The damn dog is snarling at her, saying all the man does not with the savage curl of his lip, and worse still is that all Ulrik does is stare.

The coldness that is remembered in the thoughts of the bronze etched stallion is returned to her features in this moment, seeing one partially shut door and promptly slamming all the rest of her own for good measure. It’s a strategy that has allowed her to live a long, prosperous life. It won her crowns and favors, friends and foes, and yet…

As she looks upon this man, bound in muscle, sleek and shining as she thought she remembered him (how time tarnishes the good and polishes the bad of our inner eye), she annoyingly feels, for the first time in a long time, a desperation for more. Even when he speaks, she hears the proverbial windows and shutters inside herself click and latch tight, the light from whatever sources it poured diminished and hidden, as it has been most of her life. And, yet, even as she allows herself to wall her soul away as she always has, the smallest part of herself (the little girl she had been, that forgotten innocence cast aside in lieu of revenge) cries quietly, reaching out for the closeness that has not and never will be among monsters such as she, and her Engineer.

She had been a foolish woman to think of him as much as she did. That she had let the stone encasing of her heart weaken to such a degree that he bothered her with his cold anger makes her hate him as much as she wants to bury her muzzle in the soft spill of his dark hair. What would Psyche think, the only other she loves, whom she has shown even a glimpse into the supple womanly heart that beats beneath the steel and ice?

Perhaps she would only laugh, thinks Illynx. ‘Now you know why I seemed such a fool our last years together, darling,’ simpers the Empress’ imagined retort.

Mauja and Torleik rule the Edge now, he tells her. She is both excited and immediately shut down by the notion of the Frostheart ruling over that wood once more – he had only failed them once, and he would likely do it again. Still, the dream that she could dwell in the memories of being much younger, much more capable than she was now, in years where she had almost been truly happy for the first time in so long…

She lets the notion slowly be crushed under the weight of the reality that Torleik, who was once her General, was now King – leaving a hole in the ranks she had left to defend her mountain, leaving her mind in a fretful whirl about just who the fuck could be trusted to wield their weapons in honor of the mountain (and the blood it stood for) if not that valiant knight of a man.

Her sentinels, finally finished, would die before she saw them, protecting an army led by a useless triage of Lords and Lady (for she holds some measure of respect within her heart for Hotaru, and worries only of Thranduil and Deimos’ involvement in anyone’s well being). They had battled the Falls, with some Ophelia – but the fools had not kept it. They had divided the herd, they had ruined everything she had worked so hard for - and all in the middle of it was that despicable name.

Deimos.

Her mask curls into a scowl of rage, her aureate eyes ablaze with a rage that almost lures her away from Ulrik, and out to demand blood from Deimos in a rage; one that deepens when she realizes that Ulrik is speaking as if she does not know the Edge, as if he has more ownership to its soil than she – a filly who had been born, wet and new, on that soil some years before Psyche and Mauja were names to be feared (or even really known, for that matter) within Helovia.

But she cannot blame him. He does not know her, after all.

She never gave him the privilege, the chance. She had walled it all away behind her smiles.

She tries to do so now, her pretty mouth curving upwards – “I hate the snow,” scowls her dark genius, and while she knows he perhaps hates, not the snow, but the memories that drift in their pale wake (does she not, herself, curse it from time to time, as she does their Lord of the River of Fate? Is it not the God and the snow which took their ambitions and smashed them beneath Mirage’s clawed feet?), she finds it funny, anyway. That, even now, when he is obviously mad at her and at life, he still shares more of himself, while she stands cold and staring, listening as she always does.

But then, his eyes level upon her, and the smile fades as quickly as it bloomed, a cold expression of impassivity swallowing up what little light had remained in her gaze before he had turned to questioning her. That her child had run away from him with her was even more of a blow – her head rises swiftly, her golden eyes widen in surprise, her heart clenches down into a knot at the sound of their son’s name from his lips, the first but herself to speak that blessing to the wind.

It holds tight.

My entire family – the only one I’ve eve had – was gone.

She knows that feeling, doesn’t she? Her eyes find themselves shut, for they feel like they’re burning in the corners, and she knows what that means. She refuses to let him bother her so much, to drudge up such weakness within her heart.

Kyst, having taken an interest in the situation (as she does any that cause this level of undulation within the usual steady, cold stream that is Illynx’s heart), takes a further interest in not allowing her mistress’ game to continue, having already gathered the mare’s prepared statement, and quickly shutting it down.

Don’t tell him you tried to find him, warns the griffon, her banded tail toying in an irritated twitch (why does the griffon have to say such obvious things) across the mare’s exposed shoulder, no lies.

And, for once, the golden bitch listens – though her ears fall back and she finds that she cannot continue looking at Ulrik’s bronze eyes any longer, glancing out and away into the sea of violet and emerald, amber laced.

The wind stirs her black hair about her face. She feels old, haggard. It’s too late for this, she answers the griffon, almost pleading for a chance to get out of being, well, honest.. But the griffon does not respond.

"I told no one, with no such excuse as our son, cursed into nothingness by the God of the Spark," she almost snaps, the admittance strangely waspish, her griffon preening smugly behind the curve of her arched neck that she has won, "it was not just you.”

Her voice softens, her eyes find purchase on the stallion’s handsome face, the play of his hair in the wind.

”Rikyn was meant to stay. Of that I swear. I never would have... he is your son, as he is mine. I did not seek to take him away from you, or to leave you alone."

She does not admit that she had been so sure her son was safe and sound back with his father that she did not bother looking back, or sending Kyst to ensure he had not followed. She does not admit, either, that she honestly hadn’t thought of any part of Helovia for nearly a week after she’d wandered off, having become almost obsessed with the notion of catching the figure she was sure was supposed to be dead…

…but that was another story, if he wanted it.

She could give him that much, she thinks.

"I would curse no one with being alone."

@Ulrik