Her smile broadens, watching his face shifting subtly between thoughts. It is such a Mallos thing to do – thinking both backwards and forwards, picking the whole thing apart like navigational equipment left unattended. It makes her realize he probably hadn’t thought much about why he’d rejected the goddess, what it might mean, if it spoke to something bigger going on between them. So it’s a relief that he doesn’t pull away, or close off…or worse, look indifferent.
But the moment stretches out long enough that when he speaks, and the anticipation gives way to every other feeling in the world, she has to take a beat to calm her racing heart.
Because this is too much. It has always been too much, and not enough, and Croe is as unprepared for it as she was for motherhood. She has never been one to think too much on the future, but even in the moments she had done it, she had never entertained this possibility; that she might be happy one day. That she might love someone this much. That she might be loved. Of all the twists of fate that might have been, this last one was too crazy to imagine.
”I want to be with you, too,” she confesses a little breathlessly, as if the unexpectedness of it had deflated all her pride. She leans forward, rests her forehead against his, lets her eyes close slowly. Such a strange feeling, light and heavy all at once. Her legs are soft and boneless around his hips. ”I want to be with you…like nobody else has. No magic. No distractions.” Her elbows rest on his shoulders; she strokes her fingers through his hair as she speaks, voice slow and thick with honey. She can feel her love for him permeating every cell. ”And if I…if we get pregnant, it will be a choice we made. Together. Because we love each other, and we’ve walked through fire to get here, and I would walk through fire for you forever, Mallos. I will burn for you until I die.”
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