has been Twenty-four hours of acting as a playtoy for the Archfiend, Lilly was released in exchange for her silence. She kept the secret of his true origins and he would give her freedom from himself and the Hells. The only thing left on her list of things to wrap up before she got lost in the Prime System was to follow through with Lucifer’s bullshit show for no one. She said her goodbyes to Destiny in her shop and then summoned her last portal out of the Hells to make it down to Gehenna. She took the expressway through the maze in silence that day. Her swarm had been left in Lucifer’s care the day before the Beshaba’s Day parade to keep them safe should the worst happen. Which meant there was nothing in her mind to drown out the sounds of screaming and nightmares. By the time she reached Lucifer’s doorstep, she had nothing left of the peace she’d found being away from it.

She opened the front door to the tune of, “Lucy, I’m home,” being called out at the top of her lungs. Silence greeted her in response and she followed her instincts to find him in his office.

“Where have you been?” he asked without looking up from the scroll he was reading.

“I got waylaid in the Feywild by the Traveler,” she explained to which he simply replied with a noise of assent.

“By the way, I got tired of your children bothering me, so I put them in a mirror,” he said as if he were commenting on the weather and she ground her teeth together. “It’s in your office.”

“Gee, thanks,” she said sarcastically, rolling her eyes and walking away instead of arguing.

“You’re running out of time to get my script done,” he bellowed after her.

“Fuck you,” she called back with absolutely no humor behind it. She was done with his shit.

“Excuse me?” he asked and she heard the sound of him following.

“You heard me,” she said, not turning around. “I have more important shit to deal with than your bullshit mystery dinner theater. I’m done jumping through hoops to keep you amused. I’m not your pet and I’m, sure as fuck, not your girlfriend.”

When his hand landed on her shoulder, she spun without waiting for him to do it for her.

“What the fuck did I do to piss you off now?” he snapped, surprise coloring his eyes at the rage seething below the surface of her expression.

“You’ve been trying to convince me this whole time that it’s in my best interest to perform when I have no audience and I don’t want one. And the ‘mystery’ of my soulmate to try and keep me motivated backfired the moment I solved it. It was never your mystery to give me. It was someone else’s who wants nothing to do with me. I am sick and fucking tired of being dicked around constantly. So, sure, I made a promise to stand on stage and act like an idiot. Ok, fine, but I’m not going to invite a single fucking person. I will rant and rave on an empty stage and pretend that I have the perfect audience watching. But all I am doing is fulfilling the bargain we made when you built me the theater. Do you think me performing is the key to my destiny? You’re full of shit, and I’m done.”

“Where is all this coming from?” he asked, shaking his head in disgust.

“I know what I am Lucifer,” she said.

The shocked expression and the flash of fear in his eyes were enough to confirm all of his lies. He was the one who had convinced her that she was just touched by an Old One and taught her to embrace the crazy that came with it. Yet another fucking power move on behalf of the King of Gehenna. Shaking her head, she continued into her office and ignored the sting of betrayal in her heart. The price of having the Father of Lies as her Guardian Angel was the constant companion in the pain of duplicity. Once she was again behind closed doors, she sat on the edge of her desk staring at the floor.

The reason she never prayed like a regular person was because her instincts were louder than the dreamy images or vague impressions. At least, if she followed her logic, if she got something wrong, she had no one else to blame for it. But now and then, her instincts would scream so loudly she couldn’t understand them. She needed guidance, but she knew if she asked a god, they would try to influence her in a way that could derail her. She didn’t need a guiding hand, she needed clarity of thought. She needed to get back to her roots for a moment.

Walking around to the other side of her desk, she pulled open a drawer and pulled out her tarot card deck. With the voices all of the spirits, thoughts, and gods fighting for space in her head, she managed to silence them with the first rhythmic swish of the shuffling deck. Pulling out her chair shoving papers off her desk, she spread them out in a chaotic pattern, swirling them around to shuffle them. Gathering them back into a neat stack, she shuffled and cut them three more times before dealing them. One by One, ten cards hit the desk in a circle counterclockwise from the West. Looking over the stylized faces of the cards, she took a deep breath as she interpreted the pattern.

“I know that look,” a melodious lullaby of a voice said, making her smile as she lifted her head.

