"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--"

"I don't know. It seems plausible, I guess, and-- if anyone we know-- but I don't know."

"You've always been the ugly one."

It's a joke, and not a joke.

"I wish you would stay home. You wouldn't let Gale join you."

"...I know. I'm really sorry. But I genuinely don't think there's anyone else who is going to be both willing and able to do the thing I did in Malta."

"You know what you'd say if Gale told you the same thing."

"Agravaine, I'm not arguing that I should be the one to sacrifice myself because nobody else can feed themselves to a Mouth effectively enough."

"Am I supposed to feel better that it's only very likely and not a certainty?"

"...I think it does in fact make a difference that I'm not doing this as a form of indirect ritual suicide."

"Indirect non-ritual suicide is so much better."

"And," he continues as if Agravaine hadn't said that, "I think it does make a difference that four people I cared about, myself included, were in a room with an evil god and a cultist with a gun, and the only way we had to kill the god was for someone to sacrifice themselves, and now the evil god is made of stone and all four of the people I care about are alive.

I got everyone out alive. It shouldn't have been possible to get everyone out alive and I did it anyway and, yes, I think that it matters that I'm not telling you it's okay because I should die, I'm telling you I am much better than anyone else would be at getting everyone out alive."

"I just don't think it's going to be good enough.

Whatever. I'm going out. Don't bother to wait up."