Bull and Dorian flirt poorly, get together, and make no promises at all. Spoilers for Bull's personal quest and Dorian-related happenings, that there is a dragon in Crestwood, and that Dorian hates the cold. He was raised on ancient and expensive bottles of Aggregio Pavali. He knows how to judge the legs and the terroir, how to talk about each in sublime company until they surrender to his superior grasp of alcoholic poetry. He prefers the brutish ale. It does a better job of getting one drunk.

Letters Dorian never sends to Halward Pavus frame a short story in which Dorian develops a resistance to being poisoned by Vitaar, among other things. For years now, Dorian has maintained a collection of half-composed and unsent letters home, the sorts of missives one writes in one’s head when one isn’t able to sleep.