He comes, because of course he does, because what else could happen to make this situation worse but the face of her mistake, conversational and pleasant. She twitches at the sound of him, pulling away instinctively at his voice - a voice she doesn't know but through a dream, yet it is unmistakable, utterly recognizable, and the girl's heterochromatic ears flatten at it. Even Natraj is uncharacteristically uncomfortable, refusing to return Lyra's greeting and instead coiling beneath his sister's body, his whine a herald of the oncoming storm.

"Guess it runs in the family," the girl half-snarls, still staring at the ruined shrine. She refuses to look at him, because to look at him acknowledges his humanity, that he is a person capable of mistakes the same way she is, that she is just as guilty as he. In this moment it is easier for her to simply blame Mesec, to categorize him with his mother in the cast of characters who have ruined her life. The magic of her children still tears in her mind, and she feels herself spitting it at him without much control, wanting to inflict upon him the same spiritual wreckage she currently endures. Her emotions are sharp as the edge of a knife, razor-thin and ready to break; it takes all her control not to snap like a string and strike him right there. How dare he be so blase, so indifferent to this thing he has done to her.

She wants to say more, to spit out her feelings and her anger and her shame and lay it at his hooves - and, for once, she does. Usually reticent, usually quiet, the girl lets her child's magic wrap around her like a vice. "I love someone," she tells the sky, her voice a calm that contradicts the tension of her body, the brittle character of her stance. "Sacre." His name is a whisper, a choke, a sob- she is unfit to utter it now, and yet she uses it like ammunition, wields it like a sword in her swelling rage. "I love Sacre, yet here I am, and the children I carry are not his." They're yours, she does not add, because she assumes he already knows - that he and his mother somehow planned this, as absurd as that thought is.

She steps closer to the edge of the Veins, dark eyes wild as they look across the sea, copper form illuminated by magma and flame. "The Moon has brought such darkness to our world," she murmurs, deep voice calm. She thinks now of Hototo, of the many others murdered, of her mother, of the endless night. When she looks back at Mesec, though, her eyes are not calm. Nothing is calm about her. She wants to strike him, hard, to brand his heart and leave it beating on the floor. She has never been a wicked girl, but today, she is cruel.

"Wouldn't it be irresponsible, to let her line continue on?"

I COULD BUILD A BIG MACHINE, DRAW PICTURES FOR THE WALLS
HANG UP ALL MY FRAGILE THOUGHTS, DISPLAYED THAT YOU MIGHT SEE