Forgive me...
The words faded, melting into nothingness like the snow that kissed her withers in a cold and whispered hush. Yseulte gave the mare a curious, searching glance that was as fleeting as falling star, waiting for an explanation that never came. She did not pry.
After all, she knew far too well what it was like to hold a secret close to your heart. Her King of Thieves with his wild red hair and cool silver eyes was one such secret, but it was a sweet secret, sweet and ripe as forbidden fruit. But there were darker deeds staining her heart, too, her father's golden blood on her hands; a terrible, terrible sin that she had desperately hoped would eventually decay and deteriorate, like dry old bones left to bleach and crack in the desert sun. But the secret did not fade, nor was she ever able to cleanse her hands of the lingering stains. Instead, the toxic secret festered into gaping, raw sores that wept an oozing, sickly substance...guilt. It consumed her, slowly at first, creeping up between the cracks of her heart like a noxious weed, and inch by inch, it tangled her heart into a wild, deadly garden in full bloom with ivy, nettle, and dark thorns beaded with golden blood.
If she had been unable to forgive her father for his wicked sins, how could she possibly ever hope to forgive herself?
"There is nothing to forgive," she said at last, sighing softly, as if her breath could expel such poisonous thoughts from her mind like a gust of wind sending autumn leaves away in a tumultuous flurry of color. The stranger—Hespera, she'd called herself—asked about the gods. Yseulte could only shake her head sadly. "So it would seem. It was not always this way, though." She thought of the soft-spoken boy she had met on the mountaintop, the Earth God's own son. If anyone had an answer, surely it would be the boy. She recalled the way the violets and sweet summer grass had bloomed beneath his hooves, unfurling from the frozen earth as if it were spring instead the dead cold of eternal winter. Perhaps he was the answer. "One day, or was it night?" she murmured, more to herself than to the stranger. "The sun, the moon, even the stars...they simply ceased to be. It has been dark ever since."
They walked, for a time, in complete silence. Yseulte did not wish to linger in the clearing that was drenched in hot, steaming blood. In this everlasting blackness, darker things than wolves roamed the Threshold and Yseulte had no intention to meet them. Striding purposefully through the snow, Yseulte set a pace as brisk as her crippled leg would allow. The cold made her leg ache something fierce, but drove her on determinedly all the same. With Hespera striding dutifully at her side, they followed the winding trail of glowing bark, vines, and toadstools, heading south into the wild labyrinth of the Deep Forest. Itzal bounded ahead, his violet eyes flashing and glowing in the darkness like an eerie lantern. The little tiger ignored the young griffin, for now, deeming the strange creature not yet worthy of his company.
Only when they were tangled deep within the belly of the forest did Yseulte finally allow herself to think. Questions bubbled on the tip of her tongue like a warm hot spring: Who are you? Where did you come from? Why are you here? Those would be the polite questions to ask, the questions that would make civil conversation between strangers. Instead, fixing the mysterious mare with a cool gaze vibrant as the sea and bold as the ocean tide, she asked an entirely different question. "Whose blood are you covered in?" Her voice was neither condemning or approving. Simply curious. There were no wounds marring the mare's stormy skin, so the blood could not be hers.
Or could it?
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