"Athamé. I cannot.. keep you."

You would think that after three hundred years a man would forget those small details. I suppose if I had not loved her the way I did, I would have forgotten. And yes, I know what you are thinking. 'What sort of a fool frees a slave? Especially a Love Slave?' And yet that is the most paradoxical thing about love. It makes a man do... foolish things.

It was for the same exact reason that I collared her, that I freed her. And again the irony.. for as much as I found joy in the act, I also felt an unbearable loss.

I looked the woman in the eyes when I reached around her neck and unlocked the steel band. It fell to the floor with a hollow clank. Far more hollow than the first time I had dropped it to the floor inside some monumental ruin surrounding an ancient altar. I still remember the sound of it; the sound of my words to her. And the ripping I felt inside my chest.

She reacted, much as I anticipated. She was hurt. Confused. Terrified. Believing I did not want her any longer. I could see it in her eyes, they way they instantly welled up with tears. I had hurt her... and it was for her own good that I had.

"Why why why why why?" She asked me over and over again.

"I will carry when you cannot walk. I will.. always.. carry you, when you cannot walk. You do not trust the man who has carried you all this time."

No.. I did not share in her visions, unless they were thrust upon me in my dreams at night. No.. I was not a one to read the outcome of omens. I only knew... the things she decided I should know. And when I knew them... I made for certain to keep them.

"You ask why. But you have yet to tell me what you fear, my seraph."

"I do trust.." she replied.

But I could see in my lover's eyes that she did not. She feared something greater than herself. And she had not told me in all these months what it was. Not since the night at Sarce's house when she'd had a vision of ravens all those many months ago. Not since the night she had decided... we could not conquer this on our own.