"It seems simpler to assume that the mechanism is the same, for both the future Jedao and his collaborator, but that the price of the bargain is too high."

Sasha had a tutor, once, who was preoccupied with the literary motif of contracts with the undying. She wrote four separate essays explaining that creatures made solely of air and fire were scientifically impossible. She's not sure what to make of the fact that that endless, ancient poetry reading is turning out to have been practical job training. She'll have to ask Alaric again, about his heart: both the protections and the mechanism seem suddenly relevant.