While 29

  Simend didn't wake up for three days, and when he did, he complained about almost everything. The bandages were itchy, the splints on his arms and legs were too tight, his fur was growing back in too slowly, Edric did his eyeliner wrong. He did not complain about the patches on his muzzle and left shoulder where the skin was so burned that the fur might not grow back in at all. Nor did he complain about having to be carried to the washroom to empty his bladder and bowels. Edric stayed with him night and day, making sure his recovery was proceeding as it should. Sara, Dalibor, and Kamissa all visited regularly as well.

  A week later, after Edric had just helped him to sit up against the headboard of the bed in his room and had fitted his arms into the bindings that kept them immobile and in the proper position to heal, Simend asked, "How much longer until I'm going to be able to move on my own again?"

  Edric rested his metallic hand on Simend's augmented arm and let their symbiotes interface through the bandages. "Not more than another week, I'd guess," he said. "The fractures have healed nicely, but I want to give the natural bone a bit more time to strengthen itself. Your left leg, though…"

  "Ed, I'm not going to last another week," Simend said.

  "What?" Edric stuttered. "Sim, you're going to be fine! Your bones are healing, and we don't have to worry about infection since I can use the radiance to clear it away."

  "Hey, isn't it your birthday today?" Simend asked suddenly.

  Edric frowned at him in confusion. "I mean, yes, but what does that have to do with you dying?" he asked.

  "I was just thinking, you know…" Simend bucked his hips under the blanket. "We could celebrate!"

  Edric stared at the jackal in aggravated disbelief before dropping his gaze to the obvious tent in the blanket over Simend's lower half. "Seriously?" Edric asked.

  "You've had my arms in splits for a week, Ed," Simend said, giving Edric his biggest puppy dog eyes. "You don't understand. I'm so hard I'm going to die."

  Edric groaned and clutched his fin. "Simend. You broke nearly every bone in your body, and it is only thanks to both of our symbiotes that you are neither dead nor in danger of being incapable of moving for the rest of your life. You need to rest." Then an idea occurred to him. He dropped his arms and gave Simend his toothiest smile. The jackal tried to lean backwards through the wall. "But you know what?" Edric continued. "Maybe there is something you can do for me. It is my birthday, after all, so we should get you dressed up for the occasion." He leaned forward, raised his platinum-lined hand, and, maintaining his grin, lightcrafted a wide band. Lightning crackled in pulsing waves along its gleaming surface. "And I do so enjoy the noises you make when you're wearing one of these."

  Simend recognized it at once, of course. The two of them had experimented many times with Edric's lightning constructs. Certainly often enough that Edric knew exactly how much lightning to put into the ring to just slightly surpass Simend's tolerance for it. "I thought you said I was supposed to be relaxing," he said.

  "Oh, you're going to be so relaxed you won't be able to move once this is done with you," Edric told him.

  Simend lifted his splinted legs and clapped his thighs together, catching the blanket between them. When he lowered his legs again, the tent over his lap was gone. "But it's your birthday, not mine. I should be doing something for you."

  "Well I can tell from all your yapping that your mouth still works," Edric said. Then he shrugged and dispelled the ring. "But if you're worried about it, I won't make you. Your health is my primary concern right now after all."

  With a growl, Simend spread his legs and humped the blanket. "Arbiter take you, you fucking, fish-faced tease! If you don't put that ring on me right now, Hand of Thunder, I'll bite your dick off."

  Edric grinned and conjured back the ring. "That's what I thought."

  Simend asked for the ring three more times before the splints came off the horny jackal's arms and legs at the end of the second week just as Edric had predicted. The medic didn't let Simend get out of bed, though. He cleaned up everything that had been bandaged and brushed out what fur the jackal had before tying the split back to Simend's left leg. "I want to give this one another week," Edric said. "The bones in the leg healed up well enough, but your pelvic bone shattered on this side, and the hip isn't moving properly in its joint. I'm hopeful your symbiote will be able to straighten that out with a bit more time. We'll find you a crutch so you can get yourself around in the meantime."

