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“And the way I see it, we’re even now.”

“How so?”

“Well, I do intend to marry your daughter.”

Ivain shot him a sideways look. “Does she know that?”

“Not yet.” But they were already bondmates. What was a piece of paper compared to eternity?

“I take it things between the two of you are going well then.”

Skye couldn’t stop the smile from tugging at his mouth. “Yeah,” he said. “They are.”

“As your guardian, I’m obligated to tell you your family isn’t going to be happy that you’ve attached yourself so permanently—and at such a young age.” Ivain’s tone was casual, but pointed. “I’ve seen the list of women your mother was planning to audition forthe newher. It’s quite impressive.”

Oh, Skye was well aware of what lay ahead in his mother’s search for a new duchess.

“Are those your thoughts as well?” he asked. “Do you think it’s a mistake?”

Ivain shrugged. “I can’t tell you that, I’m afraid.”

“That’s helpful.”

“What doyouthink?”

Skye hesitated. “I think… we’ve still got centuries to figure it out. It’s not like we have to decide anything now.”

Ivain thumped him on the back of the head.

“Hey, what was—”

“I raised you to face your decisions head-on. Not hide behind weak, flimsy excuses for something that could change your life. And that of my daughter’s. Stop hedging. I asked what you think. Not what sounds safe.”

Skye sighed, rubbing the back of his head. Ivain had been seeing through him since he was nine years old—today was no different. “I was… surprised at first. But the more I think about it, I don’t know, I just feel… really happy.” More than that.Content. Like the loneliness he’d carried for so long had finally been fully exorcised. “I mean, bond or no bond, I already want to spend the rest of my life with her. At least this means she can’t get away from me.”

“That’s one way to look at it,” Ivain murmured.

“Itfeelslike I’m making a mistake.”

“Does it?”

Skye shook his head. “No.” He couldn’t even lie to himself. “Am I crazy?”

“Oh, most definitely.” Ivain tossed another kernel in his mouth. “But only because I’ve met my daughter. I know what you’re signing up for.”

He had a point. Taly was stubborn. Difficult. Strong-willed. She’d been hard enough to live with as a human, and he didn’t see that getting any easier now that she had magic. She was still doubling down on every bad idea and reckless impulse.

And yet he couldn’t imagine a life without her. He’d already lived that reality once, and it had nearly broken him.

“Aside from my evidently poor taste in women... is there another reason I should be questioning my sanity here?”

Ivain chewed thoughtfully. “Most would balk at the idea of eternity,” he mused. “Especially at your age when you still have it all out in front of you. There are costs to intertwining yourself with someone on that level—sacrifices you don’t even have the perspective to recognize yet. And once it’s done, there’s no undoing it. From that position, a pragmatist might argue against it.”

It was everything Skye had expected him to say, but hearing it out loud made it settle differently. Heavier.

“On the other hand,” Ivain continued, cutting off the spiral of despair before it could take root, “life is long, and the years get lonely without someone to share them. You and Taly have been a matched set from the beginning, and that kind of connection is rare. Maybe even singular. At the end of a life that looks nothing like where you started, where the world and the people in it have all changed, I could also make an argument that the benefit of having that shared memory vested in another person might come to outweigh the costs. Eventually. Do with that what you will.”

They walked in silence for a while, the scuff of boots over cobblestone filling the quiet. The more Skye turned Ivain’s words over, the more settled he felt. There were risks, sure. Sacrifices he couldn’t fully see.