"I ... see." Delafonte stared at the boy with the silly hair for a few moments longer, trying to ignore the way he was making his skin crawl. It wasn't easy. He was insane.

'You mean we were meant to be?'

'It's usually good manners when you get captured while on a rescue mission and need rescuing yourself,' Merlin observed with asperity.

'It is? Oh, good. Something I can do, seein' as I forgot the fruit basket.'

And now Delafonte had a problem. Did he want to continue to insist he didn't know what they meant, or give in and hope this ... child and her enablers could get something more out of them?

The choice only took a moment, really. He dropped his arm. "I assure you, Valkyrie, that nothing can get in or out through my wards. No one has escaped since I became warden. No one has broken in since I became warden."

'Making things easier is the very last thing of which you're capable, Raphael.'

'You're just jealous of my youth and good looks.'

The mental sound Merlin made then was a cross between strangled incredulity and polite disbelief.