Lorre wandered to the other side of the display case, contemplating the back of the locket: intricate time-darkened gold. His bare feet made no sound on the cool marble floor. Gareth offered, “You’ve absolutely made this one a day to remember, for them.”
“I like frogs,” Lorre said, “and technically I’ve just stolen glass from a display case.”
“Not all of it.” Gareth nudged him gently. “You like children.”
“I do not,” Lorre said. “How dare you.”
Gareth could’ve presented counter-arguments in the form of Lorre’s daughter Merry, who adored the sorcerer she thought of as an uncle, who’d once shapeshifted into a unicorn for her to ride; or the young ice-witch Hilda, whom Lorre had saved up in the North, very nearly at the cost of his own arm given the frostbite, and who gazed at her rescuer
