"Gradual. That's how the magic works," she says. "If he took them all at once he couldn't use them to make us immortal."

"...So if I break the curse you're going to die."

"Not right away," she says. "Unless I try to kill him and he kills me first. I just won't be young and beautiful forever anymore. But I'm tired of being young and beautiful."

"Of being young and beautiful," murmurs Etty, "or just of the circumstances you have to do it in?"

She snorts. "It's the same thing, isn't it? I don't really think I can kill him. I just know I'm going to try, next chance I get."

"What makes him hard to kill besides the part where he's immortal?"

"He's twice my size, a trained swordsman, a sorcerer, and sometimes when I look at him I can't think for screaming?"

"I don't know. I've tried. I've picked up a few things just living with him, but when he caught me with one of his books—" She shakes her head. "I catch fire if I try the library door, now."

Etty hisses a sharp indrawn breath. "Eegh."

"So I can light candles and freeze raindrops and make my rooms tidy themselves, but I can't do anything useful."

"I take it the spells for candles and raindrops won't work on a person. At least not him."

"You think I've never tried lighting his beard on fire? He put it out. I suppose I could freeze a drop of his spit but I don't see how it'd help."

"I was thinking freezing his blood. Or the fluid in his spine, or his brain."

"One raindrop's worth at a time, when I can't see any of it? Stabbing him would be surer."

"A small ice crystal in the heart could - well, if it were sharp, otherwise I suppose it would just melt harmlessly," muses Etty, nibbling her lip.

"You've a vicious turn of mind," she snorts. "I like that. But he's by far a better mage than I am. If I try a little trick like that, he'll catch me, and then he'll be on his guard and it'll be that much harder to get him on the next try."

"Not once."

Etty lets the obvious conclusions hang in the air for a moment.

"Do you want me to try loving you?"

"Absent other ways out. If you could."

"I don't know," she says, perching on the edge of her bed. "I've never tried."

"I don't think I'm unlovable. Although I've tried to avoid - attention - from men in my village, and doubt any women would have dared tell me if they were interested any more than I cared to chance whispering to them."

"Avoiding attention," she says. "Isn't that a dream."