Hate roiled through me.

My winter coat had shed before the snow had finished melting but I was still hot with rage as I stormed through the underbrush of the Lagoon. How dare that bitch come to me with her apologies, her whispers in the dark that disturbed my dreams and pushed faces I wanted to forget to the front of my dreams. That black stallion, that worthless worm had risen in my nightmares because of her and I woke that morning with my entire left foreleg painfully tensed and poised to strike. The sand at the edge of my napping spot had been littered with deep gauges by the time I left.

The exact words my sister —that dark one, the brown and black with two good eyes who had found me in the Arch when I had ruled there with the Black— had spoken to me hadn’t even stuck in my mind, and if it hadn’t been for her lingering scent I would have doubted the reality of the whole encounter. But she had been there, right next to me, her weight sinking her four wide feet into the sand next to me and her breath warm and soft against my ear. My anger flared again: how had I not woken to confront her? Had I grown so lax, with my enemy dead, to sleep that deeply? It would not happen again, and I made that promise with pinned ears as I shoved past slim trees and flattened parts of twiggy bushes with each powerful stride.

The shade from the canopy above added dark dapples to my wheat-colored coat and cooled me unevenly. What I needed was consistent, even shade, but I did not want to stop moving, could not stop moving until my anger left me. For a moment I considered striding all the way to the ocean on the other side of the territory, but dismissed it immediately. The beach would only remind me of my sister, the one I barely remembered from my childhood, a mare who had been as silent as the rest of them and thus just as much to blame. I lowered my head and closed my eyes to slits as I shoved past more dense underbrush and felt the ground dip, then drop into a shallow pool.

I stumbled, splashing through the cold water as my eyes snapped open, and I adjusted my stride with hasty steps to catch myself before I fell. My ears pinned more tightly to my black mane and I glanced about, my gaze landing on a tiny red foal standing at the edge of the pool. I veered toward the small colt, my wet feathers floating in the water and clinging to my hooves with each sloshing step, and reached over to snap at its little face as I passed by. I stepped onto dry land and shook out the end of my wet tail as I shot a glare over my thick shoulder. If the scrawny little foal even thought about laughing at my hasty, graceless recovery, I’d cross the distance between us and teach it the true meaning of caution before it was weaned.