Desert

After Titan, Asmodeus had returned to the Desert to consider his next move very carefully. Everything in him wanted to lash out in retaliation at the Peak, but that would risk bringing more attention here than Nyimara might want. It wasn't even that he cared that much about the red mare herself. He had thought she might do well enough in the Desert and that her willful personality might complement Nyimara's, but he didn't know her well enough to want her for himself. It was only Ashteroth's irritating intrusion that had prevented him from bringing the mother of his firstborn a belated welcome-home gift.

He had returned to find his half-sister on the beach, staring wistfully out at the ocean with the unnervingly quiet colt at her side. He supposed that he should feel guilty for the ordeal that Kohelet had been through, but he couldn't find it in himself to care. It was not his fault that she had aligned herself with the curly-eared troublemaker of the Bay and then been so careless as to lose her position and ruin her reputation with the red-haired filly. Nor was it his fault she'd been dumb enough to go to the Commons and get nabbed by Nyimara.

What would be his fault, however, was if she escaped and ruined all of the carefully laid traps Nyimara had planned. And so he herded his relatives back into the Desert without a word, and once they were safely sequestered once more, had returned to his thoughts while patrolling the border. Ashteroth would pay. He didn't know how, or when, but she would not be allowed to treat him with the same lack of respect that their father had. She, of all of the others in their family, should have understood where he was coming from, why Solomon tossing him to the side was so hurtful after he'd been mostly absent for their youth.

Instead, she'd sided with them. And that, he could not forgive.

A strange summons beckoned to him and he frowned, eyes narrowing. The voice was unfamiliar, but it was clearly intended for him, and so he jogged in the direction it had come from. What greeted his gaze was a pretty mare with a build faintly reminiscent of Nyimara's own, although he did not recognize her. He paused for just a moment, giving them both a chance to take each other in, before he decided that he might as well continue pressing his luck. "I gotta admit, I'm not sure why you called for me," he spoke, jogging the last few steps to her side to close the distance between them, "but I'm glad you did. Do you know who I am?"

It wasn't so much of a housewarming present if it happened into his lap, but claiming her would still be something. A way of making good on the promise he'd murmured to her with their son between them. Plus, if he were honest, she was exactly the sort of thing he should be wanting. Fairly young. No children at her hip from outside stallions. Pretty. Bold. But she didn't have that seasoning of earned notoriety that he'd come to admire in Nyimara (and in the mares he'd approached last fall, the ones he did not tell Nyimara about). Perhaps in time, she would prove to excite his mind as much as his body, but for now, she was a means to an end. "Welcome to the Desert," he said, shifting to put himself between her and the closest escape. "What's your name?"