Chapter Text
“Come away with me,” she breathed against his lips. He could taste the salt of her tears, feel the shudders wracking her frame.
“A saint asking a heretic to run away together?” Even now, he can’t help the mockery in his voice. Even now, at the end of all things when her fear is a knife in his ribs, he can’t help but hurt her.
“I am asking my husband to choose me.” She tilts her face up, golden eyes huge and haunted and everything he’d dreamed of since he was a child with nothing but eternity and solitude. “I am asking him to give up Ravka. His ambitions. His hatred.” She cradles his face in her hands and it’s soft and warm and real. “I love you. Isn’t that enough?”