Jean-Claude looks away, unable to hold Asher's eyes. It had been for his own selfish reasons that he had bargained with Belle Morte. He had not even considered Asher's wants in the equation. With his human servant and lover dead before his eyes, and his body disfigured and in constant pain, how could Asher not have wanted death?

Thanks to Belle, Jean-Claude had conflated the ideas of love and desire, and believed that by wanting Asher to live, by fighting to keep him so, it was an expression of love. But it was only selfish desire -- the true act of love would have been to let him go as he wished.