"What if he isn't expecting you to climb through his window?"

"Why wouldn't he expect that?"

"Well, you hadn't decided to do it a minute ago, so I don't see why he ought to be sitting up in expectation instead of nursing his hangover, or do they not last this long?"

"He doesn't really drink."

"Well, he might still not be expecting you."

"I shall knock first. But I bet he's expecting me."

"I do hope he hasn't been kept up every night expecting, pacing back and forth, pining. Or did you only have permission to try to win him back after actually marrying me and not during the engagement? So that he'd think it would be now in particular?"

"No, as soon as you were okay with it was the criterion, but I've been very busy and also not known what to do. I am sure he's been spending his evenings spellcharting and if he's in a mood at me maybe spellcharting something meant to give sons of Fannar the wisdom of a typical person."

"Ew, mind-affecting magic."

"Didn't mean it literally. Not even sure it's possible, and if it can be done it wouldn't be with spells. If he did produce something that made me wiser, though, depending what mechanically it did I think I'd take it. I want better recall and working memory so badly."

"Okay, I would take those unless they had nasty side effects, I'll grant."

He starts charging walking-through-windows. "Not really up his alley, anyway. My father might get there someday."

"And if he can cast it on other people then it can bootstrap from there."

"Yes, exactly. He has a vision of getting perfect recall through that process, and then - anything we can imagine." 

"That'd be so great."

"I know! Care to be empress of the world while we figure out what the stars are and if there's anything there worth being empress of?"

"I'm sure you can guess."

The spell's ready. He makes himself able to walk through glass. He gives his wife a hug. He leaps through the window.

She chuckles to herself and goes back to her book.

When he walks through the other window he goes flying across the room and, when he lands, finds he cannot keep his feet and collapses onto the floor.

"New security measure," Finankar says, in Mitros' idiolect, which he speaks with a funny accent but otherwise proficiently. "I sent you a memo about it. It has an oddly long duration, several hours."

He stops trying to stand up. "It's not on my window."

"You hadn't responded to the memo."

"Do you want to talk to me?"

"I am stuck talking to you or carrying you back to your honeymoon suite and trying to explain ourselves in the hallways."

"I could be quiet."

"No, no," Finankar says, putting his pen down, "please do talk."

"I spent this evening telling Iobel how I fell in love with you. I made a flippant remark that you were pretty and she objected to my criteria for partners so then I had to defend myself."

"I think you do too little prioritizing that you find a partner pretty, honestly."

"I apologize. I drove myself headfirst into a predictable mess and wronged people along the way and I am not sure if you were trying to protect me from wronging you also but I am grateful for it."

"I am fascinated by the convolutions that lead you to the conclusion I broke up with you to protect you from wronging me instead of to protect me from being wronged by you."

"...yeah, that's fair."

"Are you trying to demonstrate your maturity because I'll appreciate it but it's not going to be sufficient."

"I was originally planning to try to win you back but the more I told Iobel the more I realized how hopeless it was. You find me likable enough and being likable at you won't change it. You know that I love you and protestations of love won't change it. And I don't want to have you because you save me from myself."

"You have Iobel for that."

"I am working on not using people for that."

"And in the meantime you are using someone else for it."

"...yeah, that's fair."

(Iobel is oblivious to this conversation but she would find it adorable were she not.)

He puts his spellchart down, and sighs, and picks up Mitros and puts him in a chair. "You're going to be a King, hmm?"

"Yes. Please don't say 'as far as I know the King can do as he pleases', I will get appropriately flustered but it's not really where I want this conversation to go. You were very calm and very civil and very patient and so I might have missed it. Did I hurt you?"

"Yes."

"Very badly?"

"Yes."

"Are there things I could have done to not do that?"

"I actually don't think so."

"Okay," he says. "Next step after King is emperor of the world and I can't think why that'd involve choosing between you and power."

Finankar buries his head in his hands and mutters something in his idiolect which Mitros will understand just as well but will understand he's not supposed to respond to. 

"If it does," Mitros says, "and I know that this time you'll leave for good, I think I'll keep in mind that I am not actually half as competent as I like to flatter myself without you."

"You are not going to get particularly anywhere with praises for my instrumental usefulness in acquiring power, either."

"No?"

"I spent a while trying to be competent for you and I don't regret it but I regret that it was for you."

"Do I have too much of a hold on you?"

"Probably."

"Is there a way to fix that?"

"You should probably not conduct intimate conversations the way you conduct treaty negotiations, it's not decision fatigue and a signature you're trying to elicit in the other person."

"...yeah, that's fair."

"Oh, for fucks fucking sake, Mitros -"

"Do you want me to stop being reasonable?"

"I am really not sure! Maybe I do!"

"I love you! I am adrift and only occasionally miserable but always at least a tiny bit miserable, and I cannot imagine that ever going away! I love you and I want you back and I can't talk my way into it or win my way into it and I hate feeling helpless almost as much as I hate the thought that you'll give it a try for old times' sake and not want me anymore. If I am emperor of the world and do not have you I will be good at my job but so desperately lonely in it. Life without you isn't. Please let me fix it. I don't care what you want me to do."

Finankar raises an eyebrow.

Mitros stops talking. "...what?"

"If I gave you an opening like that do you know what you would do with that?"

"Test whether you meant it by suggesting lots of awful things and then in actual practice end up kissing your nose and giving you silly compliments all night," he says instantly.

"Right. Well, that's not me."

"What do you want me to do?"

"Be worth my trust."

He swallows. "...okay."

"Be a damn good King."

"I am going to be."

"And do whatever the hell you want with me."

"Okay," he whispers, and with an opening like that he will in fact spend a good part of the night kissing his nose and giving him silly compliments, though not the whole night because it has, in fact, been a year.

(Iobel goes to sleep at a reasonable hour. If anybody asks, the trouble is she mutters random words all night.)

In the morning her cheerful husband meets her for breakfast with chocolate crepes that have something of an excess of chocolate.

Mmm, chocolate. "G'morning."