Go, and never darken my towels again..

She opened her mouth, but no words found their way out.

"I would have helped you." The admission arrived almost as a whisper, and it was somehow the most devastating thing he had said. So far.

"That is the truly pathetic part of this, if you wish to know it. If you had come to me—at any point, in any state, with any portion of the truth—I would have helped you. If you had confessed every secret, every scheme, every catastrophic decision, I would have stayed." A humourless smile touched his mouth. "You know I would have. We both know it."

The smile vanished.

"But you never gave me that chance. Instead, you built an entire architecture of omission around me and let me inhabit it believing it was our life." His gaze drifted to the fire. "Do you have any idea how humiliating that is? To discover I was the last to know?"

His voice cracked almost imperceptibly.

"I loved being your husband." The words were painful to hear. "I was proud of it. And now I find myself wondering whether I was ever truly your husband at all, or merely a role you permitted me to play while the real Celeste existed somewhere I was never allowed to follow."

He lifted his glass and took a slow, deliberate sip.

When she could not immediately answer, he continued, quieter now, and somehow worse for it.

"I trusted you with thoughts I have shared with no living soul. Not Mystra. Not Elminster. Not my mother. Not even Tara. There are parts of me you know better than I know myself." A bitter smile. "And yet, apparently, you never trusted me enough to extend the same courtesy."

He leaned forward slightly.

"Do you understand how impossible that is to reconcile? To be loved so deeply and trusted so little? To be someone's confidant, but not their partner?"

His jaw worked ever so slightly. Celeste gulped heavily.

"You robbed me of every informed decision I might have made. Every conversation we might have had. Every opportunity to stand beside you willingly instead of being led behind you unknowingly. And that," he pressed, "is not love. It is administration."

A long pause.

"When you kissed me, were you sharing yourself, or merely preserving a secret? When you told me you loved me, was it because you wished me to know it, or because you needed me to believe it?"

For the first time, softness moved through his expression and Celeste made the choice to remain quiet. At least for now, though the words burned her tongue.

"The scope of your dealings, your movements, your elaborate schemes—they are apparently common knowledge. Documented. Discussed. Undeniably understood by every corner of this city. And only I remained blissfully unaware."

His laugh was brief and brittle; it held no humour.

"And I doubt I am the only casualty of that ignorance. From the looks of it, Celeste, I am the one who shares your bed... but am I?" He paused to let the question hang in the smoke-filled air. "You and Soren are very familiar to the point of intimacy. What of Halsin? How many times did you journey to Haven alone? Leaving me behind, so that you might slip into the druid's embrace instead?"

Celeste started to protest, unable to remain quiet, her voice fluttering. "This is unfair! You didn’t join me in Haven because you were consumed by the Academy and refused when I—"

"Was I? Or was it a beautifully constructed excuse for you to cease inviting me back? To finally keep my attention from your other affections?" he sneered.

"That is the true damage, Celeste. Not jealousy. Not fury. Not even the humiliation of being the last to know." He swallowed. "Being not trusted. You have made me doubt my own memories. And I do not know if there is a crueler thing one person can do to another they claim to love."

Celeste sat very still in her chair.

She had faced gods. She had faced Bhaal himself. She had walked into rooms knowing full well she might not walk out of them, and had done so without flinching because fear, for most of her life, had been something she knew how to wear quietly and use strategically.

She did not know what to do with this.

With Gale.

With the specific, surgical devastation of being known so well by someone that he could take her apart without raising his voice.

But anger was rising in her now. Not yet the shaking, consuming kind, but close enough that Celeste closed her eyes and took a long, deliberate breath before it could get there.

"Alright," she sighed, cleaning her feet with a cantrip and pulling them up onto the chair beneath her. "May I have something else to drink, please?"

Gale blinked. Surprised—and immediately suspicious, because suspicion followed surprise in him the way footnotes followed assertions. "I beg your pardon?"

"We will clearly be here all night, and you—whether from anger or because you got lost inside your own thoughts, which amounts to the same thing—served me whiskey. I hate whiskey, Gale. I have always hated whiskey."

His jaw tightened, but he rose. "Rum, then."

"Whatever is not whiskey." She waited while he moved, then added, "Ask your questions. I will answer all of them. Or would you prefer to reconvene in the morning? I can sleep in my study."

His eyebrow rose with considerable eloquence.

"You do not enjoy difficult conversations when you are angry," she said, not unkindly, "and you are very angry. I am simply offering you option."

"No," Gale answered slowly, weighing the word as he weighed most things: with more deliberation than strictly necessary. "I want answers tonight."