“Which look is that?” Lilly asked the gorgeous brunette with cool-toned skin draped gently in a flowy, delicate fabric to the color of sapphires and accented with silver symbols. Her full, soft lips were tipped in a small smile that caused a deep relief to flow through her as she recognized Mystra sitting in a chair on the other side of her desk that previously wasn’t there.

“The look you get when you’re trying to figure out the secrets of the universe,” Mystra said.

“Scarily accurate description, my love,” Lilly said honestly.

“Ah,” Mystra said with a chuckle. “You’re finally awake.”

“You knew?” Lilly asked with a frown.

“Of course, I did,” Mystra told her with a bored expression.

“Well, fuck,” Lilly said, crossing her arms over her chest. “First Lucifer and now you?”

“Lucifer hid the truth to try and save his ego,” she said. “I knew you’d figure it out eventually and I couldn’t force you to accept it. So, I stuck close to help you control your magic.”

“Amongst other things,” Lilly said, pushing away from her desk to walk around it and leaned down to claim the Mistress of Magic’s lips and kissed her deeply enough to feel a tingle in her bones. The only girlfriend Lilly would ever claim. She’d fallen in love with a few females in the past, but Mystra was the only one she loved enough to become a male for. “Heya, gorgeous,” she said with a smug smile as Mystra looked up at her with dreamy eyes. “How you been?”

“Surviving,” she said with a wane smile as she leaned her forehead against Lilly’s for a bit before looking back at her with a bit more clarity. “Tea?”

“Please and thank you,” Lilly said as she massaged the back of her neck and Mystra magicked up some tea for them, she went back to her seat and leaned her head back. “I’m sorry it’s been so long since we’ve talked.”

“It’s ok, sweetheart,” Mystra said softly. “It happens. Now, tell me what’s wrong.”

“How long have you been watching me?” Lilly asked.

“Off and on for a few months, now,” she said. “I can never hold onto the connection long enough to get the details, but I’ve been tracking your progress.”

“And?” Lilly asked as Mystra poured a cup of tea and slid it towards her.

“By mortal standards, your level is eleven,” she said as she claimed her cup.

“Makes sense, ten is a nice round number to start within the Prime System,” Lilly said taking a sip of the lavender tea and savoring it.

“Ten?” Mystra asked, raising a sculpted eyebrow over her violet eyes.

“Yeah, about that,” Lilly replied and the goddess set her teacup down to look her squarely in the eye. “I need your permission to cast a level ten spell, but to do that, I have to blow a level.”

“Level Ten spells are strictly forbidden for a reason,” Mystra said seriously.

“They’re not forbidden, they’re just on lockdown until I can meet certain criteria,” Lilly pointed out. “The restrictions state that the spell cannot be for purely personal gain or nefarious reasons. It also requires the strength of multiple archmages, which you and I both know I have in spades. On top of that, the spell I need to cast is a Level Four. I just need to boost it.”

“What are you planning on casting at Level Ten?” she asked, tilting her head.

“Follow the Path,” Lilly said. “Under normal circumstances, it wouldn’t work but I know how to reword it for this purpose. With the power boost, I can send someone a starting point that will lead them to a fixed point. Here,” she said pointing at the room, “in Gehenna.”

“Who’s the target?” she asked.

“My partner,” Lilly replied with a heavy breath. “The only problem is, we’ve never met in mortal skin, so I don’t know him in person. All I know is his immortal construct. His thought patterns. Based on that and using the theory that a soulmate is someone who reminds us of our best, disguised as our opposite, I can break him down as a person. But I don’t know his name and I’ve never seen his face. He’s just a dream to me that seems far too realistic. Is that enough?”

“If you two truly have a connection, yes,” she said as her eyes looked away like she was trying to compare what she said to an internal checklist. “It should. But are you sure you want to force his hand?”

“That’s just it,” she said. “I can’t. I have to treat this like a love spell even though it isn’t, otherwise, I’m leaving out our strongest connection. The only thing that can stretch across the cosmos to include all of existence. At the end of the day, I’ll always love him. So, by those laws he has to choose to come to me gently and of his own free will. Otherwise, I’ll never believe that it’s real. But, to do that, I have to let go of the hopes that he will choose it.”

“You? Let go of hope?” Mystra asked with a disbelieving laugh. “That’s rich.”

