"I have bled for this land, not a fallen Empress," the cold voice of the devil sounded, replaying the images of every passionless face that had come to his call; didn't take long to open this jar of chaos, she thought as the words struck her. Her ears splayed aside, her hatred towards herself for having reacted on impulse as she did broiling beneath the simmering disgust for those who had refused to love her friend as she did, most intensely her blame she held for the black stallion. It was not that she could not understand his words, the reactions of those around her; when she really thought about it, little had truly been accomplished under the Lady Psyche, but her heart refused to let her brain's gentle prodding budge its steadfast position. What Deimos could not know was that her confidence was faltering without the black mare as her armor, and that left alone, she was unsure if she could fill the gap that had been left in the absence of either Mauja or the devilish Empress. Her frown grew deep and thoughtful as she swallowed his words in silence, looking long and hard at the stallion before her as she chose her words.

"You feel no love for her?" she asked, knowing the answer even as she said it, her head sadly shaking in a slow arc from left to right. Of course not; he would not be so cold and commanding in his crown if he had. Still, it ached, it bled and festered within her, that she could not save the woman from the loathing that had arisen in mind of her as the battle of the Edge and Throat were lost, a final straw fractured to send the avalanches down atop her head. Glancing down at her hooves as she felt the tears threaten to steal her composure again, the millionth time since discovering her desperate state of solitude, she pressed her lids tightly together and let the mourning slip back into it's glass box. It was not the time for tears. It was the time for healing the wounds that she had torn open with her tongue so thoughtlessly, so emotionally, so very much like a fucking girl.

"I would not be here to lead if it was not for that woman," spoke her anger as her eyes raised back to the bitter blue of the man, ears finding themselves lost among the straight black locks that sprung from her poll, the words flashing like the edge of honed metal in the mountain air. "I know nothing of your beginnings, but you will hear of mine, and you will listen to them carefully, for her worth lies in the story," narrowing her impassioned golden gaze her mind braced itself for the painful regaling of her life, the shameful admission that she had once been weaker than even the most pathetic of the hornless filth on the earth. "I was born to the Edge, to a pair of unicorns as devious as both you and I, and before I reached my second year, the rodents of the land had stolen my family from me, left me to their unkind treatment of the child who had been born to monsters, as they saw them to be. I have never been weak. But such a life is no life at all," her words remained of level pitch and tone, her mind and heart both struggling to maintain collection in the wake of the tale, "the Lady Psyche found me weak and near the end of my sanity, a creature of the darkness more so than the proud unicorn that I was bred to be. It was her strength, her ability to rise above their foolish notions of equality and her graceful extension of belonging that spared my life from an early end. She gave me... us purpose, Deimos, no matter how deftly one may paint Mauja's involvement in the birth of our coven. That a war was lost is no more her ill doing than it is yours and mine, the General of the army that failed and the golden bitch who lost to a healer and her dragon."

Her gaze was accusatory, it's bitterness palpable as the snarl upon her lips. Sure, Ulrik had disposed of any blame on the rearrangement of the crowns that could be placed upon the harbinger of death, and her own guilt flickered for but an instant in her gaze as she burrowed her eyes as deeply into him as she could muster. "Are you so quick to dismiss her conquests? The defeat of the silver maned wench of the Throat? Her boundless loyalty to our home, the foundation of our roots? Your lack of empathy sickens me, regardless of my feelings towards the woman. She may not be suited to lead us any longer, but you will respect her for all the blood that she shed for our cause, as you demand respect for yours." Feeling her ire settle back within her belly, a rumbling tiger that prowled and waited for it's second chance to strike. "She may no longer be worthy of leadership, but she is worthy of honor regardless. You demand my respect but give none to those who have already earned it, and for that, you receive nothing but my contempt for being so narrow minded. I will take Ulrik's word that you did not steal her crown -" venomously her gaze glittered as her mouth curved into a mocking sneer, "but do not take me for such a fool as to believe that you were hesitant to place it upon your head or at all concerned by her absence and the loss of her skill; your remarks in the meeting have proven your position in such regards, and you are a fool to dismiss the loss of any of our warriors so quickly and thoughtlessly. They flake away like layers of ice from the cliffs in the thaw of summer, our armies; and that cannot all be accredited to the actions of a single woman." The logic of a child, truly, to blame any misfortune on an individual; had it not been the sword of Deimos who had pierced the heart of the hornless to die at their gates, the very stream of deaths that had brought the wrathful eye of the Edge meandering to their mountain in the first place? She had not been there, of course, but word of such events spread quickly throughout the herd, especially when he and his accomplices had left the bodies to rot at the foot of the valley.

There was a river once,
with many round stones
enchanted by shallow hopes
of embracing the ocean;
water is peculiar this way,
how its life is a line
that cannot bend or change
without the approval of its bed.