Mine to know, she thinks, mine. Her brain coils around that word. The possessiveness will strike her later but, for now, it just gets her heart pumping as saliva settles under her tongue as if she had some craving deep down inside of her. Unknown and unusual and not at all unwanted.

There is nothing, not in this moment, that she wants more than him. To know him. To hear of his life. To hold his grief. To be given more reasons than she already has to embrace and cherish him and this feeling he's birthed within her. His confidence in her cools any of the doubts she had; shoves them into the back of her mind and slams the door upon them.

"You're the reason we're here, Mayerling," she tells him with a nudge. She will not take credit for his work. This, everything tonight, was because he recognized something in her she would not, "I don't think I'd have ever acknowledged how you made me feel without a little bit of... outside advice."

She laces their fingers together, "Thank you. And Charlotte."