“I mean it,” Lilly said and the goddess frowned at her.

“You’re serious. How?”

“Rip it out magically and use it to fuel the spell,” Lilly said simply. “To meet the personal gain requirement, I have to forget the possibility of gaining from it. I’m going to leave my book behind along with his, from the Astral Library. I’ve had mine in my bag for the longest time. I thought it was just a storybook until I realized something. I identified with every female protagonist on a level that didn’t seem to be a coincidence. As soon as I accepted the fact that I’m a god, my sigil appeared on the cover and I realized it wasn’t. The female protagonist was my immortal construct reskinned over and over. These pages,” she said, pointing around the room, “are his book. I’ve been trying to write it from his point of view to make it match up to get the whole picture. Looking at the pages now, I can see so much missing but, combined with mine, it should fill in the rest of his book.”

“Are you sure you want to leave it behind?” she asked.

“I have to,” Lilly admitted and pulled one more card with a specific thought in mind.

“What is it?” Mystra asked as Lilly blew out a heavy breath.

“I understand what he’s afraid of,” she said. “The King of Cups reversed,” she added, holding the card up between two fingers before setting it down. “It makes sense when I think about it.”

“How so?” Mystra asked.

“I pulled this card with the question in if he hates me,” Lilly said.

“Do you honestly think he hates you?” Mystra asked. “Or are you filling the silence with hatred?”

“I don’t know for sure,” she said. “But this card isn’t a yes or a no. It’s an explanation. He is my King of Cups and his world is upside down. The King can seem like an unemotional person, which tracks with his personality in the past. It may be that he finds his feelings so difficult that he keeps them hidden, even from himself. He may be worried about the consequences of letting his emotions come to the surface. He may also feel that he needs to look tough, even if, in private, he is in emotional pain.

“The King of Cups Reversed can have trouble finding love. Even though he has a lot to offer in romance, his fear of being hurt makes him put up walls around his heart. Even though he’s deeply caring, he comes across as emotionally unavailable. The King of Cups Reversed can also become lost in love. He gives all he has to the ones he loves and loses his own identity in the process. Because his identity is so enmeshed with his loved ones, he can be overbearing and possessive of them. The King of Cups Reversed can be excessively emotional. He may feel a great deal of self-pity or spend all his time trying to understand past hurts. His emotions may be so overwhelming that he is drawn towards substances or fantasy to escape.”

“Sounds like you,” Mystra pointed out.

“Except my problem isn’t shutting down, it’s getting too irrational,” she said. “On top of that, the most romantic I have ever been is with you. I wrote you poetry for fuck’s sake,” she added, making a face. “I went straight up toe shuffling embarrassed, fidgeting with my tail while I waited for you to read it, hoping and praying that you'd fall in love with me afterward. And then you dropped the bomb that you were straight. It was the closest I have ever come to real heartbreak.”

“Yeah, at which point, you cheated and ran off to get Sharess to help you design a male body to torment me with until I gave in,” Mystra said with an indulgent expression. “You were so cute and adorable until you decided to grow a penis.”

“Yeah,” Lilly said with a smug smile, “and then what?” she asked, leaning her chin on her hand and leaning her elbow on the desk as she wagged her eyebrows at her long-time romantic partner.

“You know damned well,” Mystra said, making her chuckle mischievously. Her goddess tried to keep a stern expression and failed, miserably, as she started blushing. “Focus, please.”

“I want so badly to tease you, right now,” she said. “You realize that, right?”

“I know,” she said. “Later. I’ve missed you just as much, so we are kicking Lucifer out of his bed-chamber. But I can feel your distraction. If we were to try and do anything right now, you would be a million miles away and I’d rather you be present with me in the moment.”

“Are you sure you won’t marry me?” Lilly asked. Again.

“I’m sure,” Mystra said. “The King of Cups Reversed.”

“Right,” she said and looked back at the cards. “Well, if I go by this, something is scaring him off of the idea of us being together. Even just as friends.

“How?” Mystra asked, raising an eyebrow at her.

“I," she said, taking a deep breath, “have never been heartbroken when it comes to romantic love,” she admitted with a shrug. “Unrequited love? Absolutely. But, the only time I was broken up with was a direct result of me creating distance. Every relationship I’ve had started with one foot out the door, except with you. I’ve been all-in with you since the moment you decided to take my male form for a ride and told me you loved me.”

