Of course, she hadn’t been in his life as a child. It’s something she would always regret, though it couldn’t be helped. When she’d left, Longclaw had been young. Healthy and wild and willful, and she had not worried overly much that her parting might affect him. And she’d been too far away to know he’d had children. Far reaching she might be, but even her vast sight has its limits. Regrettably, proximity is one of them. He might believe her simply another opportunist (and make no doubt, she is an opportunist), but in this case, she is merely making up for lost time.
At his accusation, she offers a faint shrug of her shoulders. She had already peeked, of course. But she didn’t have any desire to gain his enmity. He doesn’t know her yet, and a stranger having intimate details of his life readily to hand would no doubt cause him to throw up endless walls.
But he doesn’t particularly seem to care much about an answer anyway. Instead he barrels onwards, accusations springing freely to his lips. It’s to be expected, given her unorthodox approach, but nevertheless, the spiteful, accusatory words arrow straight to her heart. She stills when they fall harshly from his lips, the warmth in her features chilling to icy indifference. Her only defense mechanism, the one she uses so readily.
But she is far from indifferent. Far from heartless, as she has so often been accused. Few ever realize how wildly the emotions beat in her breast, how much she works to keep them contained. Her self-awareness is often mistaken for conceit (though, to be sure, there is plenty of that), but without it, she could so easily destroy not only what she loathes, but what she loves too. Sometimes though, they seem almost impossible to contain. Times like now.
It takes her a moment to realize the edges of ferns and scraggly brush that are scattered about them have begun to disintegrate. It isn’t until the faint hissing of dust hitting the earth reaches her ears that she realizes her carefully contained grief had begun to spill over into her own destructiveness. It stops abruptly, reined in by an iron will.
“I know exactly what he was made of,” she responds with deceptive gentleness. Wolfbane might never know of her true grief, but at the very least, he would know she cared. “And what happened has not gone unnoticed.” She knows, and she would respond. But she plays a very long game.
i see your sins
and i want to set them free
