“I know,” he admitted, and his voice was softer than he’d intended for it to be. The pale stallion swallowed at the tightness that had begun to constrict his throat, letting his blue eyes flick away from Daire just for the sake of looking somewhere other than her guilt-stricken face. Despite everything that had just transpired between him and Riesling, Zevulun still felt immensely ashamed to stand here and share a conversation with Daire, no intention still to make her leave the Prairie. Zevulun had many friends he trusted, those he knew would have taken Daire and her children in without complaint, but he’d never offered those places for her. Even now he did not tell her she should leave, though he knew that he should.

Right?

Zevulun closed his eyes and stifled a groan at the constant twists and turns his mind was going through, uncertain of everything he was doing and only more ashamed and lost with every choice he made. “I know you didn’t mean for it to happen, and I… I know you’re truthful in everything that you said to Riesling before.” The one time Riesling had spoken and confronted the mare, the time Zevulun had learned so much about her in such a small amount of time.

“I left the islands abruptly when I was young. There was family drama, but more importantly I lost my first love as well as our daughter and in losing her, I lost myself. I abandoned mares pregnant with my children and disappeared without a word.” He wasn’t sure why this story was being spoken now. Maybe he just wanted Daire to know that he understood her, in some way, in the apologies she had spoken to Riesling and the way she had accepted that her apologies wouldn’t matter. “When I returned to the islands years later, only one of those children remained.” He thought of Ysabel, thought of her angered expression as she told him of the pain she and her mother had undergone in his absence. “My being gone meant… terrible things happening to her and her mother. Her mother passed away, I never was able to apologize for abandoning her.”

He looked quietly at Daire for a moment and said, “My daughter said she would never forgive me, and…” His voice wouldn’t come, heartache suddenly gripping his vocal chords tight. Zevulun cleared his throat and concluded, “and when I heard you apologize to Riesling, I saw myself apologizing to Ysabel.” He had seen Mariael, too, nervous and so unlike herself, watching him hopefully in the Tinuvel woods, wanting to talk, wanting to apologize. Her face when he had denied her, the way disappointment swiftly came. But the story of Mariael was for another time, so Zevulun did not speak of it.

“Despite how little she always saw in me, I… I always loved Riesling.” Still do. He wouldn’t say it, but the words brushed sadly in his mind. The truth was the truth; Zevulun could not just stop being in love with Riesling even in spite of all that they’d said to one another in the Badlands. “I always admired her. She taught me a lot about being a leader… I just could never do right by her. Every choice I made only seemed to hurt her or upset her.”

Speaking of… this choice, here and now; talking quietly to Daire with heavy emotion in his voice, open and vulnerable in all the ways he should not be. How betrayed would Riesling feel to see him now?

Zevulun wanted it not to matter, but the pain still lingered in his chest.

“I’m sure if I was a better man, I’d find you a safe home elsewhere, away from the Prairie.” Away from me. He admitted finally, knowing he was not. Riesling would never return to the Prairie, but he knew the truth. “But… for some reason, I… I don’t want to do that.” This time there was a soft light of confusion in his ice-blue eyes as they quietly met Daire’s gaze. “I honestly don’t know where we go from here,” he confessed with a sigh.