"I'm more worried now that you'll want to, and not do it anyways.  You were raised by a society that denies everything you are."

"Though may I also remind you that there's other women besides Carissa, if it truly proves that she wants more from you than you want to give her."

That denies everything you are stings, the sort of sting where it's got more than just one grain of truth in it even if the statement is obviously literally false.

Keltham does have any social-emotional dignity, of course, so he's not going to hold it against Isidre that she pointed it out.  And he also has any epistemic dignity, so he's not going to automatically believe the whole thing and all its implications and connotations, just because it stings.

"Anyways," Keltham says.  "The obvious thought for how I could prevent the Queen from winning Carissa's heart through sadism is to write contract limitations on how much she can do to her there."

"Keltham, you are a very sweet and innocent lad who grew up in an incredibly Lawful Good society with nothing resembling a Worldwound and this is, in our case, something of a problem.  Anything that the Queen would find satisfying, and that would appease for a time the deeper and darker needs buried far inside Carissa that you are not ready for, is something you are not ready to see written down as contract language."

"I would be very happy to write out language that I was confident would mean the Queen had not gone further than I would want her to go, but I would not want you to see that language.  If that works for you, we have a solution.  If you write down only permitted things that don't make a dath ilani worry, then the two of them might as well not have sex."

"This is not really helping me feel like I can satisfy Carissa in the cuddleroom."

"Even when you are ready to do such things to Carissa, she will not need them done to her very often.  Your usual activities in the bedroom will not be like that."

"And for you to deliver her with a smile into the gentle hands of the Queen of Cheliax, would be cruelty in its own way, and to your credit in her eyes; I would much advise kissing her when you inform her of it."

Carissa would not dream of presuming that Her Majesty is letting her own desire to torture Carissa get in the way of achieving their strategic objectives from this conversation but reminds Her Majesty just in case that Her Majesty can have Carissa without persuading Keltham of it, since, you know, they're lying to him about everything. 

The new game Abrogail Thrune is now playing here looks a bit more like 'Do not actually end up attracting Sevar too much and subsequently end up married to Keltham.'  Isidre wasn't lying about the rental arrangement contributing to that not happening.

(Not sent to Sevar, of course.)

"All right, I'm not quite sure how I feel about that, but I'm willing to entertain the idea.  You, who does not actually want any complications here, write a rental contract whose terms you're confident prevents the Queen from breaking Carissa or winning her affection away from me by being too much of a better sadist, even if I can't read that part until possibly much later.  That handles sadism.  I think my brain is willing to believe that Carissa having an orgasm I can't give her yet is not actually a problem for our relationship."

"This leaves the problem of how to not have Carissa be attracted to somebody who, maybe, looks even more than me like somebody who could take absolute-power over her.  It leaves the question of whether I can win if the Queen tries to fight me over who owns Carissa, which is itself very much a 'trope'.  I have my own idea, but I'd be interested in hearing what, if anything, you would think of as the most obvious solution.  No, not just going ahead and demanding legal ownership of Carissa from Cheliax, the second most obvious solution."

...if Abrogail doesn't just lie, here, and she has now seen some of the consequences of lying to Keltham and having to live in the entire world you inadvertently created and shaped inside his head, then Abrogail has to admit, she is not immediately seeing it.  Abrogail Thrune wanting Carissa and Keltham wanting Abrogail Thrune to not have Carissa is not very likely to end, realistically speaking, with Abrogail Thrune sadly bereft of Carissa.

What is he actually thinking, though.  Come on Keltham.  Think of it.  (Isidre thoughtfully consumes a snack.)  Why aren't you thinking - there it is.

"Have the Queen sign a contract saying that she relinquishes all her potential ownership rights in Carissa Sevar, under all possible future circumstances where she and Keltham dispute Sevar's ownership, to Keltham?"

"Doesn't exactly cover the case where the Queen is abusing Governance powers to keep control of Carissa."

"Look, the basic idea here is, you can't actually have two people with de facto absolute-power over the same person.  Either it's true that I could get Carissa and have anything I want from her and nobody who tried could take her away, or, alternatively, it's true that the Queen could get Carissa and take everything she wants from her.  Or neither of these things can be true, but they can't both be true simultaneously."

"If the basic premise of Carissa's sexuality is that she is and should be with the person who'd succeed in controlling her, then if the Queen could successfully take her away from me, Carissa is in a sense with me under false premises."

"So the question then becomes, what is the truth, here."

What is Sevar thinking about this.

She has EFFORTFULLY FENCED AWAY the part of her that thinks this is just really funny. It is, but this is not the time to think so and possibly she is not the person to think so.

Her sincere honest answer is that Keltham is more - something, the phrase she immediately thought of is 'terrifyingly creative' but she's 100% sure she will regret with great intensity having questioned the Queen of Cheliax's terrifying creativity - more dath ilani, the space of solutions he draws from is larger and once he gets competent he'll be able to use the Golarion pool too - he clearly thought he had a way of doing safe Wishes that might work and she can't even tell him he's obviously wrong -

- anyway, he's more something than the Queen of Cheliax and the Queen of Cheliax would beat him without trying in a ruthlessness contest or a solving your problems with any of murder petrification and mind control contest, but Asmodeus has committed to letting Keltham leave Cheliax alive and in one piece, and given that she thinks Keltham would win this contest, if both of them were trying. And also it's obviously not in Cheliax's interests to let it come to that, though it's maybe in Cheliax's interests to make Keltham realize that he does, actually, want to be the person who would have absolute power over Carissa even if he doesn't quite yet want to exercise it. 

