"What?" Kagome asked him, her voice suddenly hoarse. She was certain she hadn't heard him correctly; there was no other explanation for the words that so suddenly fell from his lips.

His lips thinned but he didn't attempt to retract his words. "It was never my intention to tell you what happened," he said, his tone light in spite of what he'd just said.

"So you were just going to what? Enact your plan and not tell me all of the details?" She put her hands on her hips, not bothering to hide her irritation. "You can't just do that, Sesshomaru, and expect it to change everything!"

Sesshomaru exhaled. "So I am learning," he conceded. After a moment, he added, "I did not think you would agree to it."

She digested that, accepting that was probably the closest she would get to an apology—for now. She put a hand on his arm. "Tell me what happened, Sesshomaru. All of it. We'll work out a plan together after I know what is supposed to happen."

She decided to set aside the comment he'd made for now about her turning from InuYasha to Sesshomaru. That, she decided, could wait until after she'd heard the truth.

He was silent for a moment before he finally said, "I cannot tell you everything, Kagome." He held up a hand at her protest. "I cannot," he stressed. "I made a promise."

"To who?" She gaped at him.

His smile was sardonic. "To you. When I found you that night." He heard her gasp and nodded. "But I will tell you what I can, Kagome, that would not break that promise."

I made him promise? She gasped. "Why?" At his confusion, she elaborated, "Why did I make you promise?"

This whole time, she'd thought he'd been operating under his own beliefs, but to find that she was the reason he'd couldn't had her flabbergasted.

"I don't know," he admitted easily, shrugging off her astonishment. "You never explained and, given your condition, I did not think to press. You simply told me that it would change things and that was something you feared might keep you from returning."

Kagome digested that. "But you're trying to change something," she pointed out. "Aren't you?"

He nodded. "So were you. Just not in the way you are thinking. The version of you I met that night knew you must return. Power like yours is too great for the world you live in here. You were never meant to stay here where it would do little good for the world here as it is now."

Her mind spun but she couldn't seem to focus. "But then..." She hesitated. "I don't understand what's going on."

"You must return to the past, Kagome, and change it. It is what you were born to do." He twirled the wedding ring on his finger. "You believed this, too, in the end. It was your presence that changed the outcome of yokai."

She processed that. "And you want to change it back," she whispered, realizing his aim. "So that this time, yokai survive."

As he nodded, she pressed on, "But what does that have to do with my marriage to InuYasha?"

"Because if you marry him, you voluntarily relinquish your powers and in the end, you will die without having changed anything, Kagome."

His words shook her to her very foundation.