Northstar Vale if you're a lover, you should know:

There is a weariness settling into his bones, one that refuses to fade even under his lover's touch. He is so, so tired of subjecting himself to the whims of others — of following blindly wherever he is led. He remembers now, of course, why he'd done it, and sometimes he wonders how he could have forgotten such things. The path he forges for himself has always been one of blood and fire, chaos and grief, an endless ritual that it seems only his own charred skin can endure. But it was his own — and who in his life can say that they have done better?
Far from his lover now, he settles against the earth he'd once bled out upon, and he remembers silver eyes and a soft voice and a time when he'd made his own decisions, right or wrong. A time when he'd controlled his own destiny. I won't let anyone control me again, he decides, glancing around the vale, even if it kills me one day.