Don't matter if they're not the same people here as they were back home: some things are just given by the very nature of things. Not only a woman, but a witch; not only a witch but the daughter of the most powerful one in the entire Zone - Azkadellia may not have earned his respect, but she had it just the same. He wasn't sure which was worse: to be trapped in a steel contraption for ten or so annuals, or to be trapped in your own body for fifteen.

He had a feeling neither compared to the other, and in truth, he didn't much want to find out.

"Just Cain, please. It's...an honor. You'll excuse me if I don't kneel, but," his scarred eyebrow twitched upward in an emotive kind of shrug. "I consider your sister to be family. It would be--"

Damn words and phrasing and standing face to face with the girl who acted vessel to the darkness that had spread and nestled so deep into the realms it would take years, perhaps even generations, for people to forgive.

"It would be petty of me not to extend that same courtesy to you, unless you object."