“If you remember correctly, my darling, I confessed my love before we slept together,” Mystra reminded her and she shrugged.

“Either way, I’ve always been wary of mortal love. Now, I don’t know if that because I knew on some level, the people I was with weren’t my true partner. Or if it’s because I’ve been too afraid to be myself long enough to be accepted. So, when it comes to risking my heart to have him by my side, I have no fear, because I already love him. Every sharpened edge, every inner demon he’s afraid to face, doesn’t scare me. Unfortunately, that means if I told him he wouldn’t believe me.”

“And you think, if he reads his book, he might choose something different?” Mystra asked.

“It’s me, so I can’t help but hope,” she said. “Which is why I have to rip it out. Not only will it spare me the constant fear of rejection, but hope as strong as mine will burn for generations. How many times have I begged to you to take it over the years?”

“Try centuries,” Mystra corrected.

“Please, don’t try to remind me of past lives,” she said with a wince and dropped her forehead down to rest on her desk. “I have a hard enough time keeping this one straight sometimes.”

“I apologize, but my point is, your essence is hope,” she said, straining the word “is”. “You asking me to rip out your hope and use it to fuel the spell is you asking me to rip out part of your soul, bind it to these books, and then what? Leave it unattended? Or in Lucifer’s hands to protect? Not a chance in Hell. Or any other plane of existence for that matter. Forget it.”

“Please, Mystra,” she begged.

“No,” she said firmly. “You sacrifice too much of your basic essence, you won’t just drop a level, you’ll lose your spellcasting ability, at which point, you might as well turn human. Not to mention all the work we put in creating your barriers to contain said essence so you could interact with mortals. I have no issues with you leaving behind your books. I have no issues boosting a level four spell to level ten this once. But I will not allow you to burn up all of your hope to do it.”

“What am I supposed to use?” Lilly asked and the goddess winced as she took a deep breath.

“Your soul is still fractured,” Mystra pointed out, shaking her head. “I don’t like it. But, if you separate a small amount and bind it to a charm, it can act as a kind of ignition in case you need it,” she said, shaking her head. “You do this and you love with become a finite resource. The charm will keep you connected to the love you have now but, if you give it away without return, it will run out. You’ll have to leave your love for him behind as well.”

“It’ll make it easier to avoid him, at least,” Lilly said with a heavy breath. “Maybe after a while, I’ll be able to stop seeing phantom signs that feel like he’s looking for me.”

“Have you at least tried sending him a message before we do this?” Mystra asked.

“A few times,” she admitted. “But I don’t know if they reached him. I’ve never gotten a response of any kind. Not even a grunt of acknowledgment. That’s why I figure, as my one last try, I’ll cast Follow the Path and then jog on. Let him choose whether or not he wants to walk it. If he does, he’ll have to face everything that he’s been feeling with the knowledge of me existing outside of his imagination. Which means he’ll have to choose if he wants to risk it. If you love someone, let them go. If they come back to you, it’s forever. He let me go, that much I know for sure. I wouldn’t be here if he hadn’t, so I’ll return the favor. If I’ve been fighting to get back to him my entire mortal life, then I guess it’s up to him to choose if it’s worth it.”

“Why do you seem so calm?” Mystra asked.

“Because you are forgetting something extremely important about all of this,” Lilly said and rested her chin on her palm as she leaned elbow into the tabletop and stared at her girlfriend. “Even if he decided that I’m not worth the trouble, I have you and I love you. The only reason why it’s taken me this long to find addressed the phantom Old One in the room is that he went from a daydream about the perfect guy to a solid fact in my life as soon as I woke up. You have fulfilled every need I have in romance. On top of that, you’re my best friend. I don’t need Order, regardless of how I feel towards him. I have Lucifer to help me focus, my boys for the dick, and you for the perfect relationship.”

“But he’s your partner,” Mystra pointed out seriously.

“Not if he turns his back,” Lilly said in the same tone. “If he chooses to walk away from me, it doesn’t mean I won’t have needs. It just means I have to find more people to fulfill them than just the all-encompassing one. Now, does that mean you’ll be my one and only? On the girlfriend's front, absolutely. You are all the woman I’ll ever need or want. Permanently. If you decide to walk away, I will fight for you. But if you truly want to cut ties, I’ll respect you. Does that mean I won’t sleep with males? Not on your life, babe. I enjoy dick too much to go full-on lesbian.”

