Herbalists' Cache and i'd beg you, but you know i'm never home

"Does it matter?" Alya replied, the urge to obfuscate too ingrained and automatic to be stopped. Even here, because the words were true. Korei had betrayed them all the same amount. Hydra more than herself or Lyra, perhaps, but did Korei not know that the Cerberus shared all pains?

The next words struck the Moonspear girl dumb for several long seconds. This, she allowed to show on her face - a popping of her eyes and slight parting of her jaws. "How can you think that?" she asked when she'd found her voice once more. "That losing one daughter, one sister - that'd we'd just be okay with another one being gone? That we'd want that?" Part of her wanted to sneer that the family hadn't cared one way or another, that they'd hardly even noticed Korei was gone. But those were her emotions talking, and she knew better than to unleash them, here.

Alya made her voice small. "We were devastated. We looked for you everywhere - but we were looking for a body. We didn't think you'd just gotten up and walked away."

Which was patently untrue; they'd all thought her a deserter, and they'd been right. It wasn't until weeks and months had passed that Alya had started considering her littermate dead.