  "I'm never going to be able to dance again, am I?" Simend asked, staring away into the corner of the room.

  Edric gave his friend a gentle smile. "Sim," he said. "Not even the Star Itself could stop you from dancing."

  Simend giggled and wiped his eyes, smearing his eyeliner as he did. "You've got that right," he said with a sniffle.

  The day after Simend was mobile again, Sara stopped by shortly after sunrise and shooed Edric out of the house. "You need a break," she said. "I can handle Simend for one morning. You go out, take a swim, maybe visit the bathhouse, and come back after the midday meal. The two of us will be fine until then."

  "I'd rather spend the day with you," Edric told her.

  "That's sweet of you," Sara said, trying to push him out the door. "But go take care of yourself. There will be time for the two of us later."

  So Edric took her advice. He took a long swim in the ocean north of the city, chasing fish and boats around the harbor. Then he stopped by the bathhouse to give himself a good, deep clean. He'd been so focused on Simend the past two weeks that he hadn't even thought to take care of himself. Sara had been right. He really did need this.

  When he returned to Simend's house after having his meal at their favorite tavern, he found Dalibor there as well, dressed only in a dangerously short, brightly patterned waist wrap of the local style. The warlord was cleaning up the remains of the meal the three of them had just shared while Sara and Simend lounged at the table.

  "Ah, Edric!" Simend called when the shark entered the room, tearing his eyes away from the barely-clothed Dalibor. He waved a full glass at Edric, sloshing a bit of the deep red wine over the side. "You just missed the food Dalya brought for us!"

  "Are you drunk?" Edric asked Simend. "You're supposed to be resting!"

  "I feel very relaxed right now, thank you," Simend said, raising his glass to the shark. His tail wagged erratically through the back of his chair.

  "And what are you wearing?" Edric asked Dalibor.

  "I lost a bet," Dalibor snarled. He turned to head into the galley, and Edric could see through the large tail slit in the back of the skirt that the warlord was bare underneath it.

  "This doesn't count," Simend insisted, his tail wagging as he ogled Dalibor's backside.

  "I have dined with you in nothing but this humiliating excuse for a shendyt," Dalibor snapped. "My obligation is met. Now meet yours."

  The wag dropped straight out of Simend's tail, and the jackal stared into his wine glass. Dalibor left the room, and Sara took another sip from her own glass. "I guess my time's up, isn't it?" Simend whispered. He put his glass down, took a deep breath, and leaned his head back to look at the ceiling, blinking rapidly. "I'm so sorry, Ed. I've been sorry for years now. She told me that you knew. That you were okay with it. And then when I suggested we should just have a threesome but then admitted that no, not even I could top both of you at once but she didn't even know we'd been sleeping together, let alone that I was topping you, and I realized that she'd been lying about everything, and I just…" He sniffed and wiped his eyes. "We knew we couldn't tell you about it. At best you'd leave us both, and at worst… Well, I'd seen how you'd handled revelations of that sort in the past, and I couldn't stand to hurt you again, Ed, I couldn't! You're like a brother to me. Well, you know. Like a brother who lets me fuck him. But I couldn't stand to lose you. After my parents, after the Legion… You're the only one I have left."

  There was silence for some time, broken only by Simend's sniffles. Edric wanted to be furious with the jackal. He'd slept with Edric's mate, told her his deepest secrets, and lied about it for years. But he couldn't. Seeing his friend, his brother, who was simultaneously both the hardest and the most cavalier man he knew, drunkenly weep over his mistakes drained the anger straight out of Edric. He just felt empty and sad. How had they come to this?

  "Are you going to join us, Binta, or just lurk from the doorway?" Sara asked.

  And suddenly Edric's anger was back. Binta was indeed there, standing almost out of sight past the open doorway to Simend's home, listening to their conversation. But there was his answer. That was how he and Simend had come to this. "Why are you here?" Edric yelled.

  "Because I invited her," Sara said. Edric and Simend both gaped at the princess. "I wanted to make sure that I got the full story and that everybody involved with this debacle of a relationship had a chance to have their say."

  "You don't trust me to tell you the truth?" Edric asked.

