The sight of her beautiful homeland makes her heart ache with gladness, even as it nearly cripples itself with worry. She has missed the Edge so, so much, and can hardly wait to be amongst its warm caress again, where her hooves know every rock and her teeth know every blade of grass. But returning means continuing her lie, and it still does not sit well with the silver soldier. It makes her gut twist with guilt, her mind throb with anxiety.

But part of being a warrior is making difficult decisions, decisions that rip you limb from limb. It's not all sunshines and rainbows - it's hard, and sacrifices must be made. Nyx has had to make one hell of a sacrifice to cover up her idiocy, but it's for the greater good. Her lie is for the greater good. This is how she sleeps at night.

She bids her daughters to keep close to her heel. She has briefed them on what they are to say and what they aren't to say - Oizys' livid harpy-scars help fuel the lie Nyx plans to tell, although the fact she's bonded to a godforsaken eagle isn't particularly helpful. The girls are a few weeks old now, and Nyx has spent those weeks trying to pile on the weight she lost during pregnancy. She looks far better than she had shortly after birth, when she'd almost died - her coat is sleeker, her sides and face removed of their gauntness, her muscles rigid beneath her fur. She'd even made sure to travel the four corners of Helovia, so her limbs look travel-worn and her coat holds a multitude of scents to give the impression that she has wandered far and wide. For all the world, it looks like she's been travelling on a long, arduous mission to find her father - not spawning demon children.

Only her eyes give any hint of what she's been through - they're hard, haunted. For all her bravado, all her wit and innuendo, the ironheart has a soft centre. She feels. Only a fucking stone statue wouldn't have been affected by what she's been through - long months of self-imposed solitude during the hardest season; a difficult and painful birth; having to witness one daughter have her face torn asunder by her own father whilst his heavy hoof presses down on the head of the other frail little girl, a fraction away from ending her life...

Nyx shudders, clamps her tail tight to her thighs, as though that will erase the memory of him between them and them tearing their way out of them.

She draws to a halt, her fillies close by. She draws in a heavy breath, arranges her face into a mask of iron - inscrutable, unreadable - and bugles for her King. To all the world, this must be her triumphant return from a long, albeit ultimately fruitless, mission. The world must not know.

The world will not know.