"I do." His tone is back to being detached and matter-of-fact.
It was bruising enough to his pride to have to ask this much of her and to reveal his weakness. She's right that he would be insulted if she now tried to coddle. Even if that may be some small part of her role now that he's secured in a contract with her, in blood if not in legally binding ink yet. It should be a relief. He won't be sent to the zoo. But a part of him still feels as if his humiliation is now complete just as this city intended. They win. This time. Still. It always could have been worse.
"Thank you, Yennefer." He no longer has the right to dismiss her, but there is finality in that thanks. And he stays silent after. Nothing more needs saying at this time as far as he's concerned.
She doesn't necessarily acknowledge his thanks beyond anything but a brief hum, but she does acknowledge it, and a brief turn of fingers by her side, along with some quiet murmuring, is enough to open the portal from which she had come through before — the same one that leads back to her apartment, in the Up.
She doesn't extend an invitation to him to join her, not yet, thinking that that might be perceived as further attempt to satiate him, but chances are he'll be able to sense that she isn't planning on leaving this room by mere door, not if the sensation of wind licking at the portal's edges is any indication.
"Until we speak again, then," she responds, and casts one final glance back in his direction before stepping through, the portal remaining open only for a few more seconds before it, too, winks out behind her.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
It was bruising enough to his pride to have to ask this much of her and to reveal his weakness. She's right that he would be insulted if she now tried to coddle. Even if that may be some small part of her role now that he's secured in a contract with her, in blood if not in legally binding ink yet. It should be a relief. He won't be sent to the zoo. But a part of him still feels as if his humiliation is now complete just as this city intended. They win. This time. Still. It always could have been worse.
"Thank you, Yennefer." He no longer has the right to dismiss her, but there is finality in that thanks. And he stays silent after. Nothing more needs saying at this time as far as he's concerned.
no subject
She doesn't extend an invitation to him to join her, not yet, thinking that that might be perceived as further attempt to satiate him, but chances are he'll be able to sense that she isn't planning on leaving this room by mere door, not if the sensation of wind licking at the portal's edges is any indication.
"Until we speak again, then," she responds, and casts one final glance back in his direction before stepping through, the portal remaining open only for a few more seconds before it, too, winks out behind her.