Once, as they had traveled by light of moon, he had asked Debonaire of the reason behind his abrupt departure from the islands. A note of accusation had chilled the warmth of his voice; he was remembering Neassa. The tears in her eyes, the pleas on her lips.

With a solemn expression, the buckskin had spoken softly of the shadows that had lurked beneath the surface of his bright, sunny world. Darkness, Debonaire had explained, lay dormant in the hearts of all men - but not on the islands. He had sought to remain apart from it all, had struggled to maintain his carefree lifestyle. But in the end, even Debonaire had felt his light heart begin to yield to the darkness that surrounded it. Greed, bloodthirst. Endless cycles of betrayal and revenge. It was the birth of his first daughter that had opened his eyes to the corruption, the name that Hikea had given her that had convinced him he must escape with as much of his family as he could. Cherish. He had cherished them enough to give up everything.

Rade was not the same man that his father had been.

The bonds of blood had never been strong to him; a brittle glue easily broken when the call of Atlantis had seeped from his dreams and into his every waking moment. The warm caress of the sun, the whisper of wind through palms. And something more sinister. Rade was not Debonaire, a heart seeking to maintain purity. He had been born into this world of deceptive light, of consuming darkness. Born of it.

He has accepted now that there is no point in leaving, even now that his days of peace are drawing to an end. Rade is a marked man now; he could not deceive himself enough to doubt that his defiance of Thane and the Lagoon would be punished. From the beginning, he had known that it been a risky and foolish venture. Suicide. But he had been driven to it by the same impulse that had fueled his return, by the one thing he had found could break even the bonds of blood.

Revenge.

It was a blazing golden eye that greeted him on the morning that marked the calm before the storm. Rising from his bed of sand on the fringes of the forest, Rade shakes the clinging granules from his honey coat, stretches languidly to dispel the stiffness of joints. He had intended to make the journey to Luthien today, but the shadowy figure that erupts from the sea disrupts all his meticulous planning. Apparently Thane had made good on his promise, and for a moment the satisfaction of taking something he had once held so close curves his lips smugly upward.

By the time he has reached her, however, the smile has hardened, and the flickering warmth of his mood evaporated. His cold gaze taking in her rotund appearance, Rade can only snort disdainfully through his nostrils.

“Might well have guessed. Much easier for Thane to toss out used goods, isn't it?”

stallion // mongrel // 15.1hh // 4 // palomino roan // reba
debonaire x neassa