The way Josh calls him that ("My dearest, Alecto," he'd often murmur and what a blessed thing for a man to say if he had to say anything at all) always makes Alecto swoon, leaning towards him naturally like a flower facing the sun. I can't resist him, Alecto thinks, I'd willingly follow him to the ends of the earth, the very deepest parts of the sea if he so wished.

“Oh,” he said, a breathless and content sigh, the gentle seawind swirling about him, lifting his shawl like the flutter of feathered wings, “I was just thinking we ought to get married. Don’t you?”