You made your point, now shut up.

And of course he gets what he wants.

They pick up the game the next time Cor needs a break! He has had more cunning ideas.

He might kind of notice Maitimo staring at him longingly in between moves.

...he does notice that! He is not sure what to do about it but he does not stop making clever moves.

That would be the wrong thing to do about it! Maitimo occasionally shakes his head distractedly but can otherwise keep up just fine.

Cor winds up boxed in. Perhaps predictably he has one of his mages try something weird and experimental, risky and underdetermined enough to be settled by a die roll. Cor loses.

"You are delightful," Maitimo pronounces. "If that had worked I don't know what I'd have done."

"Lost?" suggests Cor.

"I never lose! ...but maybe."

"Never is a strong word."

"Is that a challenge to a rematch sometime?"

"Sure! I like this game."

"I've been having a lovely time."

"Me too. Thanks for introducing me to the game."

"Of course!"

Cor is not sure if the king is hitting on him or just, like, cultivating him as a magical asset/ally, but it would be kind of fun if it was the first thing.

(This is fairly legible to Maitimo from Cor's face and far away someone sighs exasperatedly.)

He does not sigh exasperatedly. He beams at Cor. "The inconvenient thing about relocating you to the palace is that I cannot offer to walk you home. - I would, in fact, put this much work just into cultivating an extraordinarily useful ally. But it'd be less fun."

"The palace is pretty big, if you want to walk me somewhere there's at least a block's worth of walking to do."

"I can probably think of places to walk, in that case."

"Let's see 'em."

Different little garden, lit in silver with mirrors everywhere. "I was going to wait until after the war," he says. "But you are very very exceptional and that doesn't look likely to work unless I avoid you until the end of the war. And I don't want to avoid you - I want you -"

...Cor giggles. "So I wasn't imagining it, huh."

"I apologize for being ambiguous? You were not imagining it. Your ambitions are fascinating and your thought processes are fascinating - you haven't slipped with the privacy, I just notice that kind of thing anyway - and you're lovely and I want lots of rematches."

"You can have all the rematches you like. What are you noticing about the thought processes?"