Oh, it's very welcome. Sonia isn't as drunk as Byerly is, but she's catching up fast, and that won't be enough, either. She bites her lip at the word raw, thinking that over -- nothing she hadn't gotten a hint of without thinking it out, nothing she hadn't felt but didn't bother pinning words to.

Sonia gives him an oddly serene smile before taking another long drink from the bottle, hissing like a cat as it burns all the way down. She wipes the bottle on her sleeve and coughs to clear her throat, shaking her hair from her face.

"Because," she says, that odd smile returning, "if it wasn't, you wouldn't have just asked me that. Because you're asking me to think about it. To look at it. Sleight of hand is all about misdirection, isn't it? You show your mark the empty hand before the coin appears, not the hand you're really holding it in."