Overlook our deeds, since you know that crime was absent from our inclination.
- Ovid -

There are crimes of passion and of malice. And then there are crimes of omission as well as aiding and abetting. Some by premeditation, others a mere effect of circumstance.

I had asked but one thing of the seer, after laying her charge of corpses into her own palanquin -- that she give me three days' head start before alerting every city guardsman and every officiating magistrate of my recent spree. Never did I count on her to destroy every last shred of physical evidence and cover my transgressions so completely.

I had killed her guard.. her friend, Bleda the Alar. I had killed two others as well; faceless rogues hired by a man named Demetrius to hunt her down and drag her to his feet. And in the end.. I had forced myself upon her and taken from her what I wished. Both profane and pure, I fucked her.. and I loved her.

There was no reason under the sun why she should have granted my one request. And yet her desire was to exhonorate me, completely erasing what I had done. Part of which was that she would return to her companioned tarnsman.. and forget me. Forget that I had ever been inside of her, furrowing my way into her soul from between her thighs.


To this day I do not know why I had accepted that parting rift between us. Why I had not instead demanded Canjellne of her tarnsman. By his very codes he would have been bound by his honor to accept my terms of duel. And I would have surely died.. for her.


Now.. by her own accord and free will, she had become an accomplice to my crimes instead. And at the time, I knew not why.