The unknown stretched from cat claws to the sheen of glass, and she stared amidst the preambles, the barbs, the nettles clustering and coiling around her mind, and wished her intrepid fears could be laid to rest. Like a strange role reversal, she was now the apprehensive one, waiting for something to happen, waiting for a dragon to descend, waiting for the cavern to swallow them whole: when she’d been the one destined, written into the stars, she’d ignited every fiber of her being and tried to throw away the empty shells of terror and fright. She could do the same thing for him. Her gaze, wide and all encompassing, rapidly attempted to piece together every nuance, every constellation, every metallic, glittering surface and render it hospitable, eventually diverted back to Roland again; the roll of his shoulders, the movement of his mass, the locked, intertwining machinations of his foreboding silence draining, dwindling, waning upon their shared glimpse. Was he unsettled too, grinding away at the strange warren, at the odd anomalies, at all the sinuous, torturous tidings biding and binding their time (and what had happened to their peaceful days, waltzing and talking, laughing and mocking, jeering and jaunting? When had they become warning glances and perils of the heart? When had they morphed from amusements and diversions to dangerous missions?)?

He wanted something – an essence, a touch, an invocation of potential, of prowess, and she wouldn’t flutter away in the wind at the hint of his one avaricious plea, cloaked ambition. She refused to be the trembling opus, the tremulous oeuvre, and proffered him the grandest, strongest smile she had – granting courage, bestowing determination, ensuring him not to worry about her (because she had just as much fortitude as the mountains, as the ice, as the sky). Her head was raised, proud, eager, fervent, and ready, even as her insides congealed and her soul twisted in a pervading sense of foreshadowing.

If he bothered to ask her to stray, she would’ve ignored him. She would’ve disregarded it altogether. Too much tenacity, too much will, too much stubbornness and zeal made up her core, forged and sculpted her very being, her very essence, and he wouldn’t be rid of her so easily. The nymph’s ears flicked once or twice, listening to the beckoning, siren sway of the sphinx, of the registering abyss, of the everlasting trial and tribulation of enigmas, mysteries, and consuming fathoms – and an overwhelming sense of valor and boldness locked over her grace, her finery, a moment where she yearned for truth to spring from her mouth and glide over the cavern, so he’d know, if anything happened…

It sparked across her tongue, rippled along her lips, nearly there, nearly ready, “Roland, I-,” but then it segmented off as he turned away, into the glass, into the sheen, and she was too late. The Songbird winced, lowered her cranium, narrowed her gaze, and looked away as Imogen shook her head in disappointment. She couldn’t even meet the kitsune’s eyes, instead, glaring into the void, into the abyss, and processing the conclusion of their fates.

Stay was her only command to the ivory vixen before she followed the Thief down into the rabbit hole.