He had spent so many years as the High Prince that when he had shed his former life in refusal to wed a girl who would bend him to her petty whims for the mere chance at begetting a son - like his father’s own second and lesser wives had. It had also been the tempering he had heard the Priests and Priestesses speak of in regards to his late night wildness amidst the dunes. It had also been the savage undercutting nature he had seen in concubines who took favor from their King. The only mares who had been as good as royalty and shown any kind of freeing element was the Priestess of Min and a Lady-In-Waiting or two for his lone sister.

It had affronted him when he was told that the kingdoms needed a binding contract now after centuries of alliance that had lasted without such tangible holds on one another. He hated that his soul would be forever parted from his Other Half over the Princess, whatever her breeding or upbringing. There was almost resignation in him before his brother Aldebaran had gathered them together and set out for him the terms of their abdication. Aldebaran would follow, so long as he would be allowed to choose his own portion of their new home for himself - not given the dregs as he had often been made to do in his youth. Atair would follow, so long as he was the one to choose his replacement as Champion when he grew too infirm for the position himself. Rigel, well he bid Antares to concede the choice in the lands they would settle in.

Rigel’s barter had been sated. Aldebaran had chosen his plot first of them all. Atair would not be old for quite some time yet. And he - he reserved the right to be their one-true ruler, respecting their sacrifices to free him from a bondage he could not bear. They all knew him to have the love of Shu as Aldebaran had, the warfever of Atair-- but most of all, they knew him to be a believer in the Old Way and knew he feared his soul would fragment if kept too long from his other half.

Here he kneels, then, stunned and utterly ashamed that she should know him capable of forsaking duty as he had done to not know her and to still have coupled with her as he had. Flying in the face of their betrothal--- she sounds to him to be suddenly taken aback just as he was, but there was more. She was not only in shock, not only ashamed of them both, but she sounded to be utterly disgusted by him - or at least, he would potentially realize later, in herself. “Wife,” he tries to say, but she is suddenly speaking, "I am not worthy of you, my Husband, Al'Amir Alssami Antares bin Sirius. I have been selfish, please forgive me, I beg of you."

He is caught by surprise in her self-flagellation, clearly not taking his own actions into account as she took her own. It earns her father a few stings of his ire that she would think of him so blameless and instead take it upon herself to be guilty. Surely her father could not have brought her up to think that a Mare held all the responsibility. No. He could not imagine his own father tethering himself to a land that would have thought to quell his mother, Mira, under the weight of such presumption-- could he?

Almost as soon as she has made her third stride, he is kicking up sand behind him and following at his mile-eating, tireless, never-ending pace. He keeps his eyes not to her retreating self but to the footprints in the sand that did not change his earnest pursuit with a false sense of proximity. She ran and Shu gave her feet wings to flee from him, Set’s own sand trying to swallow up his hooves and make him clumsy. He calls to her twice but she does not cease and he is certain that Set and Shu had taken her into their confidence, playing one last trick on him for daring delinquency to his, Their, People.

In that moment he prayed to Ra to bid them cease, to grant him dominion over his portion of the Dunes at the least. He prayed for worthiness enough to recapture what he had once forsaken.

And at last she slows, he can tell by her hoofprints sliced into the dunes. She slows and when he looks up - nostrils wide and air blasting out in even puffs - he knows she had been stopped here for some time. She is not nearly as winded as her speed should have made her and so he is cautious. She could run from him again, he knows, and he nickers to her sweetly, cloyingly, beguilingly. He comes to her as a man might come to a deer, entreating it to trust them despite their every instinct being to run. “Your name is bound to mine, you cannot hide from me.”

He says this both to reassure her and to hobble the next threatened sprint before she might make it. “We abandoned our peoples, each on their own accounting that the other was somehow insufficient for their own joy -- or perhaps I presume too much. I only know of your mind what you accused yourself of and I need to refute it before my soul tears at the cruelty of such a imbalanced falsehood.” He speaks soft, though he has to raise it for the sake of the distance he keeps for her comfort.

“I heard of your beauty, of your breeding, but none had spoken of your heart or spirit. I feared a First Wife who would smother the last vestige of what the Old Gods gave our people - as I had heard your people stifled their women unabashedly and they in turn stifled their men. We are considered the barbarian cousin of your people because we hold to the Old Way and keep to the Old Structures. I could not have known that you would be of my own beating heart in so many ways.”

He is in confession, speaking to his side of the story because he cannot imagine the Dutiful Sayyida having been so fickle and selfish against her people if not for the same misgivings as he had just owned to. “You were spoken of in the Royal Circle as a tempering agent on the warfever Ra had set in our people in the beginning. You were supposed to cease my careening explorations of the wild Desert. You were supposed to keep me from setting a path in the Old Way that would take power back from the Temples and instead bring me to heel. Neither I, nor my spurring brothers, could bear the thought. Rigel spoke for you, but none of us listened and so we left. I can only think that he had prayed and made offerings to Set and Shu so that we would at last realize that we were so utterly mistaken and so completely fitted at the fabric of our souls”