"Nothing save what I've told them -- that it was an atrocity beyond measure; that your people were, and are, unjustly maligned; that I promised justice to the living, and truth to the dead." Dimitri's back and shoulders tense; his voice shifts deeper before the flicker of fury fades into regret. "By the time I reconsidered saying even that much, it was too late. I don't know if I could have borne no one knowing. It's too much of what I was -- what I am."

He'd needed it, his oaths and obligations an anchor in this alien world, their recitation a way of sinking tooth and nail into his past and his identity. He still can't reconcile himself without them.

"I've tried not to connect you to it, as far as I could," he goes on. "I don't know if I've succeeded. But I -- I haven't told anyone how we met. I haven't said your name when I've spoken of it. I thought ... I was given the chance to define myself apart from my past. You deserve the same."