en natt så kall och månen den var klar

If he could fix her—would he? Unbidden, his mind reels back through the years, to another meeting in spring, a day two years ago, when the sun was shimmering on the blanket of snow.. such a breath-taking view he had not seen in forever, and how history seemed to repeat itself. Leyra, confessing her love. Leyra, falling into the snow, and begging for him to kill her. Leyra, crying and pleading for a child.

His eyes closed, blocking out the sight of Aurelia's pale coat up close, one of his breaths coming out longer, heavier. Her hounding and pleading had broken his thin resolve that time, the guilt forcing him to his knees and making him give in to her demands.. because it had seemed the only way to make her stay, make her not take her life, and if it had had a chance to fix her...

Or he simply could've put a child into a miserable, smothering life, and just made everything worse.

As it was, he didn't know whether her hunch that a child would've fixed her had been right or not. He'd told her, another time, and then she'd been driven from the Basin by Zar'roc and someone else (Elizabeth, maybe?) and when she'd returned, calloused and heart-dead, she'd never mentioned it.

Hadn't she died since then, or something?

Aurelia's pale muzzle came to rest by the side of his neck instead, the rhythmic pulse of her breath not disappearing into the cool night but rather beating against his skin, tickling and.. disturbing, because of the way it made his veins shudder and contract, and thrum with things beyond his control. Maybe Kri and Illynx had been right all along.

"Oh, Mauja..."

He sighed again, and opened his eyes—pulled back, just an inch. It seemed cruel that fate would always do this to him, and others; make them want what they thought he could be, and for him to have to deny them that. "Don't," he said gently, but his tired voice said many more things, stop, don't say any more, I'm sorry, it can never be. Still, he didn't pull back more than he already had, breaking their fragile contact. Just because he, for once, had enough sense to break away before he led them both to something he did not want, it didn't mean that he would have to shove her away, out into the cold night beyond. "I'm sorry. I did not think of what it might mean to you." His voice was low, strangely genuine, and his gaze went beyond the top of her pale neck and onto the distant stars.

Surely She was up there, somewhere among those constellations, laughing and twirling.. or she wasn't even bothering to look what her puny, grovelling, pathetic mortals were up to.

Se dem brinna över verkan se dem dansa framför bål
Se dem mässa inför satan se dem smida sina stål