She wanted full ranks. Despite the promotion of her son, who had brought her the head she had asked for, her council was still incomplete, desperate to fill the void Potema was not fit to fill. “I need you to step up to Listener, for the time being,” She spoke as she met her husband that morning. It was not unlike of them to talk, but odd emotions did not waver from the last time they had conversed at length. Yet despite their personal dealings, he was needed in her council much more than he was needed as her mate. Whether this development would bring him pride or uneasiness, she was unsure. However, she did know that @Kove was undeniably devout to the Brotherhood, and should she press upon the matter, he would not fail to see the higher importance. She had faith in him, that would never waver, and if he was not blind by their own problems as she expected he was not, the dark woods leadership would be complete once more and to the best of its fulfilment. For too long had Kove remained second to the white witch, despite Potema’s training, Kove had experience. Both were impeccably talented, but Damien’s council was no more and so she would induct her own.

Moonshine limelight? More like sunsdull lemondark, amiright

Awoken by the sun’s first rays of light, it was within a moment of silence that he’d become trapped. Admiring the world as it was just waking up, he hadn’t risen from his place against the earth out of fear of disturbing it. Whilst the remnants of the storms long since passed had faded away, Winter remained, still, and the grip He had on the Teekon Wilds showed no signs of loosening. It was most unlike the winters that he had grown up with—the ones that he secretly longed for—but also the same, in certain ways. Each time he exhaled there was a cloud created, and each time he inhaled he could feel the frost within his lungs. If he could stop time and live within any one moment for the rest of eternity, he would have done so right then and there, but the power to wield time was but a child’s dream—a dream that he’d been roused from after a mere moment’s passing, his thoughts replaced by the voice of his wife.

Pushing himself up off of the hardened terrain, Kove did little more than greet her with brief nod his head; it hadn’t been held low for any longer than a second, his respect for her as a wife having never expanded to include her role as a leader. It was that very same lack of trust that had encouraged him to dismiss himself immediately, yet, after replaying her words over in his head once more, he found himself unable to move. A smile did not tear its way across his lips—no, he remained stoic instead, unable to figure out what he was feeling so that his facial features might be able to reflect it properly. “For the time being?” he’d repeated back to her, posed as a question. “How long is that?” Until she might be overthrown, he thought, holding back from speaking such a statement aloud. Nemesis was his wife, and for that, he would linger at her side, but she was neither his leader nor the true heir to the Brotherhood so he could not treat her as such.

I still can’t believe you changed the title, omfg.

The questions went unanswered, the entire topic having seemingly been abandoned. He watched her, expression devoid of emotion, though within there spun a twister of conflicting emotions and thoughts alike. It felt like eons ago when he had loved her so terribly, though, in truth, it had only been a short while. The loss of emotion, his inability to cherish her as a husband should his wife, was something that he could no better explain than he could the sensation of flight. It was a foreign concept to him, his emotions in disarray behind a sturdy mask of ersatz phlegm. The intense passion that had once shot fire through his veins was no longer there, nor did the simple act of gazing at her illuminate every little crevice of his world. It was gone, vanished from his chest without a trace. Although these things he could grasp, he could understand and feel that the spark was no longer there, he knew not where it had gone or why it had chosen to flee in the first place. Those questions, never to be asked aloud, would remain forever unanswered in the back of his mind.

Slowly, his eyes slid shut and he turned his head away, finding himself gazing at the trunk of a tree when again he could see. “I could ask you the same thing,” he responded, unable to give a direct answer. The ghost, though having never been without a complete understanding of his inner-self, was at a true loss. The words that he needed to speak refused to glide across his tongue, for his thoughts could not settle enough in order to properly form them. “All you seem to want is power,” he managed to get out, his head turning back so that his gaze rested on her own. “You’ve clawed your way to the top, dethroned the one who should be there, and left me right where you found me. But then you ask what happened to me?” Shaking his head, he could hardly grasp from where she was coming, as well as what he was saying. “You don’t love me,” the man declared. “You do not speak to me, you do not look in my direction—you’re only focused on what you want, and that has changed who you are.” Whenever he looked at her, he couldn’t find anything that might suggest she was still the woman that he’d once grown fond of.