Years of training had readied me for battle, but nothing could ever prepare me for living a day without him. I’d admitted such a thing to him before—that I feared being parted from him—but the true extent of that fear hadn’t made itself known until then. The sooner we left for war, the closer our time together drew to an end, for death was inevitable. As a soldier, our mortality would loom over our heads like a dark cloud. Each rising of the sun would be a blessing. And each kiss could be our last.
