She smiles in reply to the first glimmer of her true friend since they had found one another in the grove, the threat twined with the nitwits who had thrown her to the wolves drawing a visceral grin to the soggy lips of the golden wench. Their bond had grown vastly because of such similarities in the two, their prides evenly matched and outweighed only by their taste for vengeance and the blood of their inferiors; the simple statement is enough to ease the concerns within the heart of the wretched woman that her dearest Empress has been broken by the foolish Engineer and his stoic accomplice.

She will not have to kill either of them, now, for her friend still remains within this brittle casing she has discovered. Though her horn is no longer whole, and her crown is worn upon the head of a traitor, her heart still burns as it always had. It nearly brings a tear of a joy to the eye of the Lady, but she has none left to spare; instead, she feels the expansion of her heart as hope refills the hollows where despair and loneliness had begun to take root.

”I should have warned you,” says Psyche, and her lips turn downward once more. How could she have warned her? Illynx knows she would not have listened, she would have argued the valor and greatness of the ebony woman and their horned kin; she had been naïve and blinded by the gleaming promise of her own dreams. Her darling could have warned her of nothing on such basis, but the sympathy is pleasant none the less. "I’d have listened?" she queries wryly, her small smile sad and echoed in the faint twinkle of sorrow in her eyes that crinkle in the gesture, a scant giggle dying almost as soon as it is born to the air.

She breathes in softly as the white emblazoned muzzle of her beautiful Dark Empress touches against her own, the soft smell of grasses and the musk of her decaying trinkets, her own unique odor borne of hormones and sweat. It is the smell of a simpler time, an era when all their dreams had been at a horn’s length, the world an empire for the taking, and her soul longs to return to such a period of her life.

They cannot do this, she knows; at least they still have each other. She hopes that Psyche does not lie, that this soft promise that touches her with a similar thrill to victory on the battlefield is true.

"You and I against the world, hmm?" she says softly, her lids pressed closed in delight of their simple touch, ears languid and loosely held upon her crown. Opening an eye and withdrawing from their embrace, she gently looks upon her friend with a faint awkwardness lining her features, though she tries to quickly cover it up with more inquiries as to the state of their former glory together. "First, we’ll need to get you fixed up," she smirks, playfully eyeing the broken remnants of the once proud and jagged crown of the Empress before returning her eyes to that of her friend, her usually devious smile broad and delightful on her face, "and then, we’ll see about this deplorable state of affairs that we seem to have found ourselves in. We’ll see if we can’t find what will make you happy."

She surely hopes it involves restructuring all of Helovia into a unicorn utopia, the throne of which maintained by herself and her darling Empress; but if such things are not plausible, she is sure she will be quite satisfied simply knowing that they will discover whatever it else it may be together.