[This isn't a new horror: L had, after all, wanted to break their Bond to spare Myr the referred agony of a death at Niles' hands.

It isn't a new horror, but it twists in him with exactly the same awful shock it had then. To imagine his Witch dying alone, in fear or pain--]

I do not know how I would bear it, [he says, quietly,] to feel I'd abandoned you at the last.

[Should a man's death be something he owned jealously and kept private? I'd never want you to see troubles Myr for that reason, but he shoulders past it for now; it is a conversation they should have, but not one to be hand now.

Not with Death's touch still on them, however illusory the death.

He gives a shake of his head, charms jingling, at the notion he's better kept whole.]

I'm not. [He hasn't been, for a long time. But it's not so much a burden when he can think of being whole as an unfolding process, an eternal work-in-progress. Some days harder than others--some days much harder than others--but one still in motion.] We're none of us whole, who have parts of ourselves tied up in others. I gave you those willingly.

[Would you take them from me forever?]