Perhaps it would have been a kinder fate, for such a thing to be true. Instead, she whirled on him, a typhoon, a goddess of knives and blades and valor skinning him alive. They shred and grate, until the flesh of his body gives way, revealing the tender meat of his heart. She sinks her teeth without regret into the thick of it, and he thinks to himself that he can't survive this. Surely he has faced too much, to withstand the force of pain his own family seeks to award upon him like a gleaming medal of worthlessness. He marches to his fate like a soldier, but his face falls to stone. He had suffered so much, in so few a span of years. He had praised the ground his sister walked on, had cradled her and winced with every bruise caused by gangly legs and over-eager tendencies. She had loved him, and he her, in the way that trees grow together. Slow, purposeful. Now, she was ripping apart seams that had long since grown together, leaving him scooped out, hollow, with a thousand missing parts he could never deem to regrow alone.

Her tears salt the length of his wounds, and her words are shrapnel following the explosion of her anger. He does not understand. What is she speaking of? What has he done? Cera would never have led her like a lamb to slaughter, and it is unthinkable to deem him capable of doing anything of the sort to little Ryuu. And yes...maybe, in the dark of the night, alone with his thoughts...maybe...maybe he had thought that he could be a father to Ryuu. But she tore that thought from his head, searing him along the way, and showed him how depraved he was to think such a thing.

Ranjiri's dissolution into despair leaves him broken, and he dimly wonders in some far-off headspace how he can possibly bear to stand.

It's all you've ever done. Lived on. It is your own personal torture, and so you bear it.

Ilaria is a sudden flurry of sound and motion, her tail is violently puffed, her claws distended and teeth gnashing. A wild array of sounds colors her teeth and lips on their passing, but she dare not leave Cera's poll to express her vivid betrayal. "Ilaria." His beloved is quieted immediately, but her eyes burn with a sudden, intense hatred in her silence. Her loyalties lay solely with Cera, and though her love often extended to others, she was biased in her reactions. Retreating to his shoulders, she projected as much comfort and love as she could, soothing over old scars and new wounds with a lingering air of panic. How much more could her Prince take?

Dull emeralds turned from the pits of his face to stare upon his baby sister. It hurt to want to move forward, embrace her. To know she would rebuff him. His tears had been shed far too long ago, in a past swamped by his own sorrows. He wished he could reclaim them if only for a moment, then realized it likely would only hurt Ranjiri more to see him so distraught.

"I know he is not my son. I apologize, perhaps I was too...forward." His words resonate as hollow as he feels, barren. Numb. Aurelia's countenance is clear enough in his head, and he realizes what has occurred. Though he cannot understand his sister's sudden fury with him. Had Aurelia somehow lied? Deceived him, as well? What had happened to make Ranjiri turn on him with such venom?

"Her name is Aurelia. And if you still trust my word, I give it on the account that I never claimed Ryuu was mine. I have too much familiarity with being an adopted, ragtag son in a perfect family to ever think that would be fair or believable." And now it is his turn for venom, and he levels her with the full weight of all those years of never fitting in, of striving to live up to the bar Hototo and Ranjiri had set impossibly high for him. She would never understand. Never. Cera would never have done the same to Ryuu, was grateful his own visage was similar enough to his father's to fool others often enough. No, he would never wish that disassociation and bitterness upon the already world-weary foal.

"She is his real mother. She abandoned him, and that is why you found him. He has a sister, though I'm not sure of her name. I never told you because she claimed she would not come to see him, did not want to. Told me that she desired for him to grow faithfully believing you sired him. Why would I trouble your mind with such knowledge, when it would only serve to cause you worry over something I'd thought would never happen?" He is weary, but he remains on her scale, awaiting judgment that he does not think she is fit to give. His bones are too heavy to account for the well-meaning of his supposed sins.

Where had he gone so wrong?

"I have been busy with the bridge, with Gaucho's quest, with patrols and forging...even if I'd sought to tell you, where could I have found the time and privacy?" Old wind echoes in his words, and he wonders if this was how Midas felt all those years ago, when facing the explosive fire that used to fill Cera to the brim. His wings hang low, brushing the sands, shoulders low and head even more so. Defeated. Something had snapped, like an old rubber band stretched too far one too many times. Mere threads had snapped him back together, those past few incidents, but he felt as if he could not recover from this one. Not easily. Not after hearing her hiss that Ryuu could never be his son. That he could never be a father to the boy he had truthfully helped raise.

You break everything you touch.

Her words trail off into a choke, and he assumes the worst. "You can't do it if you have to protect him from me, too?" Cynical. Bitter. Broken.

He'd lost everything. Again.

Everything but the sand beneath his hooves. The Throat had never wronged him. It had always been a place of solace, a haven to return to. An empty land large enough to hold the expanse of his mistakes.