His voice was barely above a whisper when he spoke.
"Interested, possessive in ways I have no right to be." He glanced at me. "And something else, something that makes me want to ensure you're safe, comfortable, happy. Even at cost to myself."
"That sounds like caring," I said.
"Perhaps." He moved back to the windows. "Or perhaps it's the binding's attempt to create the emotional attachment necessary for long-term stability, creating the illusion of caring to prevent either of us from doing something that might destabilize the connection."
"I think we're overthinking this."
"Or we're being appropriately cautious about a situation where our actual feelings are potentially being manipulated by infernal magic designed to ensure mutual survival through emotional dependence?"
Okay. He had a point.
"So what do we do?" I asked. "Just... ignore it and pretend we don't feel anything?"
"I don't know." He sounded exhausted. "I've spent centuries being alone, trusting no one, relying on no one. And now I'm bound to someone who's becoming..." He stopped.
"Becoming what?"
"Important." He said it like an admission of weakness. "You're becoming important, and that's dangerous for both of us."
"Because of the soul consumption clause?"
"Among other things." He finished his whiskey in one swallow. "If I develop genuine feelings and you don't reciprocate, the binding will consume my soul, if you develop feelings and I don't reciprocate, it consumes yours. And we have no way to know if what we're feeling is real or manufactured."
"So we're trapped in a situation where caring about each other might literally kill us."
"Yes."
"That's incredibly fucked up."
"Yes."
I laughed. Couldn't help it, the absurdity of the situation was just too much.
"We really have gotten ourselves into the worst possible scenario, haven't we?" I said.
"Spectacularly worst." But there was a hint of amusement in his voice. "Bound together, unable to separate. Developing feelings we can't trust, with the constant threat of soul consumption if those feelings become unbalanced."
"And we have to pretend to be happily married for the public."
"While actually being confusingly married in private."
"It's like a cosmic joke."
"If so, the universe has a terrible sense of humor."
We stood there, both of us slightly drunk on expensive whiskey and brutal honesty, staring at the city lights and our impossible situation.
"But for real.." I said quietly, "tonight wasn't entirely a performance for me, the parts where I looked at you like I cared, some of that was real, I don't know how much, but some of it was."
He turned to look at me. "Same."
Just that, same, but the weight of the admission hung between us.
"So what now?" I asked.
"Now?" He moved closer, and I didn't step back. "Now we continue as we have been, training, coexisting, learning more about each other, and we try to figure out what's real versus what's binding."
"How do we do that?"
"Carefully, honestly I don't know, probably with a lot of confusion and frustration." His hand came up, hesitating near my face. "May I?"
The question surprised me. Consent. After all this time, he was asking.
"Yes."
His hand cupped my jaw, thumb brushing my cheekbone, the contact sent warmth flooding through me.
"This," he said quietly. "Does this feel manufactured to you? Forced by magic?"
I closed my eyes, focusing on the sensation, his touch, the binding's response, my own reaction.
"I don't know," I admitted. "It feels good, right, but I can't tell if that's me or the binding talking."
"Same." But he didn't pull away. "Perhaps that's our answer, we can't tell, so we just... experience it, without trying to analyze every feeling, without trying to determine what's real."
"That sounds dangerous."
"Everything about this situation is dangerous." His thumb traced along my jaw. "But denying what we feel, real or not,might be more dangerous than exploring it."
"Because denying it could trigger the destabilization clause."
"And because life is too short, even for someone who's lived as long as I have, to avoid connection out of fear."
Coming from someone who'd spent five hundred years in isolation, that statement carried weight.
"Okay," I said. "So we... what? Just go with it? See what happens?"
"Unless you have a better plan."
"I definitely don't have a better plan."
His other hand joined the first, cradling my face, we were very close now, close enough that I could count his heartbeats through the binding.
"We should sleep," he said, but he didn't move. "It's late, we're both exhausted, making decisions while tired and drunk is inadvisable."
"Probably."
"And yet neither of us is moving."
"Nope."
We stood there, his hands on my face, my own hands somehow having found their way to his chest, both of us frozen in a moment that could tip either direction.
Then Azryth stepped back, dropping his hands.
"Sleep," he said firmly. "Before we do something we might regret."
"Okay, sleep, good idea."
But as I headed back to my room, I heard him say quietly, "Though I don't think I'd regret it."
I paused in the doorway, looked back. "Me neither."
His expression was complex, vulnerable, and open.
"Goodnight, Riven."
"Goodnight, Azryth."