Everything seems fine - or at least, as fine as it can be, sneaking around in enemy territory in the hopes of gathering children to steal. Titania trains a wary eye on the darkness surrounding them, pupils struggling to catch any sign of her daughter's existence. Rougaru's scent hangs heavy in the air, but not suspiciously so; Paradise is his territory, after all, and there was a chance - however small - that the wolf-king had learned from his past mistakes and fortified the borders against intruders. The threat of his overarching presence might deter a weaker horse, one with no ties to the souls captured within... but Titania is not weak by any stretch of the imagination, and he has something she wants, something she would, and is, risking everything for.

Vanya's nerves are catching, her sad brown eyes plucking away on the fae mare's heartstrings. She keeps close, swallowing back her own anxiety, and does not fault her cohort for the conflicts in her answers, knowing all too well how months spent under the jungle's weighty canopy can muddle the mind. Time feels different on Atlantis, its seasons nothing like those on the northern isles, and in the deepest parts of the forest, where the sun cannot hope to reach, the days alternate between dragging on and flying by. Titania barely remembers her own imprisonment, the trauma of it blurring nearly everything into wide strokes of emotion. Vanya might have seen Cressida, or she might not have - but the disappointment the erstwhile Queen feels is her own to bear. Not for long, she hopes, as they come to a stop and wait on tenterhooks for an answer to Vanya's gentle calls.

The painted mare looks back, unease writ plain in her expression, and asks for her assistance. Titania answers her with a smile, masking her own discomfort in gauzy layers of reassurance and encouragement, and dips her star-browed head. Yes, of course. Her song rises, lilting, in her throat, and she takes a step forward.

"Cress-"

And then something rustles in the undergrowth behind them, followed by a voice that, in spite of all its drawling mirth, turns her blood to ice in her veins, freezing her mid-stride.

Shit, she thinks, gathering up the last stores of her courage, and wheels around to face the wolf-king in no more than the span of a heartbeat.

Like an angel of death Rougaru stands in the path before her, haloed in shifting golden sunlight, jade eyes raking like claws across her body. In an instant she transforms, a gentle doe made incandescent with fury, venom oozing from every pore, snorting and pawing with her ears pinned tightly against her poll. She meets his advance with her own, snaking her head down, and is halfway to biting the most sensitive part of him within reach when his words - reverberating, as they are, from the whitehot contact of his chest against hers - break through the adrenaline and register.

Now she's truly frozen. Titania jerks back sharply, shock and confusion clouding her fine features; she has to have heard him wrong. The sound of her name in his mouth draws a growl, low and primal and indignant, and she almost forgets it entirely, but then he repeats it. That word.

"Queen..?" she mutters, more to herself than anything, trying to clear the mind-muddling fog brought on by his sudden proximity and failing miserably.

Rougaru speaks once more, his fetid breath dancing over her muzzle.

My Queen has done very well for herself...

Finally, it clicks, and for one brief, shining moment in time, Titania forgets about him completely. Her gaze tears foolishly from him, every one of her basic, lifesaving instincts and common-sense judgments slashed away by a blade she hadn't known to account for - and locks like a magnet onto Vanya's beautiful face, having caught the glint of steel dancing from her own soft hand.

"What?" she hisses, pointing her question's razor-thin edge squarely at the throat of the mare she'd only minutes ago called friend.

Rougaru continues, purring some other saccharine drivel with the smile as much in his rough-hewn tones as on his ashen lips. She tries to focus on the task at hoof, to run, to do something - anything - but all that remains is the memory of the day, three and a half long, difficult years ago, when she had languished on these very shores. When she'd been so sure of herself, of her place in this life and the future that waited for her there, if only she and the foal she carried could make it. When she and Vanya had met as equals, kindling what the fae had thought was an alliance between prisoners, and another of the wolf-king's captives - Jabari, his temper as fiery as his red-clay coat - had seen what she could not.

Be careful who you trust around here, he'd said. Titania related more to Vanya then, seeing easily the tragic parallels between their situations, and after the brief, curt interactions the three of them shared, she'd brushed his words off as nothing more than ignorance and a bruised ego, a cheap shot with no real thought behind it. But now, with every second that passes creating more questions than answers, the speckled woman wonders if she should have seen it as the warning he'd intended it to be.

Movement in her periphery turns her back to Rougaru. Just the sight of him pisses Titania off, but this close, with the sound and smell and feel of him acting as catalyzing agents, her rage grows beyond what her small frame can hold. Her eyes narrow, and like a viper she strikes at him jaws bared, ripping out any bits of him she can manage. "Where is she?" the dark mare screams, the birds in the trees above scattering at the sudden noise. "Give her to me now!" A squeal soon follows Titania's final outburst; she shoves against his body where it presses up to hers, and lunges, ears pinned, to bite the wretched smile off of his stupid face.

Vanya may be a problem, yes, and a roadblock she hadn't seen coming. But she can't afford, right now, to address the lesser evil of the mare's betrayal, not when the greater evil of the wolf-king still casts such long shadows. Rougaru is the source of Titania's troubles, the puppeteer pulling all the strings. He may be first on her list, but he's not the only one on it, and it's only a matter of time before the tidal wave of his own undoing comes crashing down upon him, dragging the rest of his empire with him down into the depths of Hell forever.