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Blackbox Theater

“For those who may not truly understand, the thing about Mystra is, we started as friends,” the Changeling says with a smile as remembers the day the Mistress of Magic sashayed her way. “I was young and just getting a handle on the fact that I could do magic. And here she came, swooping in from the mist to save me as I cried and panic because I couldn’t see anything except to the spirits around me. I had cast a spell I didn’t fully understand and it backfired. I wanted to see into the dark like a Tiefling, but it rendered me nearly blind. I still can’t fully see the faces of my loved ones. If I want to memorize their features, I have to touch them. The only time I can see the detail of a person is when I’m looking at the ghosts that haunt me.”

The Changeling has to pause for a moment to wipe her eyes as she remembers Mystra’s soothing voice whispering to her through the terror, telling her to breathe and everything was ok.

“She managed to reverse a little bit of the damage to my mortal eyes, and she stayed with me while I adjusted,” she says with a shaky voice. “I fell in love with her almost instantly. It started simple enough. She was my mentor and my confidant. She taught me that my magic is fueled by the emotions I feel and how strongly I feel them. She knew something was up with me though, honed in on my turbulent feelings like a bloodhound. She called me out for being interested in pursuing more than friendship. Gently let me know that females weren’t her persuasion. But when persuasion is the name of the game, I tend to cheat because I’m a Changeling. And, more than that, I got Sharess in on it.”

The Changeling then shifts into the male form of her Tiefling skin, Leucis. Topping out at 6’10”, she’d chosen to be so tall to look Firbolg Bob in the eyes. From there Sharess sculpted a body the Goddess of Pleasure described as “sex on a stick.” Heavily laden with lean, working muscle and proportionate to size. All the way down. His was still the same as far as base features. But where the female form was much rounder, the male form was much squarer in the jaw with a stubble just long enough to be soft against his goddess’s thighs, stomach, back, neck, and breasts.

With a fang-filled, dreamy-eyed, shit-eating grin, Leucis leans his head back a bit with a thumb hooked in his hip pocket. With the other hand, he runs his black claws through blue hair that’s closely cropped to the base of his scalp and a bit darker than usual. Just long enough for the goddess to get a grip on when she didn’t want to use his horns for directing. Thicker, longer, and much more prominent than in female form, his horns came in handy in that regard quite often. Just thinking about it had him licking his bottom lip and then biting it for a second. To top it off, his voice deepened to match the aesthetic and he exhaled with a heated growl.

“She didn’t stand a chance once I released the loophole in what she said,” he brags shamelessly. “She made me work for it, though. Don’t be mistaken,” he admits, enjoying the truth of it. “She knew that I identify as female overall. But the more I embraced the masculine inside me, the more I balanced myself without Order. Loving her has been my salvation in a lot of ways. So, for that, I owe her my devotion which is a price I am rejoiceful for. On top of that, she brought me Destiny to take her place when she was busy with other things. She made sure that I was never alone. And every time I've needed her, she’s always been right there when I called on her. No questions asked. So, on that faithful day when she decided to give sex magic a try with me, saying it was for science,” he adds with a chuckle, “I’d have been an idiot to deny her. She brings out the devil-may-care attitude in me that makes life easier. And for that, I love her. Always and forever.”

His smile doesn’t fade even as he shifts back into Lilly and puts her hands on her hips with a deep breath and a chuckle.

“I’d stay in male form, but thinking about Mystra when I have a dick makes it awkward in these pants,” she says, bouncing her hips a little. “Not going to lie. Unfortunately, she won’t be my wife because I don’t identify as a male full-time. She doesn’t want me to change who I am to please her. That was part of why she resisted for so long. Until she realized I never changed at my core. But, since she’s not attracted to me as a female, she refuses to marry me. She says I deserve to be with someone who loves both sides of me, not just one. I get it. And makes me love her more for it. But it sucks,” she says, drawing out the word. “It leaves me stilling there, wondering and waiting for her to decide she’s done with me. That I’m too much work. Or, worse, I’m no longer useful.”

She takes a deep breath and shakes her head.

