The two sat quietly for a few seconds, before the fox maiden spoke up.

  “So, how’s it going with the Lieutenant?” Vidalia asked, changing the subject very heavy-handedly.

  “We kissed today,” Tybalt acknowledged. He wouldn’t have shared even that much information with anyone else, but he and Vidalia had been intimate in these dreams before, over and over.

  “Just kissed?”

  “Elven style kissing,” Tybalt said.

  The foxgirl looked pleased, and Tybalt felt how strange it was to be telling one woman, in detail, about what he had been doing with another. Especially after they had just been sort of dancing around the subject of jealousy. He knew that Mariella had grown up in a polygamous household. But he had no indication that Vidalia came from the same background.

  “It doesn’t bother you?” he asked.

  “I already told you I expected to share,” she replied, smiling placidly. “To give you a little more information, my people have a tradition going back at least a couple of centuries that says sisters in a family marry the same man unless the sisters are far apart in age. I think it originates from our long period of nomadic life. Half of the men would die fighting to save the tribe, and the women and children would live on. Gradually, there ended up being a pretty steady gender imbalance, sustained for long enough to affect our traditions… at least that’s the theory I believe. So I was expecting to share you with my sister, Vicky, ever since I started dreaming about you. It’s not a law or anything, but it’s a norm, and I certainly appreciate that you could keep my sister safe and love her the way you’ll love me. Why would I mind adding another woman… or four? Or five? Within reason, of course… not more than one woman per day of the week. Quality time is important to me.”

  A total of eight, then, got it, Tybalt thought, restraining the urge to laugh. That seems excessive, even to me. I can’t imagine having the time for so many women. She remembers I’m also supposed to try and defeat the Kingdom, right? The mission is bigger than that, but I’m pretty sure we’ve at least discussed that part a little bit.

  “You seem really happy about it when it comes to Mariella,” he observed.

  “Well, there are compensations for doing things this way. Having someone to share chores with. We’ll watch each other’s kids…”

  Tybalt gave her a skeptical look. There was definitely more to it than that.

  “All right, maybe I like the idea of sharing you with another woman,” Vidalia said, her voice turning husky. “A little. Hypothetically. Maybe I’m curious… about what that would look like. Maybe I’ve pictured… scenarios. Especially if the other woman is really pretty.” She swallowed and looked slightly embarrassed.

  His jaw dropped. Now Tybalt understood. So she likes girls, too? That would explain the enthusiasm. She’ll be pretty disappointed Mariella isn’t into that, but I’ll try to make sure, if and when we add another woman, that the next one is.

  It wasn’t at all because imagining Vidalia and Mariella together made his pants tighten noticeably.

  He decided to change the subject himself this time.

  “I’ve been, um, meaning to ask you about my situation with her,” Tybalt said. “About how I can best win her over.”

  “That’s your area of expertise,” Vidalia replied, shrugging. “I don’t know much about seducing women, since I’ve never done it before.”

  “Well, I don’t know much about what the future holds,” Tybalt said dryly. “Maybe we could share some knowledge with each other. When we meet, I’ll teach you how to find all the spots on a woman’s body that help seduce her. I’ll demonstrate on you. Very hands-on, so you get the most possible benefit from the lesson.”

  The foxgirl licked her lips, turned red, and looked down, suddenly shy. “That’s—I don’t know if I can—the first time we meet… I’ll try to prepare, mentally—”

  “Relax, I’m joking,” Tybalt said. “Not something I actually do on a first meeting.”

  She let out a little nervous breath. “Right! I knew that. I mean, not that I don’t want it. Just, um, a little slower than the first time you see me. We’ll talk about it when I see you in person.”

  Tybalt nodded. “So, what can you tell me about my situation with Mariella, beautiful seer? What does my future hold?”

  “I don’t know, handsome necromancer,” Vidalia said, smiling with a mix of flirtatious intent and some underlying anxiety that she seemed to be trying and failing to hide. “There are a bunch of different ways this could go. The key choice you have to make could go badly either way, no matter what you choose.”

  “I’m deciding whether to trust her with my secret or not,” Tybalt said. “And if I do, when to trust her.”

  “I know those are the decisions you’re wrestling with,” she said, fidgeting uncomfortably. “Those are what I can’t help with. All possible paths have a chance of failure and a chance of success, and if I said I could put a number on which choice was better, I’d be lying. If I caused you to fail by giving you my advice that’s just based on my personal opinion, you might understandably hate me if it didn’t work out… since not working out could result in one or both of you dying. I don’t want to try to make decisions for you when I’m not really certain I actually know the right path.”

  “I’m not asking you to make the decision for me,” he said. “I guess I understand that there’s a lot up in the air. So forget about your power as a seer, then. Just give me your advice, as… a person with more distance than me.”

  “I’m hardly objective, since I want you to succeed almost as badly as you do,” she muttered. “But all right. Do you trust her?”

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  “As a person?”

  She nodded.

  “Mariella’s like the way you described Andric. She’s as trustworthy as it’s possible for a person to be. But she’s also extremely straightforward and honorbound. That’s the trouble. She gave her oath to the Kingdom. She swore to serve and obey.”

  “Do you trust her to be loyal to you?”

  Tybalt frowned. “I don’t know.”

  Not really, he thought. She has a few other loyalties she puts ahead of me. She’s worried about her family, her Kingdom, her gods, and her honor, and I’m not sure of the order, honestly. If she didn’t care about any of those things, I’d have told her everything. We’d probably have slept together already, too. Maybe she’d even have learned part of my secret back in camp, when she was treating my injuries. But when I told her the Kingdom was too corrupt to be saved, and we ought to consider another path, she all but ran away. She’s… not ready to turn on them.

