A tense silence develops between them for a moment, and Hymn hates it. She hates everything about today. Was Promise okay? Had Annubis gone back to keep her safe? Had he found someone for her to stay with if he couldn't stay with her? What had he told her?

You don't think he will come to trade for you? The stallion asks and Hymn snorts out a bitter laugh. "That is not what I said." And while she doesn't privately know if Annubis would have gone out of his way to trade for her, she doubts it very much. For all that she knows, he might agree to a trade if it were brought before him, but he does not strike her as the sort that would play nice first. If anything, Annubis would have come to fight for her. He would not ask or say please. "I said he wouldn't come here with the intention of trading."

The stallion continues on then, clearly torn up by his own emotions as he then poses a question that Hymn certainly doesn't expect. She jerks back, ears flicking forward against her will before settling uneasily back. "Yes, he is," she confirms when Nicodemus asks if Annubis is the sort of stallion she wants to return to. As much as he had frightened her early on with his aggressive chase to the Commons, he had proven himself to be more kind, more gentle, more fatherly than any other stallion she'd ever known.

"He is the best stallion I know," she murmurs, privately thinking that current company was included. While it was admirable that he was pretending to care if she would be safe in Paradise, to her own jaded ears it felt as if it were just him searching for a reason to not send her back. To keep her separated from her daughter.

"He treats my daughter like his own, when she is not. And he makes me feel -" heat rushes to her cheek and she suddenly feels bashful for bringing it up, only that she very much wants to make it clear that Annubis has been kinder than she feels she deserves. The truth was that Annubis made her feel loved, but to say that to anyone, let alone a stranger, made her far too anxious. "He makes me feel safe," she hedges instead. "Current circumstance excluded."