He feels he is ill equipped for handling the wounds that Sakhmet possesses. He does not have words enough to reassure her that there was still love enough for her in Eness no matter that there would be another she had also fallen in love with. Perhaps it is selfish of him to think that every heart deserved to be near to it’s one as it was desired. She explains, for the first time, that she wanted more than to simply watch Eness live her life - and it is the first real hope that he had for her.

"You are mistaken if you think that you might simply will your heart not to give itself to someone so easily." He shakes himself as she turns from him and instead of leaving, he continues on with her. "You did not say that you wanted more - you said you are not Wife and you are not Soul Sewn. Was that just more bluster about your being less than you are, then?"

He feels like there is something he is missing. She is as prideful as she was self-loathing. It was nigh impossible to think of a way that she could simply live with some comfort. "I am not telling you your place - I am trying to find a place that might make you happy. There is no where you can go - not if you feel in your core that Eness is the love of your heart - where you will not feel for her. Even if you were not there to watch it happen, you would think back on her and wonder if she had her first foal, if she had good health yet, if she had a happy marriage." He uses this to judge if it was truly love that Sakhmet felt or simply that she had never known any other concept but that giving a damn was love.

"I do not guard you, I accompany you. I do not have to guard what is powerful enough to guard itself, don’t you get it? Will you wait a second?!" he jumps forward fast enough to cut her off. "Is she so easily abandoned, your Eness? Is it so simple as to just ‘not feel pain’? Wouldn’t it be better to be as a second mother to her children, to be able to love her openly and be her every need? Wouldn’t it be better to be the hand nearby that defends her with her Husband is ill-equipped or unable? Wouldn’t it be better to do that until your soul spoke to you as well or your heart opened to another?"

He doesn’t want to ask her if she might grow to love Atair too, he does not think the proud mare would ever forgive him - for all that he had heard Atair giving her ample praise and admiring her in only vaguely less vehemence than Eness. "Wouldn’t it be only fulfilling your heart’s dearest desire to bind yourself to her and keeping the place you have always kept at her side? I would have given up any comforts and titles at all to have been able to bind myself to the one I lost… Can it be that horrible a thing that you might still find happiness and give happiness to your dearest love - requitedly!?"