For a moment she waits, as though she expects him to break into an ill-fitting burst of laughter at what comes closet at best to a humourless jest. The moment passes; his expression remains sincere. Of all the ways he thinks her doomed, he remains faithful to the idea that there is enough goodness left in her to make a vow she means to keep. Even in life, even in the days when she still held a shred of faith, her relations with oaths has been duplicitous at best.

It doesn't mean she minds them – she likes very much to be on the receiving end. There is just not a single one she has made and kept at all.

Even now, the weight of it is almost absurd: what if he perishes of any of those mortal diseases? What if there is already a taint to his blood that renders it sour on her tongue? However, she sees no ready way around it, and the breaking of the vow can wait until after the making of it. "Give me your hand, then." She extends her own, pale and cold.