Just as the gentle, pleasant vocals had attracted Albrecht's ears, so had the singing managed to reach the pricked listeners of a hellish white creature slinking through the snow. Narrow snout lifts to scent the air briefly, hell black eyes scouring a horizon that betrays nothing. Her superior hearing is a trait she employs for the sake of her sister, head twisting to gaze over her shoulder where Hotaru idly walks behind her. Someone is singing, she murmurs across their bond, playing the strings like a harpist, plucking specific chords to invite the correct response from her beloved. Bicolored eyes lift to meet bottomless black. At first there is an indifference to her expression - why should Hotaru care that one of her flock is singing? But Alice knows she needs this, this association with her people. She deserved their love and acknowledgement, and though Hotaru would never admit it to herself, Alice knew she needed it. Especially in that moment, with Tingal haunting the edges of her vision and the memory of Ashamin's words and Thranduil's retreating back. 

Come, sister. Just for a moment.

Alice has always cared for her beloved. She always will. But her hand has been forced to gentle after the trauma her Queen has endured in the past season. Hotaru can play the perfect facade to any around her, but her soul cannot lie to Alice. She sees the fissures and fault lines, and she knows that one well placed strike would cause her sister to crumble. It is her job to prevent that from happening. Nothing would break her beloved while she was around, and she would kill anybody who stood in the way of her methodical healing process. 

Still, Hotaru pauses. Alice doesn't know the singer, which means Hotaru does not either, for where one is found the other is not far behind. The hound tilts her head to the skies, scents the air, desperate for some sort of card to play against the Lady to intrigue her long enough for this to work. The stallion from the meeting is there, she points out, withholding the smug feeling welling in her chest. She knows Hotaru is interested in the crass stallion, and sure enough, the rose maiden's ears perk and her steps wander closer to Alice. "Very well then, let's go visit." Her voice is soft, and there is no need for the words to be spoken aloud, but Alice considers it a win nonetheless. 

- - -

As they approach, Hotaru's eyes are first drawn to Albrecht before finally sliding over into the depths of the shadowed cavern where the brightly colored maiden sings her song. The beautiful Lady strides forward, golden starlight tail flickering idly at her hocks as she sidles up to Albrecht, a sly glance of her eyes and a smirk of her lips engaging him quietly. "Care to dance?" she teases, momentarily shifting about in a makeshift dance to the tune of the woman within. Flicking her ears she calls into the cavern, unbothered by her own disruption unlike Albrecht, who for once seemed rather polite to leave this moment to the unknown mare. "What is the cause for celebration?" It echoed faintly at the mouth of the cave, but Hotaru as well would not dare to step within. For the sake of privacy perhaps, but also because she could not stand to linger within the mouth of one any longer. Not with how trapped she felt as of late.