"Are women not allowed to be soldiers where you're from?" Allison asked curiously, watching him with a briefly unreadable gaze. She wondered what he might think if he knew that she had actually been raised to be a fighter and a leader while the men in her family were meant to be soldiers.

Not that she wanted to talk about that.

Then she sobered, his words striking true as she looked at her wine and tried to breathe through the pain that existed for the next second. Licking her lips, she looked up at him again before nodding a bit. "It's not a nice feeling, is it?"