Lucifer approached her slowly, as though he were afraid she was a ghost, or truly made of smoke, and that too big of a movement might scatter Rieva into mist under the stars. She froze, allowing him to come to terms with her presence and figure out that she was real; she thought it was only fair.

Or maybe she was stalling; maybe her anger had been more smoke than fire, and with each breath Lucifer took as he assessed her condition and her physical reality, he blew a little of it away.

Why was she so angry?

The huge black stallion turned, presenting Rieva with a generous target for her rage. She was unwilling to let her anger extinguish, exhausted as the flames had become; it had fueled her, protected her, kept her whole. She wasn't ready to let it go.

She poured all of the rest of herself into it, igniting her loneliness, pain, hunger, grief, homesickness, betrayal, and most of all, her fear. Her fear that she might never make it home or find her Lucifer or Ceyx again. Her fear that maybe he was the apparition, not she. Rieva poured all of this like gasoline into the guttering embers of her fury, and she exploded.

She threw herself at Lucifer, battering desperately against him with teeth and hooves. Her face twisted in anguish, crumpling around the snarl that held her jaws taught over the skin of Lucifer's crest. She was too dehydrated to shed tears, and as visciously and suddenly as she had ignited a moment ago, her energy and her nerves were shot, and she soon slid to the ground, depleted.

“You weren't there,” she whispered, “when I got back.”