"You going to break down my door again?"
"Never," I whispered.
"You going to defy me in any way in particular?"
"Never in any way ever."
"Further words?"
"I love you."
"I'm sure."
"But I do," I said sniffling.
He took my arms and moved me back away from him, so that he could kiss me, and his mouth was insistent and frightening to me for a moment. Then it moved over my throat, sucking at my flesh and causing me to become weak and, with all my heart, willing to be anything he wished.
"Amadeo," I said, the name springing to my lips as though the angels willed it, the very angels whom he resembled in his purity and in his seeming innocence, starved as he was.
I lifted his right hand. There too the blade of Lord Harlech had made a cut and now I kissed it with the healing blood and watched the miracle once again.
There was something stubborn in him, something directed entirely towards our love. And how it tempted me, how it drew from me the most complete devotion.
"It's going to be a pleasure to whip you," he said, smiling sweetly, his eyes almost innocent. "You may chalk it up as another human experience, rather like cavorting with your English lord."
"Do it. I hate you," I said. "I'm a man and you deny it."
Along with these suspicions, I saw in Amadeo a growing confusion as memories tried to make themselves known to him and he would deny them, sometimes waking beside me as we dozed together, and tormenting me with kisses when I would rather dream.
"I want you, I want you now, you and Marius both in my bed, together, a man and a boy, a god and a cherub". This is what her mind was saying to me, and she was remembering me.
"I did it for love and for you. I did it for all the wrongs done you, and the loneliness you've suffered, and the horrors that the world put upon you when you were too young and too untried to know how to fight them and then too vanquished to wage a battle with a full heart."
I imagined I was home. I was safe within my Master's bedchamber. We sat together. He read from a Latin text. It did not matter what the words were. All around us were the accouterments of civilization, sweet and pretty things
"They're waiting, aren't they?" he asked. "They won't give us more than a few moments now."
Without judgment, Armand nodded. In a low, barely audible voice, he said, "It's enough. I always knew that we would meet again."