She can’t honestly be called a follower, but the message reaches her nonetheless. Perhaps “follower” is really a synonym for “descendent”. Perhaps it’s her inevitable reality to be here, to meet him, though her father had strived so hard to keep her from this part of her heritage. Her grandfather hadn’t tried as hard – the strawberry girl had never doubted her grandfather’s love, but Brennen had watched her with a different look than Cagney (only rarely, when he didn’t think she was looking). Cagney had never seen the darkness in Elite, not truly, blinded as he was by love and adoration. Brennen had known differently, and he had lost a daughter to Elite’s war. It didn’t keep him from loving his granddaughter, but he kept a more careful watch.
And why shouldn’t he? Kellyn knew she was nothing like quiet, conservative Cagney. She was nothing like her older brother Vader. She was more like Brennen – but not alike to him, either. Brennen could be dark and hard and angry when it mattered, but Kellyn was capricious and different. For a long time, it had been enough to know that even if Cagney was a mostly absent father and Brennen watched her occasionally out of the corner of his eye, they loved her.
It was enough to be loved, and she ignored what she learned of Elite’s father. Of her mother’s insanity and her grandfather the dark magician. It was enough until he called – and then a dark curiosity welled up within, and she went. Slipped out of the safety net that had long ago been cast by her Tundra relatives, and responded to his call. Perhaps she was a follower, after all. Or potentially one. “Find who?” she asks of him, flicking a gaze over the other mares who have come. And she wonders if he will recognize her; she is not the violent pink that her dam had become, but neither was she the bright fire-red that Elite had been before. She might have been red, but Cagney’s roan softened it to a prettier shade; red at the edges but a speckled strawberry pink roan in the middle. But he’s a magician, a god – surely he doesn’t need her to look like Elite to know she’s a descendant.