Tensions run high, a fever dream of blame and a dance of politics that Hotaru is witness to. Her heart runs, her blood heats, and she feels in herself something snap and break and grow beneath the icy facade of her Lady. Ophelia had been her mother's friend, once upon a time. Betrayal ran between their lines like a disease, spread from her mother to Hotaru to take upon the mantle of regret. When her Lady looked at her, did she see Hotaru? Or merely Phaedra, re-purposed into a ghost to memorialize her mistakes? Whether the rose lass meant anything to the frigid mare or not, as she watched them parry with words and spittle from gleaming ivories that could so easily be tainted with blood...Hotaru made her decision.

Perhaps it wasn't her place, and maybe it was digging her own grave ever deeper, but seeing her leader face Illynx's mistakes with head held high and tongue still...Hotaru could not allow such harm to come to her.

"You are mistaken by my words, Gaucho." She shatters the silence that Ophelia leaves behind her, and she steps forth, no longer parallel to the snowy queen at her side. Ready to lunge, to shield, to protect and take upon herself the pain of her own mistakes. Pain that Ophelia had gracefully been ready to accept. Hotaru was a big girl, young though her years were, and she would own up to her faults.

"Ophelia rose to her rank just after I made my attempt on my mother. It was not by her word that I targeted your followers. It was by the word of Illynx. However, I would not have alerted you to Ophelia's promotion; herds must keep some secrets, after all." Her throat quivered beneath the weight of the words she orchestrated in silence, the ones that would be revealed with as much might and majesty as her queen's. The ones that would effectively seal her fate, heading out from the mountain pass.

"Illynx is no longer here. She has disappeared. Shall you still desire vengeance...though you have just released me, I will gladly shed my blood in her place. Ophelia is attempting to change the Basin. Change it in ways I sought to make you understand, Gaucho." Her eyes seek to meet his, trying to get him to understand that Ophelia was not the one to blame. A beautiful trick on her part, but one acted as flawlessly as the ice that surrounded them.

"I shall not let you harm her for deeds done by her predecessor. If it eradicates your anger...I shall hold Illynx's place, as her former subordinate. Take your pounds against her from my flesh. Ophelia shall not be harmed, not today, not for transgressions made by the Lady that guided my actions." Her words are hard as steel, eyes like flint as she raises her head to him, a gleaming martyr. She wants so badly to turn to Ophelia, to tell her that she's sorry, that her words and careful eloquence could only go so far. But whatever would happen, she would sooner die than allow Gaucho to harm her Lady. Both out of personal feelings and a loyalty for the matron of her herd that would never die.

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Based off her last stealth attempt, that was around the exact date Ophelia was promoted, so Hotaru would IC be near the Throat scouting for her mother and thus unaware of the change in rank until after she returned and before Gaucho challenged her! :3 Therefore she would have still been acting under Illynx.