Pressed and intertwined, hearts beating, Erebos still thought of nothing but revenge. Even as her words clipped over his ears, the refusal was almost automatic. “You know I can’t,” he murmured into her ear, quiet but not suppressed. To invoke an oath that wouldn’t be able to outlast the day, the evening, without notions of conspiring to destroy his eternal enemy, would be a farce. The youth was full of pretenses, charisma, and duplicities, but he didn’t want to give her any doubts, any hindrance to his character. Others, surely, he’d trick and deny and pretend towards, but not Enna. She knew the weight of his strength and the folds of his weaknesses and the silly bits nestled in between, where assurances raged rampant and the depths of wrath, of contempt, simmered below the surface. She’d seen him falter and stumble like an insignificant piece of soil, but he was convinced, sure, she wouldn’t see him like that again. His voice rumbled through his throat, caught and tethered, tied within power and upheaval, nestled against her and skin-to-skin, prospering the only convictions he found worth acknowledging. “I’m going to get him, one day.” It sounded like an echo, like terms he’d spoken over time and time again, trying to snag the power, the prowess, of what he craved the most. The boy nearly laughed, not a prince, not a regal, noble creature, but a cretin, refined by the devil’s favored hand – vengeance, desire, and iniquity. He’d destroy the other or die trying, slash and lacerate and damn until something stopped him (the other’s death? His heart crying its accursed swansong?). He’d worked too hard for far too long to simply give up. Erebos didn’t know the meaning or the notion of resigning or relinquishing. Even if she begged him, pleaded for him to not come home with wounds and lacerations, the youth always would. It was a part of him – just as justice, just as desecration, just as gallantry curled and coiled its way through his veins and soul. His entity would be crushed without the opportunity to annihilate the thing he hated the most. “I’ll avenge her.” He nodded, pulled her closer so she didn’t see the lengths of which he’d truly unraveled, seething and monstrous, staring out into the void, not seeing her son playing amongst the snow, but the foretold bloodbath between dragons and foxes, between princes and thieves, between giants and soldiers.