YOU'RE ONLY AS SICK AS YOUR SECRETS
If Reave thought he could harbor his doubts, then he underestimated his sister.
The doubt is there - perhaps not as clear or perceptible as someone who didn't know to shield their emotions - but Aela sees it. More than that, she can sense it seeping so deep into her that she can feel it in her bones. The warning dissipates in her blue eyes but her pretty smile holds a lethal edge.
(Not at Reave, never at her brother. But the doubt itself is something she would wash clean from Beqanna. By fire, by flood, by war - Aela didn't care the means. She only knew that by the time she was through, there would be nobody left alive to doubt her.)
"Perhaps you should join in the fun," his sister teases him with a blazing gaze. Loess was proving to be easy for the young Empath and it felt... selfish to hoard such uncomplicated quarry. Her smile lifts a little, imagining the fun that Reave might find there. There was unsettled Sabra whose mind was full of lightning strikes and Aela still had yet to discover what the opalescent woman was truly capable of. Loess itself had fallen quiet again and though it wasn't hard to strike a sleeping giant, the palomino had been mindful of waiting for the right time.
A prod to one of their young diplomats had been an enjoyable game but with Reave and all the possible futures playing out in his mind, perhaps, the slender creature muses, he is right. Perhaps she hasn't been thinking big enough. Perhaps they needed action so large that it could spear-headed all those potential paths into a few.
Sharpening her focus on her brother, Aela asks: "Is there a future where we might use his gain to our advantage?" Whatever her brother was, he was powerful. She would much rather be the one to strike but if Gale had a future full of chaos, why not use it? Reave is right, though, that there would have to be something if they were to bargain with that beast in the East. But her mind can't fathom what that would be, not without speaking with him again.
She shudders at the thought and the phantom scar on her chest aches, itching as if Gale's magic was still writhing around her fractured heart.
The mention of a bear distracts and then inspires her.
"Did you know Loess has a pet bear?" Aela says smoothly, sharing the images of golden Ledger in the Southern kingdom. As a resident of the Pampas, she was bound by laws that prevented her from stealing him. But Reave - her wonderful brother, Reave - was not bound by such laws. "Perhaps you could borrow him," the striped mare muses with a blooming smile.
@Reave