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Sadde's running.
Not for any particular reason, just because it's faster. He's been meaning to go to one of the capitals for a bit and now, he supposes, is as good a time as any.
And eventually he's not running anymore, because he's close enough to civilisation that someone might spot him. Not that he wouldn't be able to notice them by scent before they saw him, but still. And as he makes his way to the Norway capital at this more leisurely pace, he notices the tiny, shiny key. He walks towards it and picks it up and immediately notices just how magic it is. He can tell by the way the key feels like things, and different things depending on where it is.
He verifies that what the key feels like is consistent in absolute location by waving it around a bit and seeing that the same place always feels the same. "Huh," he murmurs to himself.
He straightens up and thinks. The first obvious thing to try is seeing whether it opens any doors—a universal skeleton key sounds like the kind of thing a magical key could be—but the second obvious thing can be tested right there and then. He pushes the key into thin air with some purpose, as if he wanted to unlock an invisible door, and then turns it, et voilà, the faintest of door-shaped outlines appears before him.
He locks the door, and it disappears. Unlocks it again, and there it is. So he pulls it open and sees—
Cam does notice a little after he's done with the book. "Do you want more books?"
He draws in breath to say, "Yeah. Just throw whatever you have at me. Several whatevers, if possible."
A musical theater with a lot of aerial dancing by extremely talented demons ensues. It's not in English but it has subtitles.
(And multitasks with the whole getting-used-to-completely-new-emotions thing.)
Eventually Cam plops down next to him on the couch to watch the third act.
"So," he says, "the super strength thing, is it even safe for you to touch people who can be injured at all? You couldn't hurt me much, but I still avoid clonking my head into kitchen cabinets and so on."
(If his heart could beat he's pretty damn certain it'd be going at 300bpm right now.)
"Okay. And is the nature of the beast such that it would be better for me to be really fucking sure before starting anything or is it basically impossible to get to a state less pleasant modulo vampire mating thing than 'not actively kissing me right now' or what?"
"...it is very possible to get to much worse states than that. The fact that you're more immortal than I am is a pretty huge advantage, most vampires don't really survive the death of their mates, and the ones who do tend to not be functional members of society. Erm. And in the spirit of full disclosure, if you asked me to go away forever and never see you again I would but I might just bury myself somewhere and stay there, maybe give you the address if you ever changed your mind. That said, you rejecting me now would not be substantially better or worse, I think, than you rejecting me in a week or something. And also given the nature of the beast, if you do start anything you're very unlikely to regret it."
"How does that even work? Where did your weird vampire love magic get information on my romanceability?"
Shrug. "The Empress Regnant's magic is such that she has complete immunity to mind magic and she has a mate. And I'm pretty sure her mate was a vampire and mated on her while she was human. Mate bonds are cheating."
"No, the shrug was the answer to the question, the rest was just qualifying it."
"Okay, so you don't know. What facts do you think you can derive from the fact that the magic picked me out?"
"...that you're likely to be thoughtful, smart, good, probably quite ambitious, probably tolerant of weird things like switching genders, confident, er, I never really stopped to think about what my soulmate would look like given that I'd just instantly know. There are a few more specific things, like I'd expect my soulmate to be the kind of person who'd take kindly to my talking a lot and disclosing a lot of information and who'd want to be informed of the soulmate thing soon probably."
"...Okay, and you were confident enough of all this that you didn't really have a plan for, I don't know, 'evil soulmate' contingencies or anything? Even though apparently you are from a world where upstanding people routinely become serial killers."
"Yeah, pretty much. I mean, I'm pretty certain I wouldn't mate on a non-vegetarian—that's how we call vampires who subsist on animal blood, vegetarians. And just like I could go away if you asked me to, I," imperceptible vampire pause, "think I'd go away if I knew my mate wasn't vegetarian and didn't want to change. And actually when I turned I had been planning on overthrowing the previous evil shadow government but then stuff happened and someone else did first and now being a serial murderer is a crime."
Pause.
"But the question I was actually asking about the 'worse states' thing is, is it worse if I kiss you and then decide that kissing is going to stop versus if I never do."
Imaginary heartbeat: 400bpm.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Sadde regards Cam thoughtfully, too.