As passionate and sure as her declarations might have been, Meg didn’t know shit.

Moment by moment the lesson was being bashed into her skull and she could only stand there and take it. She spoke of the Gods of Helovia, but what did she really know of them? She had stood in the presence of the Sun God several times as he talked to other people, and the other three she had spotted once, from a distance, at the beginning of this horrid shit-show. She didn’t even know which herds the others claimed as their own. As for the other herds? The only members of those she knew (except for her strange run-in with Mauja) were only because they had once lived in the Throat. She hadnever been more out of her depth.

The little warhawk was held transfixed in the mismatched gaze of the White Queen. Though heart and mind cried out for Megaera to do something, to say something, there was no rebuttal that she could make to Ophelia’s lecture. All of her points felt like they should make logical sense but they all felt so very wrong. ”You trust too easily in gods and herds…” but what was Megaera without Dragon’s Throat? What was her might without the Sun God’s magic? What was her worth without Gaucho’s trust? She was no longer a child in the measure of years but now she felt like one all the same. Here in the pantheon of Kings and Gods and Justice, she was an ignorant foot-soldier.

When she felt Gaucho’s nose upon her shoulder, it seemed like a confirmation of her words, a gesture of approval and praise, and even of that is how it was meant, all that good feeling was melted away when she felt the strange slither of the snake. The mare jerked her head around, finally breaking from Ophelia’s gaze, to see Mara slid across her own shoulders and all that incited was a horrid dread that she had never before experienced. Was he giving up? For Gaucho to part from his companion, who for the moment was also his eyes… What other explanation could there be? She stared up at the stallion, for once stunned into silence

When Gaucho spoke, he seemed as calm as could be under the circumstances, and he called for a gathering of evidence, evidence that the others had been pointing in his direction. Would he really submit himself to the whims of this eclectic tribunal, when surely there was some other explanation, some other culprit that they seemed to have no interest in finding? Megaera had suggested calling the Gods but to have the Sun King and Ice Queen agree with her made that seem the worst decision, like she had expedited a hasty judgment against her own argument.

What could this soldier do but obey? What could this spitfire do but hold her tongue? All her life seemed to shrink around her, all she knew how to do was fight but that door had been slammed in her face.

Stand your ground, girl!

The echo of her father’s voice was replaced by Gaucho’s rumble, and she obeyed.

The confusion, the plea, fell away from her face and only a grim determination replaced it. She had to trust, In her Sultan, in her God, in herself to go down fighting but only if the decision went against them. Her body retracted to, to stand at Gaucho’s side, straight, tall (as much as she could be among these giants), and draped in the steel snake.