Meadow

When she sees him, her heart stutters. Not with the warm stirrings of affection, or the ringing pangs of longing, but of dread, cold and prickly and creeping over her like frost. The babe within her stirs, awakened by the adrenaline rushing suddenly through her veins, and she freezes, pinning her ears back. Shit, she thinks, scolding herself inwardly as she watches him advance, meeting his lambent gaze and holding it, ire and regret rising higher and higher in her throat with every word he speaks.

I should have killed him when I had the chance.

She waits, weighing her options. She can't just attack him - with the child in her womb, she won't risk it - but with him blocking the Meadow on her left, and her rounded figure blocking her ability to slip like water through the forest at her right, her options for escape are limited.

And then, as if in answer to her silent prayer, another horse joins them, familiar and strange and ethereal all at once. Starscream. Titania had seen him often from a distance during her time in the Thicket, avoided him like she avoided everyone else, but she'd noticed how his scent clung to Naydra's coat and how he carried himself. Not like a pawn in the white-haired queen's game, but a king. She studies him, the gears inside her head turning. He may be of use to her yet.

"Suffering?" she snickers, and sidles languidly up to the striped Thicket lead, pressing herself against him, like a lover, if he lets her. "I've been quite comfortable." A lie - but Rougaru doesn't need to know that.

"I didn't make a promise to you, wolf, I made a bargain with you, and as far as I can tell, you have yet to uphold your part of it." Never mind that it was a false front, that she was going to make him pay the ultimate price. Where was Vanya? She can't smell the loathsome bitch on him - nothing but the poutpurri of aromas that made up the Crossing. There's no way she left the Islands entirely, and no way Rougaru would have let her shack up with anyone else. He was too selfish, too greedy, for that.

Starscream's voice turns her ear, a slow smile tugging at her lips. "Yes," she answers, pressing her muzzle to the divot between his neck and his withers, dragging it affectionately up. "I was searching for something, but all I've managed to find," she murmurs, "is a mongrel," her dark eyes flashing as they shot like arrows to the fallen wolf-king.

Titania wastes no time. "If you have nothing to offer me, them we're done here. We have better things to do." The old dog is outnumbered, but she knows it won't be that easy; it never is, with him, and like a cockroach he's recovered from the corpselike state in which she last left him.

The star-flecked mare withdraws from them both, taking one step back, then another. "Prove your promise to me," she bids. "Bring me what I seek, and maybe I'll still be here, waiting for you."

Is Naydra's consort real, or is he another envoy sent by the Thicket to draw her back? Titania tilts her head, studying him. She could never hope to understand the ancient magic held within the birch grove, had given up trying long ago, but the Thicket was just one in a long line of entities determined to keep her for themselves. After so many years, she'd come to expect it. There was something about the brightness of a shooting star, something mesmerizing and terrifying and beautiful, and creatures of flesh and bone and sinew could not help but be drawn to its ephemeral, dazzling light.

"Come, Starscream," she croons, half-concealed by shadow. "Let us leave this dog to his task." The red-haired man might be of use to her now, but if he ended up being an issue later, well... she could shake herself free of him, too, just like all the others who'd come before him.