It hurts, to feel the spellbinding weave of uncertainty and unknowing, doubt and skepticism; it's as if the world is unraveling about her, threads coming undone, and she can't tie them together fast enough. The foundations of her very life have been shaken by the thunder of the victor's hooves, the twisted look on her mother's face—horror and apathetic acceptance. How could she? How could she—she look as if she expected this? She was Confutatis, momma-bear, with bones rattling in her mane and the second spine sunk into the gnarled flesh of her topline, fearsome witch bitch with necromancy dancing, tantalizing, forever about her fingertips. The World Eater wasn't caught off-guard by anything; she didn't lose, didn't fail, didn't give in.

Eyelids sweep shut as a wave of nausea wracks her frame once again, twisting her gut, yanking at her arteries, and she leans in fervently against her brother, pressing as hard as she can against him—as if she can melt into his touch, into his strength, into his confidence and knowingness and courage. Her black chirps, talons hooking deeper into her flesh, scratching over scars and wasted cells. His breath is warm on her withers, his scales heated as he curls and kneads into her, his concern worming deeper into her mind, insistent, persistent, determined.

Leave me be, she implores him, a delegation of stern reprimand. Not now. Nymeria doesn't want his confused aid; she wants her brother, she wants someone not in her head.

"I don't understand," the skull-faced daughter whispers. Somehow her adolescent, high-pitched tones have managed to stay smooth, controlled, despite her crack of juvenile despair; she's thankful for that. Nym doesn't want to be weak, not even in front of her brother. Confutatis wouldn't want that. Confutatis would want strong children, bold faces and dark eyes, warriors despite their presumed youth [little war gods.] "—she's mother." Unbreakable, untouchable, unkissable—a god sewn in mortal flesh, death and rot wallowing in a shell of sin.

Breath sucks, sharp, between opalescent teeth; the question he poses is one loaded, a double-edged blade. To take it in her hand was to risk cutting to bone, to have cold steel bite into soft flesh and slice veins. Mother's wrath—even despite her exhaustion—would no doubt be volatile, prone to... lethal measure. And yet to not go, to turn her back on family... she flutters, indecisive, uncertain, quivering with the internal warring.

"No."
For self-preservation comes before even family.
Nymeria did not want to face Mother's wrath. She did not want to feel agony and torment tear through her body and her tears clog her throat and the pain to shred through every cell and have to sit there waiting for it to end, praying for it to be taken away. The girl didn't want to see Volterra hurt, to see them pay in bruises for what was not their fault; not now, anyways.
Maybe in a day or two from now, or a week.
But not today.