I won't know if I am or not, if I don't try. Worried about me, Alina?

[A dig, unnecessary and childish, but he finds that he wants to know anyway. Wants to know if she's really worried for his safety, when she had been so willing to kill him herself not that long ago. If the tether that pulls so insistingly at him, is hooked as deeply inside her, as it is in him.

That he isn't alone.]

Only one eye-roll? How very generous of you. [He's long past telling her that this too will pass. That she will work through being tired, to being bored. With war, with killings, with watching everyone she meets die, turning to dust while they alone keep going.

In the world that awaits him, she might not be born. She will never be this, unless the Making is feeling generous. He snorts, exhausted and numb, the whole mission hanging on the words of the people he would sacrifice in the blink of an eye. And on Alina, who could have been everything, but she made a different choice.

One he hadn't contemplated in centuries.] For you, I will hope for the same.

[And prepare for the eventual outcome of betrayal and broken bodies on the ground.]