She looked at me. “You are our queen and our conqueror. Sin is the young prince and is treated as such by our new king. But he”—and she pointed at Nathaniel—“is nothing to us. Not king, not prince, not Nimir-Raj, not Rex, not Ulfric, not a leader of any group. Why should I answer his questions?”

“He’s my fiancé,” I said.

“No, Jean-Claude is your fiancé. Nathaniel is someone that you will do an unofficial ceremony with that even your own laws do not recognize as a legally binding contract.”

“The same is true of Micah and me.”

“He is a king in his own right both of the leopards and of the Coalition,” she said.

“I’m not a prince in my own right,” Sin said. “I’m only that because Jean-Claude says so.”

“And you are in the bed of the queen.”

“So is Nathaniel,” he said.

Pierette shook her head. “It is not the same.”

“She’s putting a ring on his finger, not on mine.”

She shook her head stubbornly. “You act as a true moitié bête. He does not.”

“Nathaniel is part of my triumvirate of power with Damian; why doesn’t that give him more status?”

“Jean-Claude gains power through his triumvirate, but you seem to gain none through yours. He chose the most powerful necromancer since the Mother of All Darkness herself as his human servant, and the Ulfric of the local werewolf pack as his moitié bête. Nathaniel is one of the weakest of the wereleopards in the local pard, and Damian was one of the weakest of M’Lady’s vampires.”

“So you don’t respect Damian either,” Sin said.

“I pity him for what I saw him endure over the centuries, but no, I do not respect him. The Harlequin do not respect weakness.”

“I’m in love with Nathaniel and would marry him, Micah, and Jean-Claude legally if I could.”

“Which is more than she’d do with me if she could,” Sin said. He didn’t sound bitter, or angry; he was just stating fact.

“None of the other men see you as their catamount, my prince. You cannot marry Anita, because none of the other men see you romantically.”

“Nathaniel and I actively share Anita.”

“But you do not share each other,” she said.

Sin glanced at the other man. “Help me out here, Nathaniel.”

“I don’t think I can, Sin. Pierette is right. I’m not a king or a prince.”

“Some of the guards called you and Micah both my princes,” I said.

“Not since Micah made the Coalition a power to be reckoned with, and Sin became the young prince.”

“So unless someone is a leader, you discount them?” I asked.

“Not discount, but if they are not in charge of anything else, then they cannot be in charge of the Harlequin,” she said. She said it like it was just a fact of life, a given.

“Nicky is in charge of the local lions, but you don’t respect him as much as Micah, or Sin,” I said.

“Scaramouche should not have used his claws today,” she said.

“But in everyday dealings, you don’t treat Nicky as well as you do me,” Sin said.

She sighed. “I do not wish to insult anyone.”

“Just tell us, Pierette,” I said.

She nodded, but it was more like a bow from the neck. “If my queen commands.”

“Yeah, I command.”

“Nicky could have fought his way to be Rex of your local pride, but he could not have maintained the leadership without your backing. Everyone knows that if they challenge him, the might of you and Jean-Claude will be with him. If he did not have the other two male lions to help him run the lions, even that might not be enough. He is a good warrior, but not a good leader, and he is your Bride, which is less than an animal to call, or even a human servant. No disrespect meant to you, my queen, but Brides aren’t meant to be kept this long. They are designed to please their Groom and be sacrificed for his or her safety as needed.”

“No disrespect meant, but huh? You and your other two playmates that got beat up aren’t usually this respectful even to me. What changed?”

“You showed that you noticed us and did not approve of our behavior.”

I frowned at her. “Magda said almost the same thing when I got her to stop picking fights with some of the other lionesses, that I’d noticed her efforts or something like that.”

“We need our queen, or our king, to rule us, Anita.”

“What does that mean exactly?”

“It means exactly what I said.”

I was pretty sure that the phrasing meant more than I understood, but I wasn’t sure how to ask the right question to get an explanation that would make sense to me.

Nathaniel said, “Maybe they’re like people who push until someone pushes back, because they need to know the rules, or maybe they need to have rules.”

“You mean, like Nicky beat the shit out of them and suddenly Scaramouche is offering to do Jean-Claude, or let Jean-Claude do him.”

“Yes.”

“So if they can’t have good treatment they’ll misbehave until they get bad treatment—is that it?” I asked.

“I think so,” Nathaniel said.

Pierette was watching us talk as if she were memorizing the conversation, and maybe she was so she could repeat it back to her fellow Harlequin.