a toast, then, to mayhem and worse;

 ‘He might think it’s an invitation for a ménage a trois.’ 

She couldn’t stop the sputtering of laughter from the unexpected reply, and a hand fluttered up over her veiled mouth out of longstanding ladylike habit. But the more the thought continued of Divos in any lustful capacity, the more she laughed, till she had to stop in the middle of the street, howling with her hand over her eyes. Her guards a good distance behind them thought she’d lost her mind as she struggled to breathe, and she had to lean against a building frame till the giggles subsided. 

A threesome with Divos - Grace, that’d be the day.

Delicately wiping the tears from her eyes, she cleared her throat once they reached the fabric store, and she strode in like she owned the place (which she did, under another name for tax reasons).

“Haaah...” Lasair traced her hands over the bolts of fabric, in her element as she considered each rich color to possibly represent the man behind her. “I like the first idea. That the entire affair’s some wicked mage’s trick out of revenge on him? Because he, what, audited a fellow?” She snorted in pure amusement, pausing over a bolt of black that tricked the eye with deep, inky purple. And as she stared, she realized it was like ink, swirling subtly under her hand.

She ordered that bolt set aside and moved over to the wall of thread selection. “But I really do need your permission, all jests aside.” She glanced at him over her shoulder, knowing the store was staffed with her people, and knew the consequences for spilling her secrets. “My magic is real. Whatever I enchant, I become in truth. So if it comes to borrowing your identity and claiming it for a while, I’d prefer it to be out in the open.” She smirked and roamed to pick a thread color. “And in writing. Imagine if you forget this jest, then suddenly see yourself crossing the street! How bewildering that would be.”

It was only after musing on the forgetfulness she’d seen at that tea party ages ago that she picked up on that note he’d dropped so nonchalantly. Four hundred years?

She paused.

Did he mean that he’s -? Mages could live that long? How?

She looked at him again thoughtfully. A better question – how could she live that long?

She smiled, keeping that thought to herself, then returned to her perusal, taking down a color in a pale burnished gold, considering it. She rather wanted something that winked in and out of the light, a trick of the eye like his magic, and though gold would work well, she put it back on the rack. “But yes – tell me more about you, Aleister! Let’s make this wicked-clone trick as believable as we can.”