So he does have a name. Titania is disappointed to learn it isn’t some rendition of bastard, or demon, or snake, or any of the other extremely creative names she has come up for him on their long swim here. She tumbles it around in her mind, tucking her head close to her chest and watching him through dark lashes as he circles her like a beast stalking its next meal. She feels his eyes on her, burning into her skin, and it’s all she can do to keep from throwing daggers at him with her own, restraining herself to merely the hard glint of before. He doesn’t look at her like Rille does, gentle and with such deep ardor, and her heart hurts to think of him so far away. The image of him, standing on the shore, watching her… it will haunt her the entire time she is here, invade her waking moments, her dreams, her nightmares. He has walked within her subconscious many times before, and if she is lucky, he will return - and she can safely be with him once more, at least there, if she cannot be with him physically.

Rougaru steps closer, and if her muscles can tighten anymore, they do. Her tail lashes again at her hindquarters, the only warning he gets, and as he places his muzzle upon her hip a whispered hiss pulls from between her dark lips. She peers at him sidelong, refusing to move her head in order to look at him fully. Titania is furious with him, and the stallion is lucky that he moves away from her so quickly. She is so full of venom for this wretched king that she wonders how his touch upon her didn’t eat away at his skin, so acidic must the blood in her veins now be. Her hormones don’t help to calm her, only adding more kindling to the fire raging down to her soul. As much as he makes her skin crawl, her instincts still crave another’s touch, refusing to recognize the difference between the one she truly wants and the one she is forced to endure.

He asks for her name. Odd, she thinks petulantly to herself, that he does not try to take it instead, as he has shown her he is wont to do. Titania stretches her neck from its bowed position, again holding her head high, and allows her ears to slip back into the damp tangles at her poll. For long moments she stares at him, letting the silence stretch so that he might think she will not answer at all, and then finally deems him worthy. Her voice is still even, refusing to budge an inch, but the hardened lilt of it holds true, like the point of a blade coming to rest just at the edge of his throat.

”My name, Rougaru,” she says, his name spat from her lips, “is Titania. Not my dear or anything else.” Pet names are for a special chosen few, for her mother and for Oberon and for her far-flung Rille, her sky-and-stars, her everything. “And you would do well,” she adds, the scowl on her face changing to a wicked sort of haughty half-grin, “not to touch what will never be truly yours.” Her hips swing wide, away from him, even as the scent of her flows with her movements, and her tail snaps back and forth, crackling in the dark humid night. She will not yield to her emotions, no matter how they crash against her ribs. Not yet. She doesn’t understand why she was chosen to be stolen away, but she has a hunch that the temptation of her season was a part of it, and she knows it is a tool to be applied carefully, lest it be turned against her.