At last, a smile. The curl of her lips is a ray of sunshine, reminiscent of the title she bears, and it allows the next breath into Kaj's lungs to come easier. Perhaps whatever is wrong with her isn't permanent, is instead a change or drizzle in her day. Yet she's silent as ever, where previously she would have been exuding light from every pore, chattering on with sparks of fairy light in her cobalt eyes. Kaj did not allow his gaze to even consider straying, deviating from the contours and shadows of her delicately boned features. Awaiting any minuscule sign, tell, or giveaway that could illuminate the situation and determine what was wrong with her. Something he could fix, could understand and therefore eradicate to improve her mood. Nothing is forthcoming, however. Normally an open book, an inked page with no smudges or errant brush strokes, Kahlua is suddenly an impenetrable shell. A statue with a granite countenance. Impossible to decipher, a lost language.

Even farther away than Kaj could have imagined something being in this foreign land.

So in tune, entranced, rapt and attentive to her shifts of expression in that moment, the sudden fall of her ears to the curve of her cranium is a definitive signal to the golden steed that something has gone horribly wrong. He has not healed her, nor has he comforted the apparent offset of her joy. Instead, his words have shuttered her away from him, spooking her like a frightened deer hearing the snap of an approaching hunter treading upon a twig.

She moves away.

"Kahlua?" Regal features crumple, a mixture of confusion and hurt a cocktail drained into his pores and the shallows of his face. Feathers shift in vivid display of his emotional state, though he was never one to hide it from his queen anyways. They flare and tremble against her hide, hesitantly withdrawing halfway as if to allow her to escape his hold entirely. Unsure what she sought. Until her words cracked the air, despite the way they were spoken in such a delicate way. Revealing everything, and simultaneously throwing the king's heart into a ravine of confusion and despair. Had he pushed her too hard? Was this in some way his own fault? But the pain in his breast was tangible, it was not something he could ignore, nor was it borne of guilt for letting her down. Just plain, intrinsic pain. Simplistic in its agonizing reality.

This time, he is the one to pull away. Scorched by this awakening, this violent rip of terrycloth from his previously blinded eyes. Expressive eyes crinkle, half pain and half an attempt to find something deeper. An explanation. Surely this cannot be it? "Have I done something to upset you?" he asks, voice surprisingly unshaken despite the telling quiet of his words. "What have you held me back from? I...I do not understand." Internally, he is howling in agony, because he never understands. He is lost forever in a world of incomplete translation and dead languages, tripping constantly over social nuances until he feels like a drowning man with a thousand water-blurred faces peering hesitantly down upon him. No outreached hands for the confused king. Pity, disappointment, confusion. But he cannot allow it to be seen on his face, can't make her feel any more negative emotions. Rebuilding the old walls he'd perfected, the subtle signs of distress the only cracks in his facade.

Slowly, he pieces it together. The exact moment when her ears had pinned, her face crestfallen moments after his declaration. Eyes widen, and his face falls somber and defeated. "You do not want foals." Kaj is not incompetent. It is a statement, not a question. A shuddering sigh swells his chest, but as it sweeps from his lungs he is left slouched and as small as his looming mass can allow. "I wanted only to make you happy, Kahlua..." it's a forlorn hope, now dashed, that echoes in his lyrics. A potential there for the both of them to back away. But Kaj cannot take this sort of pain consistently, cannot want for his only wish and hesitantly wait to see if Kahlua could ever reciprocate.

If they both pulled away, Kaj didn't think he could ever try to pursue this again.