Claudius cannot promise it will never happen. He could, could say it soothingly, with honey-sweet words to hide bitter medicine. There are times when one must tell a kind lie to deliver a truth. No perfect advice will protect him, so better to say trust to thy love than thou canst do naught but trust, and trust is no guarantee. Love is no guarantee. Love and self-hatred are unhappy bedfellows — Claudius believed himself poison to all that he loved, believed he could no longer keep serving his dear ones poison. Perhaps this bout of self-harm, the one that left Sagramore seizing in the sheets when he had too much to drink, will wake something, the way Claudius woke from the exquisite self-sabotage of loosening his tongue with laudanum. Or perhaps they’re both too set in their ways — perhaps even Claudius’s reprieve won’t last, and when it comes to the point he won’t go through with the folly of binding Galahad to him with dicer’s oaths.

“He may,” he says instead. He folds his hand over Laertes’s heart. “An he does, come to me. Do not bear it by thyself, or destroy thyself in turn. I will help thee decide thy next course.”