"You're the expert."

"Simplest thing to do is just have you be one of the many demons summoned to handle infrastructure and large-scale distribution stuff as we roll out the portals - people will notice the lack of a binding, I will observe that there haven't been problems have there."

"I could be lying in wait for an opportunity."

"Wonder if the magic Elves can do anything with their magic that'd spoof a binding."

"I'm not sure how all-purpose to expect their stuff to be."

"Likewise. There's also pretending you're not a daeva but I like the wings and tail and anyway then you can't do useful things and I'm guessing you like doing useful things. Then there's 'be open about the whole story, but not about the fact we're involved, which might be wise because it'll come out eventually and which saves me the political trouble I'll be inviting if I just go 'hi, everyone, we're making a go at ruling the multiverse and this is my boyfriend Cam, he's helping'."

"I do like doing useful things. And my extremities. My balance is even worse without them! You don't think the being involved'll come out?"

"Some people'll know. They won't talk about it without permission. ...they'll probably come to me worried but once they confirm they needn't be they won't talk about it without permission."

"Worried about what exactly -?"

"It's not fair or anything but the unbound daeva back home weren't very nice -"

"Ah."

Nuzzle. "Most people will worry for half a second, think 'wait, it's a Fëanorian, they respond so badly to coercion you can actually get them to make major strategic mistakes just by vaguely implying you think you have power over them', and stop, but some might ask, and then they will be reassured, and then they will shut up."

"Well, people might also be worried that you were quietly making major strategic mistakes."

"There's a pile of history books there to confirm that my major strategic mistakes do not look very quiet."

"Worried parties might not have done the same background reading."

"I'm pretty sure I can handle my people. I can in fact swear to it, if it comes to that."

"...how do you swear to be able to handle your people, or do you mean you can swear that I'm not being awful to you with my being-unbound?"

"The latter. And it wouldn't be 'being awful to me', it'd be 'achieve this goal I want or horrifyingly many people die', which still wouldn't work but I understand why they'd check."

"Ah, gotcha."

Squeeze. "If it's an upsetting subject I can mostly navigate it on my own, tell you what I come up with."

"It is a little and I don't feel overwhelmingly likely to come up with ideas more serious than 'pretend to be a gargoyle' but it seems weird to abdicate the decisionmaking..."

"Yeah, it would feel weird to just present you with it. Honestly, not making public what happened in Singularity is excruciatingly tempting - time's not passing there, there's no real way it leaks - but it's not the greatest precedent to start an empire with."

"Time'll pass there again someday."

"And by then we will have fixed it."

"I don't expect that to make much of a PR difference."