"Tell me who I am," he had never asked her.
"You are the Lord's chosen, the prince that was promised, Azor Ahai reborn," she had repeated all the same. But not to convince him, never to convince him; for she knew that to convince the world was a less futile task. She had never needed convincing herself, she knew, had always known. The flame does not lie.
"The flame is full of trickery," was his rejoinder. What is, what will be, what could be, what may be - warnings and prophecies all tangled up and mistaken for one another.
"Blame me, not the flame, and certainly not our god," she had told him. The reader is at fault, not the book, for misreading a prophecy.
But his faith - if he had any at all - was never in the flame, or in her god. It was in her, with her, about her. The fear she struck in the hearts of men. The mysterious power she had over life and death. But mostly death. She was his new hawk, his red hawk, not R'hllor, not the Lord of Light.
Still, he would let her believe what she wanted to believe.
"My power comes from my god. The one you doubt," she would have told him, if she thought it would have made any difference.
She, too, would let him believe what he wanted to believe.
What he told himself he wanted was only what was rightfully his, as dictated by rules and laws. What he really wanted was for the world to make sense, to be ordered, to behave as it should, always.
What she told herself she wanted was only to serve her god. What she really wanted was to save the world.
"Tell me who I am," he did ask her, at the end of all things.
"You are my king," she thought of saying. "You are a man, for good and ill," she replied instead.