YOU'RE ONLY AS SICK AS YOUR SECRETS
Svedka falls to his son, and now that Aela has had a chance to see them both in the flesh, she decides that the latter is far more handsome.
She had been (surprisingly) open with him, and it puts the palomino more at ease to see Skandar in his own skin. The argument with Obscene had come and gone, the choice had been made the Prince had ominously said and now the Empath considers his meaning while she bathes next to a demigod.
Obscene had wanted everything, and as Aela glances at Skandar, she sees a stark contrast in the two stallions (though they shared many similarities - burning eyes and a mutual hatred for Tephra): Obscene had wanted everything, but would have drawn a line somewhere. There had been plenty about the Pampas Prince that had been morally gray and Aela had been willing to bring color to his conscious.
But she doubts that they would have shared this conversation. Skandar's words are biting and brittle - with the potential to be as shattering as ice - but they make palomino still her soaking in the clear Tephran pool. Perhaps Skandar wouldn't find it amusing, but his comment catches her off-guard and makes her wry smile return. (Though it shouldn't have, she realizes. He has always been sharp, and he has always been willing to be the blade should she need him.) It almost makes her laugh, like Mazikeen's ironic comment that Nashua's son had been born a shifter.
"What do you have in mind?" Aela says, finally breaking their shared silence. "Decapitation?" she hums along, "Or perhaps becoming something that could pull him apart limb by limb?"
Aela sighs, and meets his burning gaze, knowing that Skandar would never adhere to any kind of line or boundary. Not when he - an almost God - could create them himself. Not when he could become any ruler or leader (or do they dare blaspheme, do they dare think of Skandar wearing the skin of the Dark God?) He had been born like Aela; born to disregard and ultimately break them.
The water surrounding them faintly glows, partially from the stripes adorning her legs and from the healing properties of the water. "For now, we let him live." Aela murmurs to Skandar, reaching down to the pool and soaking her pale muzzle in it. The water glinted and light up where it met her golden skin and the palomino lifted her head, intentionally dripping the water onto the skinwalker.
Would he start to glow? Would the magic in the water alter him into something else?
"Try Loess," she murmurs to nearby Skandar, reminding herself to focus. "You've worn Obscene before." He could try her half-brother, Reave. He was another horse who claimed to be close with Cheri. But the Prince was a member of their own Court, someone who Skandar was familiar with. The onyx-and-gold stallion should be easier to replicate, and if there was more to learn about what the new Southern Queen had planned, Aela had a feeling (if the memories Obscene harbored were anything to go by) that would be the place to start.
@Skandar
