He breathed in an out a few times, still tense, but not quite as much now. Yeah, that had helped actually more than he'd expected. Not that she wasn't still uncomfortably close, but he could deal with it a bit better now.

Still, his mind was reeling from all this, as he was trying to not only get a grasp on his own mixed up emotions, but trying to figure out what was going on in her head--a far difficult matter.

"Why just 'a long time'?" he asked, with an arched brow. Generally he considered being a vassal to be a 'for all eternity' kind of deal. No one could just go and quit, like Etna had apparently tried to do.