Kael was silent for a few seconds after the memory hit him.
The carriage.
The uneven sway of the road.
Younger Eva, sitting haphazardly, looking out the window… and saying it with the nonchalance of someone commenting on the weather.
"When you grow up, we'll get married."
At the time, he had laughed. Nervous. Too confused to take it seriously.
Now, standing before the gravestone, the phrase took on a completely different weight.
"Ah…" he murmured, scratching the back of his neck. "Another one of those things I conveniently pushed to the back of my memory."
Eva raised an eyebrow, amused.
"You do that with a lot of important things."
"I was twelve," he defended himself. "And you seemed perfectly capable of destroying half the world before dinner. I thought… prudent not to take that as a concrete plan."
She laughed, a light, genuine sound that broke some of the tension in the air.
"Prudent," he repeated. "Definitely not a word people use to describe me."
