"I'll try." He reaches for her with his free hand, one that has his blood on it too. He knows full well, from bleeding out last time, that he doesn't have a say in it now, that no force of will can save him, that death is inevitable. But what else is he supposed to say to her when her face is so scared, so panicked?

He never thought he'd see that expression on his gloriosa's face. It speaks of something they share that's more special than he wants to give words to, something that terrifies him in its realness. He loves her, he knows that, he isn't too self-deluded to realize that, but he can't say it.

"Albert Heinrich and Felicity Worthington. They did this." He winces and arches his neck slightly as a shudder of pain rolls up his body like the tide. He can feel the world slipping away from him, blacking out at the corners like a badly-developed photograph.