Drake shrugged a little self-consciously. "A Star Pendant. Guards against poison. No telling what kinds of things are going to attack at any given moment, and it can strap around your rapier." He'd noticed that Merri was slowly starting to use it again, and he wanted to encourage that; he'd been in battles with mages who couldn't cast due to silence or just a lack of mana, and he didn't like the idea that Merri could become so easily helpless.
The conversation about the upcoming opera, however, was not nearly so embarrassing. "Yup," he said. "She'll be Julianna. She's also doing the Founder's Play again this year, so my guess is she's going to be very unhappy for a while." That reminded him, he'd need to start dropping food off. He just couldn't remember when her rehearsals started up.
He'd wanted to ask Aspel to go, and he probably still would, but he knew Merri liked the theatre, and things had been so hectic that they hadn't really had much of a chance to see each other, let alone do anything. Besides, if Ari was singing, he didn't have a problem seeing it a few times, even if he hated the opera. Honestly, couldn't they have done something else of Shakespire's as an opera? Anything else?