Nearly a master of pretenses, of forgoing reality for something greater, something grander, he allowed her the cheeky smile, the growing grin, the elastic grip on his sanctity rippling along the lake. He permitted her secrets, her wounding words, her stinging statements (I can take care of myself, you know. You don’t need to worry.), because Erebos had the same things nestled in his crown, in his skull, tethered and chained and ricocheting, bounding and bouncing, along their ties. Like knotted coils, like gnarled fingers, they grazed and rasped, yearning to explain, to tell, to spill everything from his lips - how he missed her and their ridiculously stupid antics, how he wanted to burn away the snow just to see her laugh as they splashed some other hapless victim, how he wanted things back to the way they’d been before and how every time he wished for those days they never came to fruition. It was an endless cycle of his affections, of his yearnings, of his passions, how one day he could enjoy and embrace everything around him (playing knight and Queen with Asch, lessons with Rikyn and Aithniel), and in the next moments it was gone, slashed, cut, abolished from his sights without his permission, without his wishes. So he either hid his desires or unleashed them upon the world, and she wouldn’t want either, he was sure, because it would likely cause her more pain and they’d all had enough of that. The little fiend wouldn’t tell her about dreams of mischief and silliness, of moments gone by and passed. He wouldn’t tell her about visions of absolute chaos and mayhem. The world wasn’t fair – he’d learned the notion first hand when childhood ceased and innocence was condemned and his world started shifting from wants and needs to longings and cravings, to danger and disaster, to ruin and oblivion. Perhaps, in time, he’d realize, he’d understand, he’d comprehend, why the realm worked the way it did – made the virtuous suffer and the faultless tremble and the innocent die, while monsters and demons went on their barbaric onslaughts and terrors.

His stare settled upon her son, studying, inquiring, trying to think past his doubts and her bitter, barbing statements, trying to entice him with one of his devilish nuances and boyish grins. “What’s your name? I’m Erebos.” There was nothing else to it; but his eyes lingered along the press of the child’s hues and markings, trying to place a sire, a crisp of familiarity, of who Enna had been fond of, of who else had craved her –

Orsino hissed between their bond, shaking his head, narrowing his eyes, threatening something to bring him out of the maddening, boiling fractures sizzling in the scion’s chest. He breathed, releasing the molten, simmering segments, confounded from where they’d come from.

Her phrases snapped him away from the spellbinding juncture, so much so that his eyes, all blue, all sapphire, all ocean and Poseidon adventures, regard her like a harpoon, like a piercing, puncturing lance. Riveted and revered, they stayed resolutely upon her and the statements she struggled to loosen; she didn’t need anything from him (No – why would you, he thought bitterly, why would you require my presence at all - then go his mind echoed), but he, she, still remained, locked and quartered amongst the wide-open air. Enna’s pieces roll away into something unexpected, and his grin flickered out, dimmed, falling out of place, out of the masquerade. His gaze narrowed, suspicious and irritated, like she touched upon something she shouldn’t have, like she wandered too deep and he’d already told the story so many times (and each time still hurt - stabbed him in the chest, in the gut, in his soul, because he’d been so utterly useless and incapable and he never, never, never wanted to be that again). “It’s not for a child’s ears,” his tone, flattened and listless, sparked and incensed, rattled from his throat, safeguarding, protecting, innocence again, stare catching upon the boy who shouldn’t be told, know, what it was like to watch a friend die.