“Yeah, I’ve been running into exactly that.” There’s a brief beat, the words are almost out there, about to trip blithely off Stephen’s tongue: Yeah, I’ve been butting up against the whole ‘I’m probably going to die in battle for Riftwatch long before this becomes an issue’ thing.

But at the last second, he manages to rein himself in and cut that thought off at the pass. He can’t joke about it now; not when they recently received that long list of the dead. The occupational hazard’s a real one.

So, instead: “How old’s your aunt now? You’ve mentioned her offhand before, that she got you trained, but I don’t know much about her— I didn’t even know it was Coupe until today.”