“Seri, can I speak to you this evening?” Brand asked, after dinner.

“Me?” Seri asked.

“I miss our chess games.”

She didn’t. Or rather, she didn’t miss the way he stared at her all the while they played. Still, she went with him and sat at the chess table and tried to concentrate on the game. She knew, of course, he had something he wanted to say to her. Her stomach was in knots the whole time. It did not help that it already felt like a furnace going off.

“What did you want to talk about?” she asked, mostly because she was not feeling well and wanted to get to the topic sooner rather than later.

“Nel likes me,” Brand began coyly.

“I’ve gathered that.”

“In fact, she prefers me to the man she was to marry. Not simply because I’m younger and richer and vastly more handsome. She thinks that I am a better man: kinder, gentler, more generous.”

“How sad for her that you are the gold standard.”

“And this leads me to wonder, Seri—and I leave it to your fine moral judgement—would it be wrong for me to seduce her?”

“Yes,” she said tartly.

“Why?” he asked.

“Do I really have to spell it out. You kidnapped her—”

“Rescued her.”

“—and threatened to turn her into a dragon. How is this even a question?”

“So it’s the coercion part that bothers you?” Brand asked. “Because, I’ll remind you, she was being coerced into marrying a man she despised. If that marriage had gone through—”

“I’m not arguing that her being forced to wed a cruel, hateful man was right. I don’t believe it is. Nel had reason to refuse him, and her decision should have been respected. But that situation does not justify your actions. The two have no correlation.”

Brand tapped his fingers on the chessboard.

“You intend to seduce her, then?” Seri asked.

“I’m thinking about it.”

“Nel is a good girl.”

“Of course, she is. That’s why I like her.”

“Why hurt her then?”

Brand looked at her darkly, and Seri knew she’d said the wrong thing.

“I would never hurt her,” Brand stated in a low voice. “That’s what you think this is? You still think that I’m some sort of barbarian, don’t you? That I’m going to pressure her and pressure her, until she relents, and the instant she says yes, that I’m going to simply toss her over my shoulder and throw her on the bed—”

“That’s not what I said.”

“You don’t have to say it. I see it on your face, every single day, every moment you catch us alone together. If I want her and she wants me, and we choose to be together, why would it be wrong? Explain that to me.”

“If you keep her as a prisoner and threaten her with a curse—”

“You are never going to let that go!”

“No, I am not! How many times do I have to tell you it’s wrong, before you get it into your head!”

“Fine,” he said. “I lift the curse and then I seduce her.”

“But why would she agree—?”

“Let’s say that she did,” Brand said, getting heated. “Let’s say that after three months, she’s fallen in love with me, and I’ve fallen in love with her. And I let her go and she still wants to be with me. Then is it wrong?”

“Yes. Because the next morning, you’re going to leave her, and she has to go home and deal with the loss of her reputation and any other consequences of your night of passion, while you simply skip off to the next girl. And this is just on a practical level. I’m not even arguing about on a moral level, sinning before the eyes of God—”

“You are so puritanical, you know that? Everything has to be justified a thousand times over. Do you ever do anything just because you want to?”

“What do you want me to say, Brand? You asked my opinion, and I have given it to you. I think it is wrong. I have nothing else to say.”

He was quiet.

“And if I married her?” Brand said, after a while.

“What?” she said.

“If I offered to marry her, would you still think it wrong?”

She blinked. “Do you want to marry Nel?”

“It’s a hypothetical situation, Seri.”

“No,” Seri said, “it would not be wrong.”

Brand peered at her. “Really?”

“Yes, really. I don’t understand where you think the conflict lies. Unless—”

“What?”

Seri looked down. “If I were to hypothetically agree to the morality of this hypothetical marriage, it would be on the assumption that you would not simply abandon your wife for the next pretty girl. Or keep kidnapping other women to… to seduce. It would be on the assumption of a… a normal marriage.”

“Normal?” he snorted.

“I suppose that would be impossible for you,” she said. “But if you married her, would you try to love her?”

“I wouldn’t try,” he said. “If I married, it would be because I did love her—the girl I proposed to. I don’t care about money or status or alliances. I come from a ruined castle. I live outside society. If I took a wife, she would need to accept… that.”

He looked away.

“Not, of course,” he quickly added, “that I expect to be married.”

“Why not?” she asked.

Brand looked at the chess board. “It’s your move.”