The smoldering embers of hatred Rade feels for the Lagoon are fueled by Clytie's blunt speech, rekindled into a sweeping flame that sets his blood boiling. No doubt Thane had permitted this unspeakable act - perhaps even planned it - to punish the mare's involvement with Styrke. It was not enough, apparently, that they had taken everything his brother had held. They needed to defile it too, soil it with their seed and then throw it back in his face. Was this why Thane had surrendered Clytie so readily?

A pretty little package, stamped with the Lagoon's own seal, to send a message of his own.

As the primal core of him stirs, Rade struggles to stave off the darkness that arrives with his fury. To retain a semblance of sanity, he focuses on the sensation of air being pulled deeply into his lungs. Being exhaled softly again. For a few moments he stands like this, silently glaring toward the horizon; a marble tribute to the war being waged within him. It is the sound of his name that animates him again, opening fissures in the stony exterior he maintains. A flicked ear, a gaze sliding to glance back at the ebony girl. Pregnant with her rapist's son, but apparently unconquered. He does not need to ask himself - or Clytie - what quality she possessed that had caught Styrke's interest.

“Revenge...and repentance.”

He answers simply, rolling his amber gaze back out to sea. Studying the distant blanket of clouds that herald a storm. It is an insufficient explanation; Rade knows that more words will need to be exchanged before an understanding is reached. But he, himself, does not completely grasp the importance of his self-appointed tasks. So he focuses on the latter half of her statement instead, his golden features grimly sculpted now. Of course there will be punishment, retaliation, blood for blood. It was inevitable that the war the Lagoon had picked would continue, but Rade was not going to stand down even in the face of such might. When everything you held dear was already taken, what else was there to lose?

“Let him seek his retribution here. He has already taken from me everything that I cared about. Everything that I was.”

Traveling back to her, his amber eyes reveal a faint warmth, stirred there by this spark of defiance.. and by a feeling of kinship. Of anyone, this mare will understand him. Only with her...they had taken her body, too. She was left with nothing at all, not even herself.

“You know how it feels. All that matters now is that they pay in kind for what they did to Styrke and me.”

His sullen voice softens, little more than a breath as he concludes his brief speech.

“And for what they did to you.”

She has turned away from him, but Rade does not turn away from her. Morphing back into the statue, he stands like a sentinel in her presence, not trusting the serenity of their surroundings. A sobering thought occurs to him as he muses silently, the mournful song of the sea filling his ears. Clytie is as much a prisoner here as she had been in the Lagoon - only the name of her captor has changed.

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