She is not as the women he knew before. She had flirtation in her, but it was tempered by kindness and self-respect. She had beauty, but it was poised and held up her station. She had love, but it was not a frivolous thing and was a wondrously delightful burden to bear. She was everything to him and her smile means much to him when he promises to behave as a civilized man this night. She says she does not fear him and it does not ring out as false, but still he wonders.

Even when she prostrates in the womanly fashion of washing her Husband, he wonders. Even as she listens to him with patience as he regales her of the matters of the kingdom within which they resided, he wonders. He wonders how it is that she might believe him when he said he loved her, how it is that she might believe him when he said he cherished her. He knows well her jealousy, even reveled in it, but he knows too well that she has been told of another that held the unkind office to unfurl him from his self-hatred in a way no one but a warrior might have done and survived. He knows that she could call him corrupted, a false Husband, an intruder on her honor.

It keeps him well apprised of the worth she lends him in this act of washing. Her touches are done kindly, with little lingering that might be misinterpreted. He settles for her as a nervous stud horse might settle for a favored stableboy or trainer, tamed to her hand by the many acts she’d bore without complaint that another might have taken leave of him for. His eyes flutter closed, ears turning to a state of relief rather than attentiveness as he continues, careful to brush barely over the mention of the women who had come to call the Dunes of the Eastern border home.

He hums aloud for her a second as she moves to his mane, tilting his head so that his crest is bent towards her ministrations. He does not, therefore, see her reaction to this new stallion who had irked his warrior-brother so. "I did not think he would return, after his loss." He hears this, but there is little reaction to her knowing of this man, so much longer had she been a part of this world than he and his three siblings. He treats her regret as her own secret, her having not put her thoughts on him forward or aloud beyond the tone that ended her words as a statement and not a question.

Her interest in informing him is expanded, however, a tribute to his patience. "I was once a part of his herd, although it was to my dearest Naz that my loyalty lay. I wonder what it is that has brought him back." His withers flicker at her admission, though he does not try and pry any further any more than she had pried at him about his time with Indira. He had felt her body cleave it’s first beneath him and knew her to have Known no man. Still, he wonders if her heart had not still a sliver of attention for this other… for all but half a moment when her teeth free a desert bramble bur from a lock of mane.

He reorients to talk about the flaxen mare that had grasped the attention of his most ill treated brother, amusing himself at Rigel’s expense not for the first time. He can feel his wife smile and he rather likes how warmed to this idea of matchmaking she has become. It had once been the right of Mira to make matches for other members of the royal family, after all, and he rather thought that her tenderness towards matters of the heart might make her a little kinder than the Mira’s of the past (and even in some respects his own mother) had ever been. Her tease regarding his brother brings a delighted, if masculinely short, chuckle as her rubbing and splashing continues to wash the day from his skin. "I almost pity the lady, Wife. Sacrificing the poor lamb to an eternity of endless talk."

Then he broaches the idea of her leaving under the eye of Atair and he begs her to keep his nerves in mind during her travels. He does not mean to smother, but she still held the embers of Qetesh in her scent and the fires of Min did not always heed where they burned if a man could come by a woman unprotected or not concerned with the bounty of her womb over the bounty of a luxurious mating.

She chides him patiently, quietly, in the proper manner of a woman given her station beside him -- privately. It is spoken for him because he invited the chastisement - though she is kinder than he was to himself. He looks at her when she smiles, though, feeling that she might have still some love for his brother as her teacher despite his misgivings of letting Rigel continue on in that office. He lets her forlorn look linger, lets her choose her own time to embrace him, but when she finds herself resting her chin atop his back, he turns so that he might massage his lips across her flesh. He hums gratefully, approvingly, into her neck, the smack of his wetted tail on the water the only hint to how he appreciated touching her in spite of his chaste display of his continued passion.

“I want you to build this world of ours with me, Sayyida.” His voice is unwavering, but it is soft and coaxing rather than commanding as it should have been to any other creature. “I cannot forsake my gods, but I can give them their tithes in ways that do not offend you.” He knows from Rigel that she had been especially appalled by certain things regarding their upbringing, though Rigel had been shy of telling him any particulars. He dreads to ask if she knew of his greatest shame, or the fact that two had acted for him as the Priestess of Min and there was another who added to that shame. He wonders if his brother had been so loose tongued, or if he had held it and she’d some other reason to find fault in their ways. “I want to raise our children to love your One and to respect my Many. I do not know how it might be done without offending them all by our abridged worship, but I will bear their ire if it means I might be a better man in your eyes.”.