Both players flip over their bids.

Yeah, yeah, nice read. Shiro goes back to eating her salad now that the game's over.

Juno growls, deeper and more primordial than any human woman could. She lays her last card on the table, where it will impotently beat out Sora's bid for the five of spades. The final score is 53 – 38 for Sora. Disgusting.

"Good game! Wow, that was hard."

He has another bite of his unidentified bird wing. It tastes like chicken.

Losing a single card game is just life. If the order of the last two cards had been reversed, that game would be hers. Losing multiple card games in sequence is disgraceful – but Juno has enough class to avoid demanding a best two out of three. For one thing, she's not confident she'll win the next one either. She's not a card shark by trade. For another, there's an outside chance that this guy will defeat Chloe Zell and become the next king of Elkia. If she ever finds herself facing off against Sora with human territory on the line, he'll have no way to foresee what comes next. When the chips are down, she'll be challenging them to a game with considerably less luck involved.

Stephanie stares at the cards, dinner half-eaten.

"How did you know?" she asks tentatively.

"Luck," Juno says dismissively, starting in on her own dinner. "Come, human. Claim your prize."

As wagers go, this is hardly a loss at all.

"There was less luck involved than you think," Sora says. He moves over and starts running his hands through the catgirl's fur. "We both knew that drawing on the nine was the safer option for you, but I knew that you knew that I was inclined to discard my low cards. I did it with the ace and the two at the beginning. If you bid ten on the two and I discarded the six, I'd be guaranteed the five and win – at least, that was the most salient possibility to you, based on the way I played."

Stephanie doesn't fail to notice that Sora's brief explanation did not contain the words 'expected value' or 'Nash equilibrium'. Evidently he's taking his information secrecy policy seriously. She'll ask later.

"Hmmph. Maybe you have a fighting chance after all. Ah, a little higher please."

Sora scratches her a little higher, directly behind her ears.

Juno emits a sonorous contralto purr and leans back. Yesssssssssss.

(This is not the most fun she could be having right now, but she has a guess as to why this man is staying as Princess Steph's personal guest and if she's right this will drive her up the wall. It would've been better if they tied and she could get him to feed her dinner at the same time, but this will suffice.)

Stephanie has feelings about this, all right. Possibly not the right ones. What does Orig—

JEALOUSY IS THE WRONG EMOTION. PICK A DIFFERENT ONE.

Annoyance, then. She sniffs haughtily and goes back to her dinner.

Touching Juno's skull while she makes this noise is fun, but it feels like resting his weight against the engine block of a sports car while it revs in low gear. He eventually, reluctantly, stops petting the catgirl and resumes eating dinner.

The food is tasty even by the standards of people who know how to cook and don't compensate by eating meal squares supplemented with multivitamins. Shiro polishes her meal off in short order. Sora's drink smells good, but she's too full to bother going back for one of her own. That's it for dinner.

"Grub's good as always. See you tomorrow, Sora!" Juno slinks off.

"Be seeing you."

He waits until Juno is out of sight and another minute after that before he turns to Stephanie. "Who is she?"

Stephanie rolls her eyes. "Juno Mandagot. She's been the ambassador from the Eastern Union for around a decade, which mostly entails advising the crown on diplomatic matters and representing the interests of werebeasts in Elkia."

And she's a grade-A pain in the rear end, but that's neither here nor there.

"Must be awkward to eat dinner with her around."

Oh, you think?

"There's no proof that she was involved in anything," Stephanie says tightly. "There is, however, a great deal of evidence. I've been trying to get her dismissed for years."

"Something for us to think about after we win."

"Ah, speaking of winning: how did you do that, Sora?"