It had been too long since she had last seen her sister in arms, the Dark Empress with her devious smile that lingered subtle as a whisper on her features and the deep ebony rivulets of her hair, the stark whiteness of her markings against the pitch of her skin. If Illynx can feel love, then this is it, the hot pulse of her heart beating with riotous intent against the ribs of her chest, this will to serve a fallen queen when she herself wears the crown of ice and her lover is nearly without a horn to even claim having a crown in the first place.

For any other, the lips of the golden bitch would hold only insults, and there would be no piteous whimpering within her heart for the broken sister who failed herself and her people by loosing her most prized possession to a hornless blight. But for Psyche, Illynx feels a sorrow that is deepened only by the thought of what would become of her, should she fall into the same steps that her dearest Empress had; it are these thoughts that draw her from the confines of her mountain and southward, though she wanders never far from her home since the invasion of the shadows.

She will make no such mistakes again; her heart will beat alongside the mountain or it will not beat at all. Let her sister forgive her for luring her so close to the splinter that festers in her heart, for it is the same ache that gives the Gilded Blade her confident step and the gleam to her eye. It is only in this that she and her beloved differ – at least she hopes. She can accept the fact that Psyche has been jaded against the splendor of the palace of the north, for it is only a home; Illynx knows that their hearts beat alongside another’s even if the continent seeks to drive them apart.

After all, who had found her when she had first come home? Who had managed to pull her from the depths of her despair with a few simple sentences and a gentle touch?

Not sure how she knows her love will be here on this night, Illynx follows a path that she is sure will end with the Empress for no true reason other than impulse. However, she can see the jagged lines in the road that have led to the turn of events that have left her without her emotional guide for the first time in too many years, and she knows that they can dawdle no longer when it comes to appeasing the thirst of the wolves who skirt their doorstep and the shadows within.

Psyche must come, on this night. There is action to be taken; the secret keepers of her fold had come to her with news of recent kidnappings, one of which involving her handsome and possibly coveted new General and the fair Arah and her daughters.

One of the names involved made her heart curl into itself, and spit.

Confutatis. I should have killed you when I had you pleading on my doorstep.

Psyche! she calls over the clicking of her hooves across the ice, choosing a side cavern some yards off from the opening to her usual and preferred place to venture, the place in which she had shared a rare moment of casual conversation with Deodat. Her dark tail drags along the glistening ground behind her, amulets clinking almost merrily against her black hearted breast, the Lady content to pace and call out for her dearest as long as it took for the neighboring horses to grow agitated and bring her to the source of the pleading – though she hoped it would be only the lure of her desire to speak with her that would draw her friend north, back towards a place she had once forsaken.

Perhaps the sight of the ice will refreeze her heart.

@[Psyche]