"Sounds like Mrs. Winston-Rogers' job. And I don't care about some stranger's siblings, I care about you. I love you."

"I care! I love you too but I don't in fact only care about the wellbeing of the people I personally know and--"

And you don't get to ask me to cut pieces of myself off to make you happy, he doesn't say, because that would be much more cruel than he wants to be.

"You said you're turning into a monster."

"I have a patch of weird skin, I'm still me."

"Is there anything-- anything at all-- that's occult and nice."

"Yes," Mordred says, because this one he actually has an answer for. "Her name's Inaaya, she can pick up objects' histories by touching them."

Agravaine pauses. Does a double-take.

"You like women now?"

"That's not what I said, I said there is something in the world that is occult and not horrible. But also, yes, it was a surprise to me too."

"Your voice got all soft. Apparently it's already starting to change you."

Eyeroll.

"Or, possibly, whether I like people has nothing to do with whether or not I'm a fish."

"We know that occult things can eat people's minds, forgive me if I am concerned about you turning into a fish monster."

"It is completely fair to be concerned about that. And, also, she's exactly my type, and I really don't think that having a girlfriend is the most concerning thing that's happened to me in the last few months."

If he looks very hard at the cutting board then he won't have to try to figure out what Agravaine's face is doing.

"It terrifies me that you might die.

But it terrifies me more that I might have to watch you slowly transform into something else. Until a stranger moves in behind my brother's face."

"...yeah. I'm scared of that too."

"But you're not going to stop doing the thing that might make you that way."

"I'm never going to take Nectar, or do anything that I know warps you. But people change, Agravaine, and you can't ask me not to learn things about myself because it might make me different."

"So you were... a fish monster all along."

That's not in fact what he meant, but, "I said Inaaya could pick up objects' histories by touching them? Before I drowned, she asked me whether I knew I wasn't human."

"And apparently the part of Scotland our family comes from is full of sea monster shapeshifters, that was fun to find out."

"Shit."

"Yeah."

"--does that mean that any of us could."

"I don't know.

I'll tell you if I find out, one way or the other. But-- I don't know, I'm not sure if anyone knows."

"Great! That's. Great."

He doesn't say anything about the one person who might know.

"Yeah. That's-- almost exactly what I said. I sort of wonder about Morgan, but--"

"She did vanish. Do you think--"