Duskfire Glacier let me give you my life

Eyes roamed around them - flickering from one side to the other, Duskfire to Tartok, Tartok to fire, and all the while Njal did not let his own expression fade, his eyes to wander. He felt his stomach knot as she hissed a response, though. The mountain man had expected her ire, her teeth, but not the gut-wrenching pain of her complete dismissal; it felt as if she had reached inside of him and torn asunder everything that lay beneath the skin, with only those two words. What home indeed.

She listed each sin of his defeat, or so he thought - and then deviated, and as the name of their youngest — his first error — breathed as an inferno from her gnashing teeth, Njal felt himself sink. He tried to remain stoic and let her speak, to let her beat him down in this new way of her's, but with each new comment he felt himself withering. Crumbling. Where once he was a mountain, now Njal felt like dust before this woman.

And as her voice raised to whistle-pitch, like a train ready to derail, or a kettle having reached it's boiling point, he moved. Oh how he moved. Lurching for her as if to strike, maybe, and for all intents and purposes that is what he sought to do - reaching, desperate, until he had not sunken teeth in to her flesh but wrapped himself as closely as he could. Njal's cheek slid against the strange contraption which sat like a broken crown around her neck, but he did not care; holding her as close as he dared -

just holding her —

because he could think of nothing else to say. And then, as he sighed against her, deflated beside her, something snapped. With the breath came a quiet sob and the sting of tears as they filled his vision; as Njal closed his eyes, his grip became a true force.

"My fault." He slurred, and sucked in a sharp breath through his nose. The only thing that managed to squeeze out of him before he fell to complete silence.