She enjoys the depth of his interest, how his eyes trail the impassive lines of her well trained mask of a face and his ears flit atop his crown to catch each word and intonation that falls from her lips. It makes the conversation much like a game, one that presses her to hold her guises in the face of a challenge and to bend her words with the grace and adeptness that she has honed her entire life. To feed him scraps of her wealth of knowledge was an aspect of the game she particularly relished in; she wanted him to learn of the world he was in, but she also knew that to be perceived as entirely forthcoming is not in her favor – she herself felt disdain towards leaders she had met in the past who told of all their threads to any who called themselves friend, knowing from her own heart that not all words are true and that not a soul can truly be trusted.

He inquires more of the darkness, coating her mind in the bleary, dreamlike things she can remember of her time among the wraiths and the frantic days before it all had taken its turn for the worse. Her ears twitch unbidden against the heavy weight of the thoughts that sweep her, though her golden eyes do not falter and her smile remains, for the most, intact.

It is the past. She was stronger for all that had come to pass and had, once again, proved her resilience in the face of shadow and massacre.

"Most," she says, delving into what she knows of the days that had passed unseen and those that had come after she had been healed in the depths of the Heart, "none expected it and few knew what to do when it came to pass. A cure and a place of safety was found in Helovia’s Heart some time after the first fell to the disease, deep beneath the earth; I believe the hole is still there, if you wish to see where we all hid like frightened rabbits."

She does not tell him that she was once one of the beasts, or that she had been saved by one of her enemies and that the truth of it all had kept her from lashing out as viciously as she had desired when her requests of friendship had been returned with a resolute no rather than the Edge’s quivering, “we shall see.” That Midas had been bold enough to completely refuse her spoke volumes of his character, and that of his kin; they were distrusting by nature, and that would keep them alive, so long as they never wrongfully placed their faith in a weak backed ally. She figures they already are – having been from the sands of the south, Midas would surely seek them out in allegiance if the herd was worthy of mention in any way, something that might prove to be a weak link if the king of the dunes was lost as Thranduil said and Kri was never to return as the bitch deeply hoped.

He elaborates more on this most thrilling of details, her interest in the matter evident in the way her eyes shine with the keen glow of a cougar laying low and watching its prey in the grass, the subtle twitching in her dock as the thrill of a potential asset to her nefarious schemes is slipped into dark rimmed ears. He says that the man remembers nothing – which makes her lips curve almost viciously, white teeth clenching together in the restrained lust to yelp her pleasure into the skies, but he also says that the others seek to save the brute from his wretched, emptied mind.
"Mmm," she croons, her eyes growing distant as she wonders what to make of all this information, whether she should send out her wolves to tail the weakened buck or if she should see what is born of his lost mind, what all lies behind a broken man and the herd he had abandoned; she decides to send some of her more astute gatherers of knowledge out to the south, to see what all can be learned of that nest of vultures and sparrows.

Golden eyes trace the expression that crosses the man at the realization that she would not argue with him about the foundations of her guise, that she openly wore a mask in order to appease the minds of the other rulers in the land. She could do nothing to change what she had already done, faces immediately brought to mind that wandered the earth and knew of her rancorous heart – one of whom was the Queen of the Edge, who still sought to trust the golden wench despite the disastrous way in which they had first met that day on the frozen riverbed – and while she could not change the past, she could slip her pawns and rooks about all the same, hiding the darkness of their hearts behind the pure, innocent silks of her gentler kin. Lena, Roland, perhaps even Thranduil – they are all lace in comparison to the oily pelt of the Plague, and they will serve her well in their kindness and foolish notions that all are created equal.

She does not explain this to him. Let the man figure it out on his own – an additional facet to the game they play. She listens to his retort with raised ears and the slightest of crinkling around her eyes as she smiles. "Darling," she says with a sweet giggle rising from her lips, "you would not believe how deeply the notions of peace have seeped into some hearts." She speaks, of course, of the Edge, who surely was eager to see a friendship rise between the wicked northern land if only for the hope that it would bring an end to the blood shed, reign in an era of that golden, putrid lie that they spent so much time chasing; she had seen Kahlua’s face as she spoke of her philosophies, the way of life that she sought with this new mask of neutrality worn over age old hates that, if she had done all as she had planned, would now be viewed as a skeleton buried deep in her closet rather than a set of gleaming blades as they truly were.

A time of peace they will have – her motives can drag outwards past her own life, so long as she tells her successors the ultimate goal of this path, and it will always end in the favor of her dreams.

He agrees to the job she asks him to assume, and with a smile and a flip of her dark locks, she offers him his first task. "Seeing as you are talented enough to earn entry into the Edge, perhaps you could try your luck to the south," she muses aloud, "I am afraid I know very little of the Throat and what has come to pass since the lifting of the shadow. Others will come with you, if you wish – just ask it of them. But I do not resent a man who does things on his own."