The brief respite that they had found in one another was broken all too quickly. No sooner had Kvothe spoken than the spotted bachelor began to pull away from her, a distance greater than any physical measurement cleaving them apart. And though her rejection had come first, the red mare was surprised to find how much it hurt when Tyr turned away. How much it hurt to see the lines of his face— only moments ago furrowed with concern and something more— smooth into a remote and expressionless mask. When he looked at her that way, nothing remained of the kind stranger whom she’d come to care for; nothing remained of him that was hers. A sharp pang rippled through her insides, and the slender chestnut reached for him placatingly, wanting to press her muzzle to the warmth of his skin again.

But Tyr was not hers— and she, and she…

I want to keep you safe. And… I want to raise this child together. Like we should have done the last.

—and she wasn’t his. But the certainty of this truth had faded somewhere along the way— perhaps when Tyr had returned to her, when he’d claimed her for the second time, or even in this moment of confession. Either way, Kvothe felt the stallion’s need and pain flood into her, as if they shared one body, one heart. As if she had been marked in a was less evident and yet somehow just as deep as the scar that Ironclad had claimed. And though she might not love him as she did Ironclad, how could she do anything but yield to his desires? When he asked it of her with such fervent hope, how could she be anything but his?

Closing her own eyes and swallowing hard against the tight knot of sorrow in her throat, the red Friesian surrendered the last pieces of herself that remained— and her hope with them. “I— okay, Tyr.” Kvothe murmured, blinking away the hot tears that flooded her dark eyes and willing her companion to believe both them and the heaviness of her voice to be born of grief for Aslan. “I— I’ll stay with you. For as long as you want me.” Reeling from the loss of her son, her mind still rejected the potential consequences of their brief union. As such, the lean mare offered no response to the latter half of Tyr’s plea, save to press herself close to him with a gentle shudder of red skin. And whether this reaction was born of dread or delight— or perhaps even both— Kvothe could not say.

With Tyr, the line between these two extremes had blurred long ago.