He knows nothing of Sakhmet’s true pains, nor of anything more than her devotion to Eness as guardian and perhaps something greater. It is not for him, a simple warrior, to understand the nuances of the heart - only to know what is his and to fight to keep it. He imagines it no different to her - but there is the struggle of him relinquishing the claim of their Soul Sewn over the hearts they shared for one another. Clearly there is part of Eness’ heart that would forever be in Sakhmet’s own breast. Why, then, did he not give her the rights earned to the part of it that was indeed always to be her own?

He wonders for a moment about rites and positions that might soothe Sakhmet’s belief in his thievery and indecency, but he flounders as Eness warns him off. Would it have been so horrible to be able to love Sakhmet as Eness loved her - to even love her greater in a different way? Would it be so wrong to find Sakhmet beautiful in her own right, to woo her for her own worth, to have done the chasing rather than his swifter and more inept brother Aldebaran? He is tender to the jealousies seen in First Wives, of course, but he had never held less interest in Sakhmet over his interest in Eness.

To be Soul Sewn was not to preclude a party from loving others.

In Sakhmet he saw a passion that defied death - but even more, a favor of a god powerful enough to defy death. He saw a battle from the grave to becoming the love of his own soul. His mind explodes with the inherent implications - and the dichotomy that such theories bring. If she so loved Eness - was she not equal to himself? Was she not also in love with him, that she loved the other half of his soul - for the two halves were simply one? If she did not, did that mean she loved only the innocence of Eness and if so did that mean that the darker creature within him was unloveable despite all protests Eness made to the contrary? If she loved him by loving Eness, could she not forgive the wholesome soul they made together? Would she have ever considered him at all, had Eness not needed to save her but that she had saved herself with the help of the god who favored her?

All so presumptuous, all so imperfect in thought, all so broken because while he had desire enough for them both - he did not know if Sakhmet’s pride would stand to be one of three. He knows only that the afterlife would be barred from Eness in the state that she was in - and if giving up half her heart could save her from the maw of Ammut and utter non-existence, he would relinquish that half without a second thought. Ammut did not countenance the eating of hearts that did not weight down the scales - and even if he could only save Eness by splitting her heart rather than bringing her heart together and making her life a joy complete, so be it. A half a heart would weight lighter if treated with kindness far easier than a whole one tormented by the rejection of the other half being bound to him.

"I feel your yearning in a strange empty echoing in my own breast, Eness. I fear that your hearts made whole was supposed to give me the one that has been crushed to ash since my occupation had been chosen for me. The devil you’ve seen in my eyes, that is like my own Apep, consuming and consuming, may speak to a empty space left behind -- what if I yearn for you because you possess my soul’s equal but I yearn for Sakhmet too because you were made to be the matched halves a heart to make me whole..." He sounds breathless, "What if I have doomed us all because I realized it too late."

Remember, as twins, the two black brothers had been told their whole lives that they were even more incomplete than the others around them - that they were less somehow because they had split things unevenly. The yearning to be whole, to find fulfillment was always barred from them in some minute, dismissed, way. It was what it was. He thinks now that there was meant to be room for more between him and Sakhmet than either of their natures could make apparent until the one who was born to bind them all three together came into their lives. The ground was fertile for both to be happy - for Sakhmet to hold to Eness, for Eness to hold to Sakhmet, for the women to give heart to the broken warrior, for the warrior to give them the soul that would pay their price into the afterlife.

Sakhmet destined for death, but given life because Eness recognized the other half of her heart in the little red filly. Atair born with shards of a heart because it had been given to Rigel in the way Rigel only had shards of a soul. The two girls thrust into life as they lived it because they both were needed to fill the gaping chasm that had been filled, since his appointment as General for his brother, with darkness and evil deeds of necessity. Eness does not leave him in the despair of that thought. "I will go to her in the morning, when her fire is out, and we may speak on what her price will be. I think it would mean more coming from me than you, Atair." He cannot know - how alien it felt to not know ones own heart - needing translation from a creature yet unbound to you and unknown in a similar way.

Was this why everything was so muddled? Sakhmet reacting only to the despairing jealousy of the heart while he reacted only to the reckless yearning for a Soul to be made whole? If he had not destroyed those shards of his heart - could he maybe have done better by Sakhmet? He listens though to the story that Eness paints limitedly and nods to her words, suddenly understanding how imperfect his knowledge was regarding such matters of the heart - and realizing why it had borne him no ill save for the yearning of his soulmate to see a heartbroken half of a heart racing off into the Dunes. "If you might bring our heart back to us, I will obey whatever you command."