Disclaimer: Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is the property of Electronic Arts, 38 Studios, and Big Huge Games. I am not them, and as such make no money from this venture.
This chapter is triple length, which makes it 300 words exactly.
Every time he looks at her he thinks, 'It must be Fate,' before he remembers that it doesn't work that way for them. Not anymore. They fit together so well though, that sometimes he wonders what a Fateweaver would have told him had he asked all those years ago when he believed in loving gods, in Justice and Fate and the Weave.
He wonders if they would have refused to tell him; shaken their heads and said his Fated match was out of his reach. Or maybe they would have lied to him; tried to push him towards a villager or told him he had no match at all.
It was a blessing that she had died, and he didn't care who thought him a monster for believing it. Her death brought her to him and he would cheerfully relive all the pains of his youth to know she was waiting on the other side.
It is these thoughts that bring him here, the only temple of Belen not yet desecrated by that misguided cult. Silently he makes his way through half-remembered rites and prayers, all the while thanking the most unforgiving of gods for releasing her, if only for a short while more.
He lays out his sacrifice, folding its limbs neatly on the altar. Standing over it, he cuts his hand, dripping precious crimson over its form. He smears his face with lines of blood, mirroring them on the stone figure standing watch at the rear of the chamber. Hesitantly, he places one last bloody handprint on the cold representation of Death, pressing his palm over the statue's nonexistent heart and repeating his most fervent thanks. As silently as he came, he retreats.
When he returns to her, she only smiles knowingly and kisses his bloody lips.