Beltane had not felt him approach, but when she saw him, she felt a chill run along her spine. She shook, as if taken suddenly by the cold, her legs trembling beneath her as she took a broad step forward. He was across the water, but the water had river ran narrow, and she could see each familiar line of his face. Blackthorne, the Darkbringer, in the flesh. She could not help but laugh, amused and completely in awe of his arrival. It was not a mocking laugh, and she did not laugh at him. Instead, she seemed to laugh to somebody else - she glanced to her side, and turned back to Blackthorne with a wide grin.

"I told them that I had felt a snake nearby, I did," she laughed, and she greeted him then with her body. She bowed her head ever so slightly, her tail waving slowly before she straightened and grinned at him as if he were an old friend. In a sense, he was. He had been her leader, after all, and had given her much in Iromar. Despite much of the animosity towards him, Beltane had never considered him truly evil. Though her loyalty had been given to Avery, it did not mean she owed anybody her behavior. Beltane could be Beltane, no matter who she was with.

"Ask me nothing, Darkbringer. No, no, I'll ask you something." She leaned out towards him, seeking to bridge across the water itself and breathe in his scent. She felt her skin prickle again, and her dead ear jerked back. She seemed to respond to some unseen force, flinching to her side for a moment, as if struck. She straightened quickly though, and looked into Blackthorne's eyes with a wild sense of awe, a kind of hunger. "Do you feel it? Do you?" Her eyes widened, and she breathed in deeply. When she exhaled, she did so with a sound composed of both pleasure and relief. He had to have felt it. Why else, she thought, would he had come? Blackthorne, Beltane knew, was drawn to power. It didn't seem to matter what kind of power it was.