"If I had that ability now, I would not have a lakeful of swans out there right now. But it's not impossible in principle, just difficult and a little dangerous. I'd need a lot of power to build the spell, and it'd probably take me at least a week straight, and if I leave my foundation spell alone that long it starts to wobble."

"And then you can alter your existing immortality to match?"

"Yeah. Again, with difficulty."

"Mmkay."

Hug.

Hug.

"I'm not sure they'd see being properly immortal as an improvement."

"Well, probably not, but then I also wouldn't have to keep kidnapping more of them, so..."

"True."

"Yeah."

"...The one I met when I first got here...if she hadn't told you about the curse and you'd dragged me off to rape and torture, I'd never have told you about this and you probably wouldn't be contemplating immortality."

"...yes?"

"I don't like the idea of people being worse off because they helped me."

"She's not."

"Okay. Good." Snuggle.

Pensive snuggle.

"You okay?"

"Mm. Just - I don't deal well with the implication that I should feel a certain way or react a certain way to something."

"...That's fair. Would it help if I reframed it as 'I feel this way and would consider it a personal favor if you did the thing' instead of 'you should do the thing'?"

"Yeah."

"Good, because that's closer to what I meant anyway."

He hugs her and pets her hair some more.

"Before you said anything, I was planning to ask Luar and tell her that if she survived I'd let her go."

"Did I fuck that up!?"

Hug. "No! I was - tempted to be contrary for a second but that would be stupid."

"Oh thank goodness," she breathes. "Sorry, just--just the way you said it--" she is maybe trembling kind of a lot.

More hug.