He’s clever. That is…less than ideal. Clever is dangerous. It means he might be a threat to whatever efforts they make to take back the Badlands, if Sakir allies with him first. It also means Arsinoe was right to send her - where one of the others may have played the simpering damsel or the manipulative seductress, Xafira is nothing but herself through and through. There is nothing for him to see through or suspect, because she tells only the truth, and has never been good at anything else.

Her dark, glittering eyes search his face and while she can hear the humor, the tease in his words, Xafira doesn’t deign him with anything more than a slow, unamused blink and a shift of her weight, relaxing into the sand some. She will pass judgment, and will not do so quietly.

“Neither do the Badlands,” she tells him archly. Idleness leads to death in her harsh homeland. Desert, Badlands or Hills – it matters not. All of it is Salem, and all of it is cruel. Weakness does not thrive here - this isn’t lush Luthien, or the overgrown jungle of Atlantis.

His question is a fair one, and one she can answer easily enough. She snorts in amusement at his assertion that this isn’t political. “Arsinoe’s already got her claws in that one,” Xafira confidently states, tossing her head back to indicate the Badlands new owner. She’s yet to have it confirmed – but she’s also yet to find a stallion who can resist giving her sister exactly what she wants. “And Evrain holds the Hills. That’s half of the island you’ll have blood ties to.” And even now, pretty little Eloisa has been sent to ingratiate herself with Helios. By the end of the season, if all goes to plan, blood will again unite Salem. “If you want to do anything political on this island, you need Rafe or Marceline’s blood.” And a solid half of Marceline’s children are Rafe’s as well at this point - Xafira saw that new spotted little filly carousing around.

She shrugs, and adds smugly, “I’m not half bad in a fight either.”

liver chestnut overo | 15.1 hh | mare | mutt | | rafe x velahrn| of the Desert