"I am going to request my orb, and my dagger," He says simply, laying the truth baldly between them. It is a hideous, horrible moment of vulnerability, and for a breath or two he wants to snatch the words back somehow, like hands that've strayed too close to the fire.

But it's too late: he is committed, and she forewarned. And... it is mutual, again. They can only betray one another, or hold true, now; in truth, he cannot blame her, were she to do it. The stakes were as they had ever been, after all.

But her hands are small and gentle in his own, cool, dry fingertips, and the gentle chafe of his thumb against her knuckles. Once the initial panic begins to fade, he feels...

...he feels...

lighter.

For all the terrible risk in this admission, in this moment, he is free, even if only for a little while, from the terrible, weighty burden of being alone, and of the lies that uphold that loneliness.