Whenever you are ready, or if you never are, my heart is yours, until Death do us part. Whatever that may mean when consorting with one of Death’s handmaidens.

When he laces his fingers through mine, my heart does its now familiar panicked flight, bumping painfully against my ribs. My shoulder twitches as if to pull my hand back, but my heart overrules it.

I bear a deep red stain that runs from my left shoulder down to my right hip, a trail left by the herbwitch's poison that my mother used to try to expel me from her womb.

I will sit here but an hour or two, then leave." I yawn. "So very long as that?" When he answers, there is a wry note in his voice. "I do have my reputation to protect.

You love me?' 'Yes, you great lummox. I love you.' He lets out a sigh. 'Sweet Camulos! It's about time.

Perhaps that is because you mistake death for justice, and they are not the same thing at all.

And just as love has two sides, so too does Death. While Ismae will serve as His mercy, I will not, for that is not how He fashioned me. Every death I have witnessed, every horror I have endured, has forged me to be who I am -- Death's justice.