Silvertip Mountain if you stand for nothing, what'll you fall for?

He saw in Akantha something truly uncommon; vulnerability. Guilt, sadness, regret -- Whip could read all of these powerful emotions plainly in her sorrowful gaze and he felt them mirrored in himself. He too was a broken creature, made of many splintered pieces that could be rearranged but never repaired.

Instinctively, Whip bowed his head, tucked his tail between his legs, and made himself small before the Matriarch of old. She did not demand it of him, but the conditioning of the Sirens ran deeper the conscious thought. And while he hated them, all of them, those cruel creatures, he could not bring himself to hate her. No, Akantha was one of the few Whip allowed himself to love. In many ways Akantha was his surrogate. His mother.

"They said you were swept away," he said, recounting the story he had been told after Akantha's disappearance. "I didn't -- I didn't know what to do."