Why did he remain? After all of this, after seeing her icy guise melt beneath the sincerity of his affection, why did he still stay by her side? He knew, or had at least glimpsed, every broken, sordid part of her. There was nothing left to entice him with, no lie or fantasy she could concoct that he would not see through. In baring herself to him, she had removed any potential appeal. The mask was where it all lay; the beauty, the mischief, the power and control. The haunted shards that gave voice to the mask were worth less than nothing. The girl from the Foothills could never have become a queen. Hotaru had created herself from nothing, she knew how much she was worth. 

It wasn't this. 

It wasn't dark eyes and black voids of pain and suffering that she had enabled. It wasn't a quiet place to rest and a crackling fire. It wasn't a love so selfless that she couldn't stand to harm him. She, who had conquered every soul through sheer, stubborn desire and a tongue as sharp as her wit. Standing across from Thranduil, oozing blackness as she crumbled before him, she had wondered what the love between her parents had been like. She had never known a love like theirs, the tale she'd rehearsed from her mother's lips. A love to leave loved ones for. A love to move mountains and cross oceans for. A love to change the fundamental structures of your very existence. A love to make history. Tolio and Phaedra would live forever in the intertwined trunks of the trees where they had given their lives for one another. 

She had looked up at Thranduil and she had wondered - is this the same love? Hotaru would never be able to atone for the mistakes she'd made in regards to her family, to her mother. But she could live her life trying to make Phaedra proud. And so she gazed upon the Clovenheart and she tried to imagine what Phaedra would say if she were standing there beside her. If Hotaru had ever had the chance to introduce her to the two stallions playing tug-of-war with her heart, who would Phaedra tell her to pursue? Tolio had surely never been the stallion everyone suspected Phaedra would end up with. In fact he was likely the very last candidate on the ballot. So why, why had Phaedra given everything for a man like that? What had she seen in Hotaru's father?

He had called her angel. She remembered that much. He had doted upon her even as he broke her heart, the call of his people too strong against the love he had for her. He had burst into the Foothills, a hellion returned from the lands outside Helovia, to drag his angel from the skies to join him in the ash-streaked lands of purgatory. It reminded her of Thranduil, the beast her father had become, the one she'd known growing up. But in the beginning...her eyes drift to Ashamin.

Regardless of how Tolio had changed, his love for Phaedra transcended the darkness of his soul. My angel. And maybe Hotaru wasn't worthy of a title as profound as that but...

Even the most powerful and quick-witted of queens can fall in love. And they can deserve it.

She was allowed to want this. They could ruin each other, but she couldn't let the fear of the what if's keep her tied. Mother give me strength to love like you did. With that last begging prayer, the most sincere she'd ever concocted, she let one trembling leg move forward. He moved to meet her, a quiet challenge - a plea - playing on those soft vocals that burned through her body like whiskey on a cold night. She let him press close, let the heat of his body scorch her until her insecurities lay in ashes between them. Hotaru lifted her face to bite gently at the  crook of his jaw and tried to ignore the way her lips trembled with fear. What about Thranduil? Her mind couldn't help but hiss. 

Alice cut sharply across their connection, words like flashing fangs in defense of her beloved. Thranduil is not here. Ashamin has always been here. Never mean. Never hurt. Whether that would remain true through the seasons...Hotaru had no way of knowing. 

"Okay," she whispered for his ears alone. There was no hiding the shadows of fear and nerves that were painted plainly across her pretty face when she turned to try and catch his eye. Courage is not the absence of fear. It is the knowledge that there is something more important than that fear. "You have me," her voice hiccuped, not sorrowful but tentative. For once letting him take the reins, handing them over with her own shaking hands, transferring the power to someone else for the first time in her life. "Will you love me?" Do you love me? Her mind howled treacherously, but Hotaru steadfastly ignored it. Love was not possession. Love was not hurt and the collision of two powerful forces. Maybe this was love. Her mother had never told her of the nights crying, the weakness she'd encountered that came alongside her love for Hotaru's father. This was all Hotaru knew. Ashamin had to teach her the rest. 

OOC thingies here