The weight of the world on their shoulders thrust there by the loss of Maslakhat as guardian was like the release of young adults into college. Their own matters had taken precedence. The land had suffered for their blindered view that had been facilitated by their upbringing. They did not have the staff of their former kingdom to do as they felt they wished.
Eness speaks to them with the irritation gained from a mother’s experience. It shamed them, but it was their further lack of good behavior that had clearly tipped the scale. Antares with his aggression bolstered by his frazzled grip on wildly thrashing reins, Atair with his attempt to pick up the pieces from the eldest, and then an additional lack of grace when it came to being confused by fatherhood and preference of battles he knew how to fight, and finally Rigel. Rigel with the cutting-off-at-the-knees that had sent it all into the spiraling dive.
When she finishes her first sentence, Aldebaran spares a glare for Rigel most of all - still sore at his mistreatment that had come from something so simple. When Eness ceases to be the bold and brazen self that none of them recognized, turning her attention to Atair with his temper and his anger at being shoved between two impossible decisions, Antares seems to finally awaken.
The privacy finds Atair closed eyed and trembling with the shock of the almost-war he would have incited. He does not move, does not look to her. He is too confused. He is too unnerved by the words of rejection that still pierce at his chest. He hears a shift in sand and flinches, so like the boy who got himself chewed up and trampled in the early years of his military training.
When he opens his eyes, his expression is void, back to that neutral mask she had originally seen painted across his starry face.
He had been and still was so elated to have sons, to have Eness, but the initial understanding had given way to a panic that was bred from stories abroad of men who lost sons, daughters, wives -- every day there was some new tragedy. He had never been worthy of a Soul-Bond, what could the fates have in store to have given him such a blessing---? When would they take that from them?
He had thought they meant to take her from him when she gave her claiming call and it was answered by Antares with anger. He had thought that the fates meant to take her, or to make him take his brother. The nights spent without worry had erupted into so many worries he could scarcely breathe, much less bear to share them all with someone so newly having brought two great gifts into the world. He had been careening over the dunes because he had thought that the Balance of Maat had sent agents to come and collect what he owed. He can see she shakes, but he is afraid to touch her, afraid to approach her, broken within by the years being told that he was too harsh, too angry, too beastly, too violent - and having that same identity painted over him by the one who he believed accepted his faults and flaws.
What does one say in the midst of all that?
It was all he could force up from the choke in his throat.