In this womb or tomb - ALL

[Pollock]

I called you to announce sadness falling like burned skin
I called you to wish you well, to glory in self like a new monster
And now I call you to pray

He looks at him—Rodrik—with narrow, shrewd eyes;
He can see recalcitrance. He can see his distaste.

So be it.

He has never asked for their unconditional loyalty—he wanted it, in the way any egotist (inebriated, spent and gold-dripping) would, of course. He could demand it, but he has seen them tear his flesh like a hoard of dogs in his dreams, night in and night out—they are unruly; they are violent and bloodwashed, many of them. And the Pangean king isn't stupid, besides, he has always appreciated the spirited—remembered Sinew for years because she had show him hers, even as a girl—and despised the impotent.
And what he told the God-king, Carnage, that he loved the lawlessness of this ruinous nation, he meant it.

They are the feral—they’ll come to like him, tolerate him, or fuck off into the desert to plot or perish,

Rodrik, he hoped, would do one of the former. The gift-giver can recognize an asset when he sees one. They are not so different, the two of them. “You do that, Rodrik,” he says, deliberate and gravelly, “I’d like to to speak with you some more. Unless you have something pressing to tell me, I suggest we meet after you visit Ischia; tell me what you find there.”

His lips twitch upwards, he turns from the red stallion to the prince.

He nods, his own crude, weighty head at the stallion—certainly ‘boy’ no longer— the upturned lips become a fiendish smirk, unlike the cold straight line he usually wears, but no less hostile. The boy had earned his place. He knew it better than anyone else and while his father brooded over stone and saltwater, he was busy ferreting playthings from their holes—sharpening his skills, skills the king valued very highly. Truly his father’s son.
“Of course,” he replies, and he knows the thing that draws Bruise over the rocky spine that separates the two kingdoms intimately, himself. “Have fun. They have travelled here, but their Queen had precious little to say when they did.

They’ve seen ours,  it is only fair.”

He turns next to Sinew. Like things hewn of iron, they clang and they clatter—he punishes her with his coldness; she punishes him with starvation. They do not draw blood, but perhaps both would be pleasantly sated if they did. He certainly would, though only enough to fulfil his covetous needs; only enough for her to see he could be as exacting and as attentive as Tarnished had been. 
(When they become stilled, finally, they are both rewarded once again.)
He nods at her, giving each of the boys a glance. He believes her when she says they are more—she refuses to enlighten him, though, she keeps the details she had scried out on the Mountain close to her breast. He might even come to appreciate them (Feast, at least) when they begin to show their proclivities to him plainly, as Bruise had. 

He is glad she opts to come with him. He much prefers her near or in sight than otherwise. “We will go tomorrow.”

When, Harmonia offers herself to Sylva, the gift-giver gives her the same stern nods, “good. I’d like to hear what you find out, too.” He takes the apathy from the little golden mare as being what to expect of her, at this point. From the beginning, he has suspected something stormy in her, so unlike the exterior she presents—she has failed to reveal it, thus far, and so she puzzles him all the more. Makes him aggravated—lustful to peel back the pallid outside to get to the testier things within.
That was until she offered him something shinier to fixate on.

POLLOCK
the gift giver