SEVAR THINKS ABROGAIL FUCKING THRUNE WOULD LOSE TO -

...is a 'trope' trying to provoke her here.

"Are you suggesting... some sort of duel?"  Isidre ventures cautiously.  "This sounds like essentially the opposite of what we want, here.  And I am, to be honest, a little concerned about your ability to take Abrogail Thrune in a direct contest of wills and powers."

Wait why did Isidre say that.  Damn it, Abrogail, get ahold of yourself, you have goals in this conversation.

Well, at least she's not straight-up lying to him about that, that's an encouraging sign.

"I haven't the tiniest intention of fighting fair, Isidre, not against the Chief Executive of Cheliax.  The more impossible a problem is without cheating, the more it means you're supposed to cheat."

"She's more of a Good person than I am, by the sound of things, or Carissa thought she might not be that Good, but her advisors certainly sound Good-leaning.  All 'the good of Cheliax requires that you have no fun' and that.  The Church of Asmodeus yoinks her political capital if she actually tries to take Sevar; I can say I'll walk out on Cheliax if I lose Sevar to her and mean that, because I'm less Good than she is and have fewer existing bargains I'm constrained by."

"I'd expect Carissa's sexuality to accept that coin, if it's a reasonable and logical sort of sexuality.  The question of who is more willing to use their power is very much the determinant of who actually would end up with absolute-power over her - who it is that, if they so chose, Carissa could not escape from."

Tell him if he'll walk out over me then he does win. And that - caring that much about me - is indeed something the Queen can't compete with, and the key to Carissa's sexuality, or as close to it as a person who still runs into a wall of Good every time he tries to have desires can comprehend it.

Abrogail Thrune has not felt quite this irritated in some time.  She is a good Asmodean - her compact requires it of her, yes, but that's not why she does it - and so she has her pride.  In a room near to this one, silently and unremarkedly, precious things burn; when you're at the eighth circle of sorcery you can do little things like that without bothering about the spells.

Well.  It's clear enough that Sevar thinks that Keltham has already won this contest, and with it her heart; so the question then becomes, does Abrogail Thrune choose to permit Sevar to go on believing that, and to convince Keltham of it too.

"Being willing to go to lengths great enough to take possession of her, is the key to Carissa's sexuality indeed," Isidre says.  No hint of coldness shows in her; Abrogail's Splendour is about her and she is no undisciplined child like these two.  "Or as close to it as can be understood for now, by a person who still runs into a wall of Good every time he tries to have desires about matters like that.  I think I have some idea of what you're planning now; I'd still want to hear it spelled out."

"That Carissa's sexuality depends on the truth of two propositions that can't both simultaneously be true is, itself, very much a 'trope', and one of the deepest and most powerful ones.  Even more than the Queen of Cheliax being a complication, even more than her coming into conflict with me, the deepest 'trope' here has to be the question-of-fact, what is really true.  Everything else fell into place once I realized that."

"My proposal is as simple as it is unfair to the Queen.  If I meet her and know her and think she's worthy of Carissa at all, I offer to negotiate the rental agreement for Carissa.  In front of her advisors.  And with Carissa there to see it, because she's the one who has to know this truth and witness it.  I say plainly" (a dath ilani does not bother to add 'and truthfully' if they're bothering to let words leave their mouth at all) "that I'm worried about a more experienced sadist stealing Carissa from me, and if the Queen of Cheliax does that successfully, I will walk out on Cheliax and go make a revolution somewhere else.  I say that I want guarantees about my right, signed by the government of Cheliax and by the Queen and by the Church of Asmodeus in whatever capacity Asmodeus recognizes such things, to take Carissa with me if that happens, potentially including against her own will, if I so choose, to somewhere that puts enough value on a dath ilani to also recognize my possession of her."

"Having that right doesn't mean I'd actually exercise it, obviously, but nobody needs to say that in front of the Queen; and while Carissa might know what I wouldn't really do, I think she'll also understand the romantic gesture in the spirit in which it was intended."

"If everybody's being sane, the Queen and her advisors are like, sure, sounds weirdly extreme but he's obviously doing it to impress his girlfriend, they sign on like the totally sane grownups they are.  The limits on the Queen's sadism are in a sealed section of the compact that I trust you to write.  The conflict and the 'trope' have been defused, easily enough to call into severe question whether there was ever really any 'trope' at work in the first place."

"If the Queen is like, why, no, how could I possibly do that, I have strange reasons I cannot do that, then we know she's a giant 'trope' avatar and there's a foretold path of conflict and complication whose core question-of-truth is who Carissa Sevar really belongs to - both de facto and in terms of her core sexuality, because those two are the same thing."

"In which case, obviously, I stop negotiating that rental agreement, get back to my new research installation, and both we and the Queen's advisers do everything we can to keep the Queen and Carissa apart for as long as possible.  We do everything we can to, like, totally slow down all of that from actually happening, if that is at all possible, and try to delay everything into the future as far as possible, because, like, I already have a job."

"Eventually either the Queen loses power, or the two of us reconcile and kiss, or, if I screw up along the way, the Queen wins and Cheliax stays poor for longer.  Or Golarion ends up falling to the Worldwound because there wasn't really anywhere else that could offer the resources that Cheliax and Asmodeus could.  I suppose there's other possibilities within the 'tropes' that would then almost have to be governing, but I'd have to think hard about what they were; they'd be less probable."