As clever stratagems under pressure went, this started out fairly well. It was a very good threat, something of her own making to be used against her in this situation. And why against her, save for the fact that something was very much about to happen that they'd likely both regret later (the means if not the end)? Because she had acted in bad faith previously, had led him on. There were only so many betrayals one could rightly take, especially when it was the same betrayal over and over again. She had hid this from him. She had indirectly acted in a certain way towards him because of it. Much of the trouble with Gloria which had caused such problem for both of them was at least indirectly due to this. How much of that had impacted what had happened in the woods? How much of it had led to Burnie being dragged to the Inquisitory?
But that wasn't the worst of it.
The worst of it was that there could be no future for the two of them, no open doors, regardless of which door they might walk through. The worst of it was that he had come up with some sort of solution, not a perfect one, but one with charms, one that they could make work, and she hadn't even entertained the possibility. Instead she resorted to a sort of cowardly sort of agreement, of letting him believe that things might go on.
Meanwhile, she hid other (related, though he still was only partially sure how) things from him, things he had to find out from her mother of a sister of all people.
And now, here at the end of it all, things were about to happen at the best and the worst time and there would be no coming back from any of it.
So then to his lips the ticture of her own making, something that would drive him away from her, that would leave her with a hardly appealing body and little else, with silence and her own thoughts, and deeds, and actions. It was something that would potentially allow him to stymie her plans or to rush straight into the fabric arms of the ghoul of his love, or that would send him back to Meg. She couldn't know what it might do, but it would allow him to meddle. At the best and the worst time for it.
It was a wonderful threat. And a wonderful threat it would have remained if only he wasn't already beginning to waver, if only she hadn't been so strong and quick and errant in her swatting and grabbing.
That was the problem with the threat of a thing. The best threat could actually occur and for the chance of it to be tangible, it had to be high, and for it to be high, well, all it took was a queenly hand acting in an unqueenly manner.
A third of the vial splashed down his throat. A third of what remained splashed across his face and to the ground. The rest remained and he looked at it in front of him more quizzically than bemused, even as she shoved him causing the lingering liquid to splosh about. "Well, maybe not days."