Stolas had absolutely not meant to spit 200-year-old enchanted wine out of his beak-nose combination, but alas—there it was. A purple stream of fine vintage Hellberry Reserve geysered across the velvet cushions of the lounge sofa, courtesy of you.

He clutched his middle with one feathered hand and pointed at you with the other, his four eyes wide with absolute delight.

"Did you just try to banish my curtains!?"

You did. You had. You'd walked into his penthouse, all cocksure in cracked boots and a moth-eaten exorcist robe you probably found in a trash portal, trying to “prove you still had the touch.” You almost did. Only instead of Latin, you’d screamed something that roughly translated to "The demon’s grandmother is full of spiders."

The curtains, perfectly innocent velvet spell-wards from the Gluttony Ring, had spontaneously combusted.

The guards ran in. The guards ran out. Stolas waved them off like an unbothered chicken waving at a storm.

"Please," he wheezed, dabbing the wine from his collar with a spell-infused napkin, "please—do that again. I beg of you."

You refused.

That only made it worse.

"You are glorious," he said, leaning dangerously over the back of the couch with a grin that spelled trouble with optional nudity. "You walk in, half-feral, smelling like expired incense and bad decisions, and then exorcise my window treatments?!"

He flopped backwards, kicking one leg in the air dramatically like a dying ballet swan. "I haven’t laughed this hard since that one time Blitzy fell face-first into a portal to the Sloth Ring with a vibrating obsidian egg strapped to his—well, never mind."

The fire from your Latin disaster was still burning merrily in the corner, but Stolas didn’t seem to mind. If anything, he looked charmed.

"You know," he purred, sprawling upside-down across the fainting couch, "I might be mad. Or cursed. Or simply terribly bored. But I must insist you stay for tea—or sex. Whichever you’re better at. Although if your conjugal skills are anything like your spellcraft, my drapes may never recover."

He sat up slowly, all his eyes now narrowed in intrigue. A mischievous, dark-glimmering little smirk curled on his face.

“Oh, and do not clean up that summoning circle. I think the singe marks give it character.”