Her eyes fill with tears. They spill over, tracking down her cheeks. I brush them away with my thumbs.
"I was so afraid," she admits, her voice breaking. "A small part of me thought you only stayed because you were bound. Because the curse gave you no choice. When it broke, I was afraid you'd just... disappear."
The fear in her voice breaks something in my chest. How could she think that? How could she not know?
"Leave?" I lean down, pressing my forehead to hers. Our breath mingles in the cold air between us.
"I'm here because I choose to be." I pull back enough to meet her eyes. "If you'll have me. If you'll accept a broken, rotten thing that's tasted Hell—"
She kisses me.
It's desperate and fierce. Her hands fist in my hair as she pulls me down to her. I taste salt from her tears and feel her body still burning with fever-heat against mine. I kiss her back like she's the only real thing in this world.
We break apart gasping and she sits up in my arms. Snow clings to her hair and her eyelashes. She looks half-frozen and completely divine. I've never seen anything more beautiful.
Something steadies in her gaze. The weariness burns away, replaced by resolve.
"I can make you human now,” she says.
For a moment, I think I misheard her.
Not only did Rhianelle break the curse and destroy the Rhunhraefn, she found a way to restore my mortality. The one thing I've desperately sought for three thousand years.
"I found the way from an old grimoire," she continues. "The spell, the ritual, everything you need. It's what you asked for when we made the Arawynn bond."
My gaze drops to the mark on my wrist.
The sigil of Arawynn.
Kill the Fae King.
In return, she would make me human.
For centuries, the thought of true death had been my only comfort. The idea that someday my existence might simply end. I would finally find peace after endless nights of blood and shadow, a final, peaceful rest. The hope of oblivion sustained me through the darkest hours of my cursed life.
But looking into Rhianelle's eyes, I find something better than the death I'd craved.
I find a reason to live.
"Yes, it was the only thing I wanted," I admit quietly. "But that was before."
Her brow furrows. "Before what?"
"You." I cup her face in my hands, feeling how fragile she is. "I spent three thousand years chasing true death, wanting to end this existence. But then you happened. Now I want every moment I can steal with you."
Her breath catches. "But you've sought mortality for so long. You could have a real life. You could—"
"I have a real life. With you."
"Svenn—"
"Elves are long-lived," I interrupt gently. "If I become human, I'll have perhaps sixty or seventy years if I'm lucky. Sixty years against your centuries is a heartbeat. A blink."
I see the relief in her eyes, quickly hidden but unmistakable. She doesn't want to lose me to time's inevitable march either.
"And there's the war," I continue, voicing what we both know. "The fae king won't stop. He'll come for you and yourpeople. As a human, I'd be useless to you. I'd be another fragile thing you'd have to shield."
"You're not a weapon," she protests.
