Rufus Florentine was bored out of his mind.

  The guests at the table were mostly couples and after the wine began flowing, they all retreated into their own worlds, chatting quietly or (in the case of Rosa and Lady Herschel) staring at each other in silence.

  When members of the order gathered for dinner or drinks, he could usually rely on Frost to talk with him. At events like this where her wife was attending, however, it was impossible to get her attention and he had to fend for himself.

  The young man seated across the table was staring into his wine glass. He looked up and met Rufus’s gaze. “Good evening.”

  Rufus nodded. “Good evening. Your name is Evan, right? I’m Rufus.”

  “Nice to meet you. You work for Helian’s wife, right?”

  “In a manner of speaking… she’s not technically in charge, but she orders me around all the time.”

  Evan smiled. “I also get ordered around a lot by women who aren’t my boss.”

  Marie leaned over and punched him in the shoulder, then returned to staring at Rosa.

  Rufus felt a strange kinship with the young man. “What do you do with your time?”

  “I’m an accountant. So, I spend most of my day adding and subtracting numbers from each other, then writing them down on paper. Sometimes I multiply two numbers. It’s exceedingly boring.”

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  The young squire sighed. “Yeah, that sounds familiar. I spend most of my time hitting other people’s swords with my sword. Sometimes one of us gets knocked onto our rear and everyone else tries not to laugh. We all dream of being allowed to hit things with our swords out in a forest somewhere.”

  He spent more time on the ground lately now that Frost and Helian were making frequent visits to the training ground to spar. Frost called it “physical therapy” to recover from her arm injury (even though she hadn’t injured her sword arm), but Helian didn’t even bother coming up with an excuse. It was probably just fun to torment House Solana’s knights. At least he wasn’t the only one getting trounced.

  Ruby halted her conversation with Sapphire to join in. “Don’t let him fool you, Evan! Rufus is very skilled with his blade. He probably spends 20% less time on the ground compared to the rest of us. I think he’ll be the first one to get knighted.”

  Sapphire interjected from behind her, “if you were half as good with your sword as you are with your mouth, you’d be a knight by now!”

  After saying this, something occurred to her and she turned bright red.

  Ruby laughed and then turned to face Rufus. “Don’t take it personally, okay? Frost just harasses you because you learn the fastest, so you’ll set a good example for everyone else! Probably. I don’t think she has any reason to hold a grudge against you. If anything, you should hold a grudge against her!”

  Evan smiled and sipped his wine. “I take it you three have known each other for a while.”

  Ruby nodded enthusiastically. “Childhood friends! Though he insisted we weren’t friends when he was younger. He used to call me ‘stinky’.”

  Rufus sighed. “I’ve apologized multiple times for that…”

  Sapphire finished her glass in one gulp. “If I recall, she was rather smelly that day. It was after the carriage incident, and she was covered in muck.”

  Ruby pouted. “Even so, you shouldn’t call a young lady ‘stinky’… it’s impolite…”