you be the wind
i'll be the wildflower
i'll be the wildflower
“Excuse me -“
Ipomoea turns by instinct as the regent enters the room. But the look in Seir’s eyes freezes his smile before it can reach his lips, and he can feel his blood turn colder and colder with each heartbeat filling the space between the immortal’s words.
“You all know nothing.”
His words ring out sharply through the room, and all the curtains filling the room turn to dust. Ipomoea can feel them settling in piles on the ground, even as he can feel the magic and tension coloring the air, filling the room until it feels ready to burst from the weight of it all. He lifts his head sharply, and at first he is silent.
He steps closer, each sentence another step until he’s standing beside his regent, words echoing throughout the silence of the room and the still of his soul.
“Seir,” he says quietly, pressing his shoulder to the chestnut’s. “That’s enough.”
But even as Seir falls quiet, the rest of the crowd swells. Ipomoea watches the regent, searching the planes of his face for understanding, even as the voices rise and fall around them. But if there’s an answer to be found for Seir’s provocation, he does not find it. So he listens, and while he knows it’s not enough (a part of him is snarling, baring bone-white teeth at his own throat and telling him to add his own words to the fray, a feral part that demands assertion-) it’s all he can do.
Until Seir leaves, and Thana, and the room falls quiet again with their absence.
From across the room his eyes meet Andras’.
“We are not here to fight each other.” There’s a coolness in his voice that had not been there before, punctuated by the fading hoofbeats of those who had left. “It is the poacher we should be angry at. Until proven otherwise these attacks will be treated as an attack against Delumine.”
He takes a moment to search the room with the remaining equines.
“If you have a problem with the patrols, feel free to stay here and help map out Viride or identify the animals -“ he gestures at the map and the documents Emersyn has lain out for them, the stack Andras carefully tap, tap, taps against the hardwood table. His wings itch, fluttering nervously at his ankles like they’re begging to fly out after the others.
If it were another day, he might have let them.
“But for those who are willing to help us catch the man - or woman - responsible for this-” his eyes harden, as he jerks his head into the air. “-patrols will start immediately.” And this time, he promised to himself, they would not stop until the woods were safe again.
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