  "I absolutely trust you to tell me the truth," Sara told him. "But since apparently every one of you has been lying to all the others, I can't imagine that any one of you has anything approaching the whole truth to tell me. So, Binta. It looked to me like you were here for most of Simend's admission."

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  "I was," Binta said, not entering the room.

  "Would you care to respond?" Sara asked.

  Binta glanced at Edric through the doorway, but her eyes quickly fell to the floor. "He's telling the truth," she said. "I lied to him to get into bed with him."

  Edric's heart broke again. How could she still hurt him like this? "Why?" he asked.

  "Let her come in first, Edric," Sara said. "Would you like a drink, Binta? Simend has opened his collection for us."

  "I think I'm going to need that, yes," Binta said.

  "Dalya, could you pour a glass of the Cornelian red for Binta?" Simend called to Dalibor while Binta took a seat on the sofa.

  "Why?" Edric asked again. He had to know. What had he done wrong? "Was it because I wasn't good enough? Was it because I'm not…" He glanced over at Simend's crotch, and the jackal rolled his eyes. He knew Simend was far better endowed than he was, so maybe—

  "For the love of the Sun, Ed, no!" Binta said, rolling her eyes as well. "That was never an issue. It was me, not you! I just…" She sighed and paused when Dalibor offered her a glass of wine. She took the glass, downed the entire thing in one go, and handed it back to Dalibor, who used the excuse to leave the room again to refill it. Binta eyes widened when she spotted the missing back of Dalibor's waist wrap before she continued. "I thought it would be exciting, you know? To have both of Kamissa's luminary hunters. And it was thrilling, to be able to have a tumble with Simend and then come home and do the same with you". She sighed. "Until it wasn't. Until I learned that you were lying to me about what you liked. But I couldn't tell you that I knew and that I didn't care, Ed, because I'd have to lie to you about how I found out, and I couldn't risk the chance that you wouldn't believe me. So I tried to make it easy for you to tell me yourself. Let you know I was okay with you sleeping with other people while you were gone. Told you that I would love you no matter what. Just waited for the day when you would actually trust me. But you never did. Even when I saw that archive of you and Sim, when I told you that it was okay, you just lied to me again. I knew that you and me were over then. It was just a matter of time." Dalibor returned and handed her another full wine glass. Binta took it but did not drink. "And then Kamissa found the archive of me and Sim together, and everything went to shit. Why did you even keep the Star-cursed thing?"

  "I don't know. I never watched it," Simend said softly. He gazed over at his collection of archives and the lockbox sitting there with them. "But it's hard to get rid of my archives. They make it easier to be alone."

  "How long?" Edric croaked. "How long were the two of you…"

  Simend and Binta stared at each other for some time, both of them with their ears folded back. Eventually, Binta looked away, glaring at her untouched glass of wine. "A year," Simend said, still staring at Binta. "We stopped about two years or ago."

  Edric's knees gave out, and he sank flat to the floor. A whole year, and he had never noticed. He clutched at his fin. They'd been lying to him for three years!

  "So just to be clear, Binta," Sara said. "You didn't know that Edric liked taking it from behind until Simend told you, correct?"

  Edric's stomach lurched, and Dalibor whined. "Can I go now?" the jackal asked.

  "I'm sorry, Dalya, but not yet," Sara told him. "This should be over quickly, and I need you for what I have planned next."

  "You have this planned out?" Simend asked.

  "Of course I do," Sara said. "I may not be a Verdant warlord, but I learned multilateral diplomacy at the feet of the emperor of New Rome. Now, Binta, do you need me to repeat the question?"

  Edric pushed himself up to his weak knees and leaned over the back of the sofa. Binta looked a bit stunned, and Dalibor had his fists clenched as he eyed the door out of the house. Simend, though. Simend looked terrified, clutching his tail and staring at Sara with wide eyes.

  "Uh, no," Binta stammered. She set her wine glass on the table. "And no, I didn't. He never gave any indication he liked having his ass played with." Edric flinched, and Dalibor whined again. Both reactions repeated several times as Binta and Sara continued. "He was only ever on top with me, and he definitely knew how to make me feel good."