  He sighed.

  “Look, you know I’m an open book, as much as I can be,” Vidalia said.

  Tybalt shot her a look.

  “With you!” she added. “Obviously I may have withheld a little information from other people. And you know there are limits to how much I’ll give you from my visions, but that’s for a reason. Telling too much can make events spiral outside my ability to anticipate them. What I’m getting at is, as a woman, not as a seer, my advice is to tell her the truth as soon as you think you can. I think it’s usually better to be honest with someone you love, and who you want to love you.”

  He sat there in silence, processing.

  “You do want her to love you, you know,” Vidalia added. “I know you do. Even if you might be keeping your feelings at a safe distance.”

  Sometimes it feels like you know me a little too well for a girl I’ve only seen in dreams.

  “Want has nothing to do with it,” he replied.

  “I don’t think that’s true. But I’m not going to push. These are decisions you have to make for yourself. As a man and a leader. You’re responsible for deciding how much truth other people can be trusted with.”

  He nodded, suddenly tired.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  She squeezed his hand. “Wish I could actually help. But I’ll always be here to listen to you.”

  They sat beside each other for a long time, the foxgirl’s body melting into Tybalt’s shoulder as he simply thought about the last few days with Mariella—particularly the day that had just passed. He shook his head.

  “How much do you know about magic?” Tybalt asked.

  “Um, just how to use mine,” Vidalia said.

  “Just wondering if maybe there was something you knew that I didn’t.”

  “I should probably be the one asking you, honestly. I’ve just got oral traditions passed down through the family. I bet when the gods gave you your classes, you got some sort of lesson on how to use magic.”

  Tybalt shook his head. “I have a couple of textbooks, but I just had my first lessons in mage combat from Mariella. I had no idea of what to expect, really. There’s been a steep learning curve.”

  The foxgirl gave him a skeptical look. “An actual steep learning curve? Or an I’m-Tybalt-and-I-should-know-everything-instantly learning curve?”

  He chuckled. “Sometimes I forget we’ve never met in real life. Half the things you say, it feels like we’ve been together for years.”

  She pressed her face to his shoulder and nuzzled it affectionately. “You mean it?”

  “I’ve already been thinking of you as my girl,” Tybalt said. He felt a light thump at his back as Vidalia’s tail wagged excitedly back and forth.

  “I am, absolutely,” she said. She dropped her voice. “So is my sister. She just doesn’t know it yet. The tribe doesn’t know about it yet. But we’ll make it happen.”

  He reached down with one hand, ruffled her hair, and played with her big fennec fox ears. Her whole body seemed to relax into the latter touch, as if she was receiving a massage. After thirty seconds or so of this treatment, she let out a quiet, throaty sound that reminded him of a purr.

  I’ll have to remember that those are sensitive.

  He kept going for another minute before he gradually slowed and came to a complete stop.

  “Is there anything else I can help you with?” she asked a moment after he’d rested his hand. She sounded very peaceful, as if she was almost ready to take a nap—despite the fact that they were already in a dream.

  “I was offered this skill, Osteomancy,” Tybalt said. “It’s divination through bones, using spirits for advice. I figured it’s redundant, given your skillset. But I wanted to check with you.”

  “Trying to tell the future?” she asked, frowning.

  “Yeah, that and solve puzzles, I think. Figure out where people are. Understand what’s going on in the world broadly. A general use skill.”

  “I would definitely put it at the bottom of your priorities list, though I wouldn’t rule it out completely,” she said. “There are probably some situations where it would come in handy.”

  “But I’ll already have my seer for everything else,” he finished for her.

  She nodded. “I’m glad I could answer at least one question tonight. I was starting to feel useless!”

  “Never,” Tybalt said. “Even setting aside the fact that a beautiful woman who’s loyal to me is never useless, if you hadn’t shown up, I’d still be in a dream getting tortured by the High Priestess of Astara.”

  Vidalia gave him a complicated smile. “I hope that never happens again. I wonder if it was the real priestess or some god or demon playing a trick on you. Either way, you should lie down beside me every night, so I can make sure I’m defending your dreams adequately.” An innuendo had crept into her tone, though it was hard to be certain how suggestive she had intended to be. That was always the way with this foxgirl, Tybalt had noticed before.

  She was sweetly suggestive, almost innocently seductive. But now was no time to be distracted.

  He decided to focus on the last part of what she’d said. It reminded him of something else he had wanted to ask her.

  “Could you try to give me some directions to help find you? That way, we can actually make that sleeping next to each other wish come true.”

  Her tail smacked excitedly against him again.

  “Let’s try it,” Vidalia said. “I don’t think you’d remember if I gave you a long oral explanation in a dream. But maybe if I show it to you visually.”

  The background dissolved, and Tybalt found himself in a beastfolk village. It looked much like the one he and the squad had camped out in the last several days, except that this one had been raised on a mountainside. There were trees everywhere, and with their elevation, he could see far off into the distance.

  “This is the center of my tribe’s communal life,” Vidalia said. “A safe place where our elders and children remain hidden from any attack. No human has ever set foot here. Showing any non-beastfolk how to reach it is strictly forbidden.” She looked slightly nervous for a moment and visibly suppressed it, replacing the anxious expression with a thin smile. “Let me guide you to some landmarks…”