so much that I see seems so beautiful. That woman, for example”—she gestured discreetly toward an older woman seated at another table—“has lines beside her mouth and eyes, as if she smiles often. Can you imagine what a happy life she has led that her face is so ready to smile? I look at her and think those lines are the loveliest thing I have ever seen. Or perhaps it is the drops of ale sparkling in that laughing man’s beard, do you see him? He looks as if he has not a care.”
Maddek grunted. “He looks as if he’s had too much to drink.”
Her lips pursed and she leveled a withering gaze upon his face, as if to reprimand him for his sour response. “I would like to have not a care. So perhaps I ought to drink too much,” she said tartly, drawing hearty laughs of agreement from the warriors.
Even Maddek could not find fault in her thinking. With a grin, he said, “When the serving woman returns.”
“Do you think that is how the goddess sees us—as you do? As something beautiful?” Toric’s face was red as he asked, and reddened further when she met his eyes and gave her somber reply.
“If Vela truly looks through me, I think she must.”
Maddek cared little of a goddess’s opinion. He should not have cared for Yvenne’s, either. Yet he was pleased she thought him handsome.
Foolishness. Appearance was nothing. For all that her features were pinched and sallow, they were finely drawn, and her eyes arresting. But she was also treacherous—and there was nothing appealing in that.
Yet his cock still stood stiff as an iron pike. That owed nothing to her appearance. It was the bold way she looked at him. It was the heat of her. It was knowing her lips would be wrapped around his shaft this night.
The barmaid returned then, mead sloshing over rims in her haste. She served Yvenne first and plonked another pewter flagon in front of Maddek with as much care as she might serve a dog. Kelir’s was delivered in the same haphazard fashion.
As long as the mead didn’t spill into his lap, it mattered not. Amused, Maddek drank. The barmaid watched Yvenne’s first swallow with the intensity of a mother watching a newborn latch onto her teat.
With foam on her upper lip, Yvenne eased the woman’s unspoken concern. “It is refreshing, thank you.”
The woman’s smile was wide and bright. “Anything else, my lady?”
“I cannot imagine—”
“You will be staying overnight? Your party has secured a private chamber?”
Yvenne’s gaze flicked to Maddek. “I believe so.”
He nodded. A large private chamber for Yvenne, himself, and his Dragon guard, though a few of the warriors would sleep in the stables. Parsathean horses were too valuable to leave where any bandit might steal them.
“Shall I arrange for a bath in your chambers, then?”
“A bath?” Pleasure lit Yvenne’s face.
Her pleasure was outshined by the barmaid’s. “We will begin heating the water now. I shall happily attend to you . . . in any way you wish,” she finished breathlessly.
Because inns often catered to all of their guests’ needs. Maddek frowned but before he could respond, Yvenne shook her head. “I am accustomed to looking after myself.”
The woman appeared as if she might burst into tears.
Ardyl, who had been quaking with laughter through this exchange, slid her arm around the barmaid’s soft waist and pulled her closer. “Do you wish to attend to someone, you can attend to me.”
The woman’s devastation seemed eased by Ardyl’s interest. Eyebrows arched, Yvenne glanced quickly toward Kelir—perhaps to see how the warrior liked Ardyl flirting with the barmaid he’d singled out for himself—and her brows rose ever higher when she saw Kelir’s broad grin.
She looked to Maddek and whispered, “Is this also a competition between them?”
It was. Though not as Yvenne likely imagined. They would not compete for the barmaid’s attentions. The competition would come later, after they’d secured those attentions.
And Kelir did not even look at the serving woman now. Instead he focused on Yvenne. “So you think Maddek handsome?”
“I believe it,” she said. “But I am no true judge.”
“He has a fine brow,” Kelir said.