"He-"

Perhaps one of the deep-seeded reasons Isopia had never told anyone what had happened before, was because she didn't know how to answer this question. "I thought I was his only girl and that we had something special, I let him do me and then met his hoard of children and then murdered mine - but that's all on him."

That didn't really have the right ring to it.

It didn't capture the way her lips had wanted to say all sorts of obnoxious and poetic things about how she was feeling: I never knew I could feel like this (but she genuinely hadn't. Isopia, who at most felt annoyance towards how slowly the minds of those around her worked, hadn't felt happy more than ... what? 1 or 2 times? To think she was capable of love of all things did seem impossible); I thought I was the only one- (but that didn't capture how naive she had been made to feel. She, the one they called The Mountain that Knows, and yet she didn't know better. It wasn't just manipulative that he had kept his band of women from her. It was ... was ... so cruel. But even that didn't capture the sinking, shrinking, wanting to hide away from the world feeling it had caused); I couldn't let the baby live (how could she? That baby, born of lies and emotional manipulation? That baby, no more than the offspring of a stupid mare (a term she did not give herself lightly), and a stallion who wanted nothing more than to conquer her? To merely increase the number of his brood? How could that life he allowed to live? The only thing that might have made Isopia care for and love it, was the tether it would have had to its Father. But now that tether had turned from something beautiful into something grotesque, and so had the child); He has a child with Aithniel ... (Would Ros understand the significance of that? That the sun demi-goddess had been one of the first to 'befriend' her, as much as either of them made friends? That they had completed the tasks her Father had given to all of Helovia, that breezy day in Birdsong? That Volterra would just ... just move on so quickly, and to her own cousin?! Would Ros understand the ire and fury and betrayel that inspired inside of her?).

"He-"

That tremble resumed in Isopia's lip again, and this time her mind was too focused on how to word what she was about to say to order it to stop. Her body felt so tired, and in that moment the idea of just laying down in the pit she had dug - turning it into a grave don't you see - seemed so enticing. Hototo had died to save everyone, and she would die to save her own fractured heart. And why not? She didn't owe this world anything.

Except she did. Her very existence was based on it.

"He-" She started again, her golden eyes searching Ros's as if begging for her to say that she had developed telepathy and that she already knew what it was Isopia was trying to spit out. "We-" She continued, hating the way the word sounded on her lips. There was no we anymore, and, as she had learned, there never was to begin with.

"His lies are the reason my child is dead." Isopia finally managed, her voice having dried up completely, but sounding only remotely like her normal academic cadence. (Unsurprisingly, Isopia didn't think about the importance of this sentence. That she had even been pregnant to begin with, given all that she stood for, was perhaps more shocking than all the rest of it combined. It also meant that Ros was now officially not only the last virgin in the group of 4, but the only one who had created a child.)

@Roskuld