Her eyes flash with a GLARE at his response and every ounce of her control goes into forcing herself not to curl her arms under her chest and turn her cheek from him with a huff --- it’s what he wants. So she stands her ground, gaze narrowing with defiance as she stares him down. “Don’t call me that,” she says, and then “That isn’t true.”

It’s absurd. Even without their bond she knows that he could see inside her mind as easily as breathing, so the fact that he questions her --- now, after everything --- is not only RIDICULOUS, but enough to flare up irritation within her, quicker than anyone else she’d ever met had been able to. “I want you,” she says again, her voice unwavering where previously she’d been embarrassed to utter the words, “Who you were then. Who you are now. All of you. Despite everything you’ve done, regardless of whichever NAME you’d ask me to call you. Just because you’ve never heard it before doesn’t make it a lie.”

Standing before an altar, he inhales a breath, a clear draft of air that he registered all the way down in his lungs. It was a cold slice of perpetuating reality that confirmed beyond doubt that this moment was real, that he was about to drink of that sinister concoction that sat upon the pedestal before his gaze, left out in clear view as promised. An invitation that would come bundled with wide reaching and extremely regrettable consequences.

Nauseated by the very concept of what he was about to do, he is almost hesitant to proceed, sample that damnable draft that in its consumption would allow him take leave of his senses, strip away all regrets. An enticing offer for the desperate and fallen like him, wanting more than anything else to be uncoupled from his persisting feelings of inferiority, rid him of the lamentable companion  called dejection that lurked beside him ever since the day he was declared unfit to wield one magical uru hammer. All that was needed in exchange, per the grand art of the deal, was a small pittance; he had to cast off the last shreds of his pride as both a former warrior of some renown and a proud prince of the realm eternal. 

Shockingly, he accepted this price, learning in the process of a drink that would restore to him the strength he lost and more besides. Departing immediately, he tracked the location of his prize to an old shrine in a remote region of Midgard. Built to worship a god he couldn’t identify, it was apparent from the first moment he set foot inside that the crumbling building had long been abandoned by its worshippers, perhaps for several centuries or more. That was grounds to cause alarm, a sure indication that the offer he had so desperately accepted was not as it seemed to be and yet, the blond ignores the warning signs, overcomes his own reluctance and starts to finally scale the altar to receive his salvation in waiting.

“ do you consider me a TYRANT? ”   his voice reveals nothing of the reasons for such a question --- even less of what is the answer he wishes to hear. khan sees it in her art that he is not the first emperor with a fist of iron to whom she has dedicated her time  ( he’s just egotistical enough to hope he will be the last ), so only one question remains: does she choose to ignore the actions of those who catch her eye... or is a cold-blooded emperor with a crown she knows to be built of bones exactly what she wants?