  "And once you found out he liked bottoming, did you care about how unmasculine that behavior is considered?"

  "No! I didn't care at all! He was obviously into me. Figuratively and literally. I just wanted both of us to be happy. That's why I let him know I was okay with him sleeping with Simend."

  Edric blinked. He still didn't believe that she didn't care about that. It was so weak, so wrong, for a man to enjoy being topped like that.

  "Did you tell him specifically that you were okay with him sleeping with Simend?" Sara asked.

  "Well…" Binta faltered. "No. I just told him I was okay with him sleeping with other people while he was away. I couldn't mention Simend, or he would have found out I was cheating on him."

  "And when you finally ended things with him, what did you tell him the reason was?"

  Binta looked down into her lap and fiddled with the hem of her short skirt. "That it was because he liked having a dick up his ass," she said softly. "Because I knew it would hurt him."

  "Thank you, Binta. That's all I need from you," Sara told her. Binta took a deep breath and slumped into the sofa. Edric almost felt sorry for her until Sara's eyes locked on him, and every muscle in his body tensed up at once. "Now, Edric. Is this the first time a woman has broken up with you for that reason?"

  Edric ducked behind the sofa, leaving only his eyes and fin peeking out. "Why does that matter?" he asked.

  Sara's eyes never released their lock on his. "Do you know, Simend?" she asked.

  "He's told me about two," the jackal answered, still staring at the princess in terror. Then he gasped. "This is why you got me drunk!" Sara gave him only a curt, sideways glance before she tried to continue her questioning, but Simend interrupted her, wringing his tail between his hands. "Oh no! I think I might have a fetish for commanding, masterful women."

  "Is that seriously your takeaway from this?" Dalibor asked, his hands over his eyes. "How do I know more about this than you do?"

  Sara groaned and rolled her eyes. "I'm not going to sleep with you, Simend," she said, frowning at the jackal in exasperation.

  The tension left Simend in a massive outrush of breath. "Oh, thank you, that helps," he sighed.

  Then Sara smirked at him. "Volusa's still out there, though," she said. "She might yet." Simend tensed straight back up, and the two women giggled. Soon, Sara cleared her throat. "Now. Edric. These two earlier relationships. The women weren't sleeping with anybody else?"

  "Not that I know about," Edric answered pointedly, still hiding behind the sofa. Binta's tail thrashed.

  "Were you having sex with each other?"

  Edric blushed. Why was she dredging up his old relationships like this? She already knew he'd been sleeping with Binta. And Simend. "We were."

  "Did you tell them that you wanted to try having something up your ass for a change?"

  "No! I could never!"

  "Then how did they find out?"

  "They found out when—" He stopped himself before he stumbled into the trap, but it was already too late. His stomach dropped and he felt the blood rush from his face. Sara's face was no longer neutral. She was angry. She knew. She already knew how his previous girlfriends had found out his preference for bottoming, but she needed him to admit it. He had to tell her. He couldn't tell her. But he had to tell her.

  "Do I need to ask Simend, Edric?" Sara asked him. "Or can you tell me the truth yourself?"

  Edric sighed and lowered his eyes below the back of the sofa. There was a right answer to that question, and he knew what it was. "I can tell you myself," he whispered.

  "Then come over here where I can see and hear you clearly and tell me," Sara commanded.

  Edric's heart fluttered. She was every inch a princess, and she had played them all. He didn't deserve her. Though if he didn't move soon, he might not end up with her anyway. Was it worth it? Was she worth debasing himself like this? He knew the answer, of course. So he forced himself to his feet, trudged across the room, and stood in front of the chair in which she sat. He stared at his feet. He couldn't meet her eyes. He took a deep breath and spoke in a clear voice. "They both found out when they walked in on me getting fucked by another man. The first by her brother, and the second by Simend."

  There was not a sound in the room besides his voice and Sara's. Not even a breath. The princess's next questions came quickly and fiercely. "Had they told you they were okay with you sleeping with other people?"

  "They had not."

  "Would they have been under the impression that your relationship with them was monogamous?"

