Gisele turned to see the mercurial Ascian standing before her, broad shoulders as hunched as always, though the corners of his generous mouth had curved from their mild resting frown to a smile that was strangely genuine. 

She could not help but return it, and her answering curtsey was only faintly mocking. “The Fury only knows how I live to entertain you,” she said.

At that, Emet-Selch’s golden eyes grew wider, and he burst into laughter, doubling over a mere moment before he flicked his hand in the air. “If only you knew how very much you do, dear girl.” 

Gisele’s eyes were transfixed upon him as he crossed the shadows in his customary indolent manner, slouching as always, yet nonetheless filled with a confidence careening toward arrogance; and not for the first time, she was minded of Zenos yae Galvus, and marveled at how he resembled his great grandfather far more than his more immediate kin. It was different, however, with Emet. How, she could not name precisely, for in that moment she was startled from her brief reverie, when Emet-Selch joined her at the window.

“No one’s kissed me like that in a long time,” he said to her, leaning against the frame; sapphire blue gossamer stirred in the night breeze of a moment, the sheer curtain between them shrouding him briefly as he leveled a meaningful gaze upon her, devoid of casual irony.

Gisele met his eyes with a curious gaze of her own, smiling innocently. “Oh?”

“Don’t play daft, Gisele. It doesn’t become you,” Emet said firmly. With a careless manner of grace, he extended his gloved hand to her and turned it palm side up in one smooth gesture; she glanced down, and spied the faintest hint of smudged carmine staining the exquisite white silk which sheathed his fingers.

The gambit in Rak’tika succeeded, then, she thought in silent satisfaction, though she did not permit such feelings to show; instead, she felt the smile fade from her lips, and she slipped a hand beneath his, cupping it with her fingers. “I was—and am—truly grateful for your deeds. I meant what I said. And I only meant to offer my thanks, for your show of good faith. Did I offer offense, instead?” she asked, tilting her head.

“No.”

“Then why have you come this night?” Gisele asked, drawing a single scarlet lacquered fingernail, short though it was, along the rosy stain upon his fingertip, making lazy circles. “Do you wish another?”

“And what if I said yes?” Emet replied. “What then, oh heroine? And what would your husband say?”

“Which one?” Gisele asked sweetly, without missing a beat.

Emet-Selch’s eyes clamped shut as laughter poured from his lips once more; it was strangely sweet, she thought, and more than a little endearing. He stopped as quickly as it came, however.

“The one who threw his shield at my head and refuses to die.”

At that, Gisele could not help but laugh herself, and quite sincerely; Haurchefant would be inordinately proud to be described as such, she thought.

“Think him my keeper, do you?” Gisele asked. “Well, he is not—nor is Aymeric, nor Estinien. Nor Ysayle, for that matter. Always, I have loved as I will.”

Emet-Selch shut his eyes in momentary repose, and his smile returned, if enigmatically. “Love as thou wilt,” he said softly, his shadowed eyes still shut. “For Love is the Law...Love under Will.”

“More wisdom of the ancients?” Gisele asked, and she struggled to remember where she had heard it spoken once before, for it was eminently familiar to her, tugging at her memories.

“The underlying principle of all Creation, or so someone I once knew believed,” Emet muttered softly, and with his eyes still shut, he turned his face toward the night sky, if only a moment. “It matters not, in the end. Full glad am I to see it lives on nonetheless, if fractured and unwitting.”

“A flawed diamond still shines, Emet.”

Emet-Selch opened his eyes then, and they, too shone; but without flaw, Gisele thought, a preternatural brightness which belied the truth of his enigmatic nature. “And oh, how it does,” he said, low and dark. Gisele’s breath hitched inside her throat, all unwitting, as Emet drew his carmine stained glove up to cup her cheek within his palm. The heat of his hand was like fire against her bronze skin, igniting sparks within her.

“You asked of me, what if you wished another? What shall I do?” she whispered, trembling against his hand, her lids growing heavy against her eyes. “I say that I would give you far more than I did in the Greatwood, if you so wished. Do you so wish?”

Gisele was ill equipped for the answer, in the end; for the quiet ferocity with which his arm, clad in fine Garlean brocade, wrapped around her waist and pulled her closer, to draw him her tightly against him. Leaning into her, his long lashes lowered near to brush his cheeks, and he found the fullness of her lips with his own, pressing them fiercely against hers, working them open; they were soft, achingly soft, and full of heat and hunger by turns. His tongue slipped between her teeth before long, lashing within her eager mouth with unfettered want. One hand he drew up her bare back, his gloved fingers raking into her wealth of thick, silvery curls, lightly making a fist within them; the other spread across the small of her back, exposed as it was by the low cut of her nightgown, and his hot palm slid lower to grip her tightly by the rear, holding her against him as if a vice.