There's a few things to process and address in that. The city had changed him...and he had been ill-prepared for dealing with the urges and needs of the creature, even if he knew what it was when he'd turned. He'd nearly drowned Wolfe and Jon and assaulted many others in the meantime. It had been him, but he'd been no better than a child handed a knife with no concept of death or dying yet in his head. His fault, but not without cause.

And, honestly, she could have been anyone.

Which begged a few other questions to his mind that weigh with what he actually wants to tell her a moment. In the end, he decides to let the questions wait.

"Back home, I fell before a golem made of metal and electricity. I died...well and truly, just as my sister before me. When Amnos brought me back, the others hadn't noticed and he didn't wish to speak to me of it...so, for a time, I kept what I was feeling to myself. It was Rhyt who pushed me, who asked me what I'd feared to put into words: 'does it feel like there's a hole in you that can't quite be filled?'"

The waves crash and the spray comes up to kiss their cheeks and he knows his words won't be enough for what he's trying to get across. "It's what I was trying to tell you a year ago...the living aren't meant to die and come back. We're allowed to by whim or gods or whatever happens here, but the soul isn't meant to remember something so traumatic. It scars and takes pieces of you every time it happens. What you're feeling now? That lingering...I'm sorry to tell you it will always be there. There might be times it feels less, particularly when you're laughing or loving...but there will be times it feels heavy, when it aches like an old wound...and there's no magic or herb that will lessen it, not even time. That's why I mourned what I did to you. Why I tried to do that ceremony before."