The panic in the pale mare's face had Kohelet recoiling, flinching back from further evidence of her willful blindness for far too many years. She had not raised a hand against Mae, but that did not mean she had ever extended one either. The tobiano shifted her weight, torn between wanting to flee and needing to face the consequences for her own action (and inaction).

There is no response from her once-herdmate at first, but they were soon joined by someone else that Kohelet did not recognize. A gray mare that carried herself with the sort of presence that bespoke a rank of some kind, if she had to guess, and wariness entered the eyes of the Bay's old co-lead. She did not know the rules of the Peak the way she did other places, did not know if the woman could - or would - place a claim around her shoulders the same way that Fell would have any unwitting new arrival.

Thankfully, she kept her distance but the silence that followed her query was loud. The version of Kohelet that had once spoken for both herself and her then-mate wanted to hedge before answering, but in her current sea of heartbreak she didn't see the point. Mae knew her sins anyway, there was no point in hiding them. "I-" She hesitated, suddenly torn by the intricacies of am and was. "I am," she finally decided, knowing that she would never forsake her family, even if they shared land with a monster. "I was born in the Cove, but I-" her gaze swept to Mae again, shame coloring her warm brown eyes. "I ruled alongside Fell for a time," she murmured, his name twisting in her mouth, alien and sharp.

"It took me a long time to see him for what he was," she admitted, unable to look either of them in the eye now as her own prickled with tears again. She'd spent more time crying the past few days than she had in her entire life, but they were useless, empty tears. Tears that meant nothing, because she had done nothing. How many mares do you think there were? Some insidious voice in her mind asked, taunting her with the consequences of all that had transpired.

More softly now, her gaze rose apprehensively to Khar'pern and then fixed on Mae. "There were a lot of mares I could have helped, if I had just realized sooner."