  His voice grew weaker with each answer. "They would have been."

  "Did you tell them that you were sleeping with somebody else?"

  "I did not."

  "So you were cheating on them."

  It was not a question, but he responded in a whisper anyway. "I was."

  "Is it possible," Sara asked, enunciating each word, "that they did the same thing that Binta did? That they told you they found your unmanly tastes disgusting only to hurt you rather than admit that you had hurt them by lying to them and cheating on them?"

  Edric closed his eyes, but the tears still streamed down his face. It had been his fault the whole time. He was right that he had been the problem all along, but they had not hated him for what he liked. All three had hated him for what he had done. "It is," he answered.

  Sara did not let him wallow. She had a final knife to drive home. "If the two of us pursue a relationship with each other," she asked, "are you going to cheat on me the same way you have cheated on all your previous partners?"

  At that, Edric finally met her gaze, his eyes full of tears. She did not look angry anymore. She looked sad. "Sara, please," Edric pleaded. "I like what I like. I can't change what I am."

  Sara closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and let it out in a massive sigh. Then she leaned towards Simend, and the still-terrified jackal leaned away in turn. "Simend," Sara said. "Is our friend here a member in good standing of the College of Lightcraft?"

  Simend blinked. "Uh… Yes?" he drawled. "I'm told he's one of their best artisans."

  "So if I were to ask him to…" Sara trailed off and looked over at Dalibor. The man's tail was tucked firmly between his legs, and his ears were folded back painfully far. He stared straight up at the ceiling. "Dalya, I don't need you here for this bit. Why don't you go prepare us a snack?"

  "Yes please thank you," Dalibor said in a giant rush of breath, and his minimalist waistwrap nearly fluttered loose in his haste to leave the room.

  Sara waited until he was out of the room before turning back to Simend. "So if I were to ask Edric here to lightcraft me a replica of your erect cock, would he be able to?"

  Edric's jaw dropped and Binta burst out into raucous laughter. What had she just asked? The slow smirk spreading across Simend's face confirmed that Edric had, in fact, heard the princess correctly. "Oh, Thunder's stones, yes he could," Simend said. "And now I want to see him do it!"

  Sara turned back to Edric with a smirk of her own. "Edric?" she asked.

  "I won't!" he yelled.

  "You didn't let me ask my question," Sara said through a chuckle.

  "I'm not lightcrafting a replica of Simend's dick!" Edric yelled at her.

  "Could you not shout, please?" Dalibor wailed from the galley.

  "That isn't what I was going to ask," Sara said still chuckling. She took a deep breath to calm herself but was not entirely unable to suppress the laughter in her voice. "I was going to ask if you were aware of the existence of something called a dildo."

  "I—" Edric tried to answer, he really did, but something inside his head seemed to have broken. What had she said? It was hard to think over Binta's now even louder laughter.

  "Or how about something called a strap-on?" Sara asked.

  Nope. He couldn't do it. He couldn't even find words inside his head, let alone lightcraft them into a coherent penis. What?

  "How do you know about them?" Binta gasped through peals of laughter. "Have you ever slept with anybody in your life?"

  Sara's smirk spread into a broad grin. "I spent all morning with Simend," she said.

  Simend gasped. "That's why you asked me all those questions!" he yelped. "You got me drunk on purpose!"

  "I am very good at what I was trained to do, Simend," she told him. The jackal tensed up again, and she sighed. "I'm still not going to sleep with you, though."

  "That's good. That's really good," Simend said, nodding rapidly. "Because I don't think I'd be able to tell you no if you asked, and I'd feel really bad about doing that to Ed again."

  Edric tried to find and form words the entire time the two women laughed together. His mouth worked, but no words came until at last Sara regained control of herself and smiled up at him. "Do you know what those things are, Edric?"

  "I, uh…" He coughed and cleared his throat. "I do."

  "Good. I'm glad," Sara told him, a final set of stray giggles punctuating her words. Then she gave him a viciously toothy grin of her own. "Because I suspect we're going to need them both in rather short order." And his thoughts scattered yet again.