“Are you sure this is what you want?”

She laughed at him. It wasn’t unkind but it wasn’t happy, either.

“When do I ever do what I want to do, hm?”

The pale line of his mouth twisted, a slash against otherwise still features.

“I would like to think that you do things with me that you want to do.”

Her eyes turned towards him and she smiled: “I do. But you do those things with me. Those are not things I do by myself, for myself. Does that make sense?”

His fingers, impossibly long, twitched. “It does.”

She nodded, and looked back forward. The view was amazing: nothing but forest as far as the eye could see, reflected against the smooth, unmarred glass that was the side of his glorious manse, where she’d spent so many years, running in his gardens, climbing in his bed, nothing but a child. Those days were gone, now. They seemed so far away. She was an adult now - a woman. His woman.

At times, that thought, that reality still boggled her mind.

Beside her, his hand moved, twining around her’s, swallowing it whole so easily.

“You know I will catch you, yes?”

“Who says I want to be caught?”

His grasp tightened, curled, nearly crushed the bird-bone finery that was her fingers.

“You would leave me now?” he rasped, tongues rattling in his mouth, behind the beartrap that was his teeth.

There was a beat of silence, the sort that stretches out forever, drives you a little mad while waiting.

“No,” she finally said, shaking her head. “Not yet. Not today.”

But he knew, eventually…

Not now. Instead, he bowed his great head, black hair drizzling over her, a cool rain that smelled of him: of offal and too-sweet rot, of cold winters and burning fires.

“I will catch you,” he murmured in her ear, hand moving to settle on the small of her back, before his lips pressed to her temple.

“I know,” she whispered quietly.

He did not push her.

She simply fell.