'Yes. They. The child is a threat to them. You are a threat to them. This way I can protect you. I can give your child legitimacy. It must be our child, now and forever.' Still she stared at the ring in silence. Like a prisoner staring horrified upon the instruments, and deciding whether to confess. Two awful choices, but which is the worse?

'There are many things that I can give you. Safety. Security. Respect. You will have the best of everything. A high place in society, for what such things are worth. No one will dream of laying a finger upon you. No one will dare to talk down to you. People will whisper behind your back, of course. But they will whisper of your beauty, your wit, and your surpassing virtue.' Glokta narrowed his eyes. 'I will see to it.'

She looked up at him, and swallowed. And now comes the refusal. My thanks, but I would rather die. 'I should be honest with you. When I was younger… I did some foolish things.' Her mouth twisted. 'This isn't even the first bastard I've carried. My father threw me down the stairs and I lost it. He nearly killed me. I didn't think that it could happen again.'

'We have all done things we are not proud of.' You should hear my confessions, some time. Or rather no one ever should. 'That changes nothing. I promised that I would look to your welfare. I see no other way.'

'Then yes.' She took the ring from him without any ceremony and slid it onto her finger. 'There is nothing to think about, is there?' Scarcely the gushing acceptance, the tearful acquiescence, the joyful surrender that one reads of in the story books. A reluctant business arrangement. An occasion for sad reflection on all that might have been, but is not.

'Who would have thought,' she murmured, staring at the jewel on her finger, 'when I watched you fence with my brother, all those years ago, that I would one day wear your ring? You always were the man of my dreams.'

And now of your nightmares. 'Life takes strange turns. The circumstances are not quite what anyone would have predicted.' And so I save two lives. How much evil can that possibly outweigh? Yet it is something on the right side of the scales, at least. Every man needs something on the right side of the scales.

Her dark eyes rolled up to his. 'Could you not have afforded a bigger stone?'

'Only by raiding the treasury,' he croaked. A kiss would be traditional, but under the circumstances—

She stepped towards him, lifting one arm. He lurched back, winced at a twinge in his hip. 'Sorry. Somewhat… out of practice.'

'If I am to do this, I mean to do it properly.'

'To make the best of it, do you mean?'