He knows that smile. He's seen it before.

His head tilts, and he looks young. Eased, at least, and perhaps it's the Girdle (he never had skill with Melian's sort, moreso with the one he cobbled out of his own Craft, but they needed something impenetrable for this) or the absurdity of it all that wipes some of the shadows carved in by the Necromancer, but it feels as though they could be in another city, in another time--

"Will you be seeking to ease his loneliness, cousin?"