“But, enough of the melancholy love,” she says with a fond smile. “As perfect as it is, being so far from perfect, and as happy as she makes me when I’m with her, it’s just temporary. She’s made that abundantly clear. She stayed with me for a few days after that, though, laying her head against my chest with I stretched out in male form, holding her. Her way of making sure I had enough love in the charm she made to hold me over. She may not be my cure, but she’s one fuck of an anti-depressant. Which is amazing, because then I had to deal with my Guardian Angel.”

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“Lucy, you’ve got some splaining to do,” Lilly said in a singsong voice as she tracked Lucifer down to the roof of the theater that was bathed in light from underneath the clear, domed roof of her office’s skylight.

He was leaning, half bent at the waist, into the railing lining the top of the theater’s roof. When she spoke, he turned his head slightly to look briefly before turning back to watch the lightning strikes in the distance.

“You’re in a better mood,” he pointed out. “Thank you, Mystra,” he added with a mumble.

“Good move making yourself scarce for a while, by the way,” she said in a normal voice, walking up behind him and hugging his waist loosely. “Major brownie points.”

“I figure, I should try to get as many as I can where I can,” he said with a shrug. “Try to keep you from turning me to ashes.”

“Roast chicken, actually,” she corrected him. “Celestial hot wings. And, you got some pretty decent drumsticks,” she added, backing up enough to smack him on the ass. When he didn’t immediately snapback with a smartass comment, Lilly let out a heavy breath. “What’s wrong, Luce?”

“I fucked up,” he said quietly, not looking at her as she leaned against the railing beside him and looked up at his face. “Instead of trusting you to keep your word when you said you’d always come back, I tried to keep make you believe you needed me.”

“Which is why I maintain that you may be an idiot,” she said, ducking her head under his arm to stand in front of him, wrapping her arms around his neck loosely and pausing until he looked at her in the eyes. “But you’re my idiot,” she told him seriously. “You and Mystra came into my life at the same point. She gave me the knowledge to understand what I was capable of. You gave me the strength to believe I could do anything if I put my mind to it. She soothed me as you challenged me to get back up and try again. I may wax poetic about my love for her because it makes her smile. And I may constantly ask her to be my wife. But that’s because I know my time with her is borrowed. You have always been my constant, for better or worse, no matter how I try to define what you are to me. The only love I have that matches what I feel for Mystra is the love I have for you. The only reason I haven’t proposed to you a million times is that you keep too many secrets and tell me too many lies. But that doesn’t change the fact that you’re my best friend, my first love, and the only Guardian Angel I will ever need.”

“But you don’t need me anymore,” he said quietly. “You know what you are.”

“I don’t need your magic,” she said. “I don’t need your connections or your resources. I don’t need your reputation or authority. But I will always need you.”

Lucifer leaned his forehead down to rest against hers, closing his eyes as he inhaled deeply. Sliding her hands from around his neck to his torso, she pulled him by the sides of his tunic a step forward, making him straighten so she could tuck herself against his chest. After a while, his arms came around to hold her tightly and he rested his head on top of hers.

“I don’t want you to find Order,” he said quietly and she looked up at him, studying his face as he seemed to brace for her to respond.

“He can’t replace you,” she said seriously and he closed his eyes, leaning his forehead against hers again. “But it does make me wonder why you pushed for me to do this.”

“I’m a Celestial,” he whispered. “I can’t disobey my orders. No matter how much it hurts.”

“Who,” she started and then paused as she looked at him.

“You,” he said.

Lilly winced reflexively though there was no venom in his voice. They’d hurt each other so much over the years. She didn’t want to hurt him anymore. Pressing her lips together and closing her eyes, she held onto him as tightly as she could. Apologies would never clear the scars of the past between them. But she didn’t have to add to them. He was taking a risk by telling her the truth. She didn’t want to lie to him in return.

“I’m not looking for him anymore,” she said. “Trying to figure out who he is forced me to look at myself more closely than I’d wanted to. It made me admit my faults and the needs I try to downplay to be self-sufficient. But it also made me realize I don’t need him. If he finds me. If he bridges the gap between us and decides he wants to be a part of my life, I’ll deal with it then. But he can’t take away the people I love and keep me as an ally.”

“You would turn your back on your true love for me?” he asked.

“If he is my true love, he wouldn’t ask me to,” she said seriously.