Do you realize how easily you manipulate people? Do you indeed even notice the manipulation anymore? I don't imagine you do - it has been second nature for you for as long as we've known each other, and I imagine for many years before. Not that you intend it, of course, but you're beautiful, you're powerful. People see that power and that beauty and are blinded by it. They will give you anything you desire, if you so much as hint at it.
I include myself with them, of course; I know I am a hypocrite. At least I am not ignorant.
Every time things go wrong for us, I see the eyes of our brethren turn upon me in anger or disappointment. Most I would consider friends, but since becoming your second, I have become something more and something less. They put their faith and their trust in me, just as they do in you - but unlike you, I am not the perfect, flawless voice of the gods. When you look upon me with frustration burning in those strange eyes of yours, they see that it was my fault the knights chanced upon us. My fault that the alarm was sounded too early, my fault that we acted on the misinformation of our contacts, my fault that we made a reckless gamble - even when you were the one who insisted we move swiftly, and I cautioned you against it. After all, I am the mortal, and you are the miracle; if there are mistakes made, it was I who made them.
But I accept it. For your sake, I accept it, for I know how tormented you were in the days before you had someone else to blame, when it was always your fault. They did not blame you then, either, for you have always been their saviour, but I know that in your own mind you were destroying yourself for every miscalculation. It is easier for me to withstand their accusations and yours than to watch you suffer silently, your pride and your position not allowing for any admission of guilt. They needed their saviour, and they still do.
And so I will follow you to your bed, and I will make my sincere apologies - yes, sincere, for I am as taken with you as the others, if not more so - and allow you to vent your rage upon my body. Unlike you, I can be pacified simply by the healing spell you whisper after, when I am lying bleeding on your sheets, and the sweet, secret smile that accompanies it - a smile for my eyes only.
You've never needed to use that compulsion of yours, Sydney.