Shadewood gave you every piece of me, no wonder it's missing

He advanced from betwixt the shadows as a serpent, a reptilian king with the woods confined in his grasp. As she watched him, this ghosted sylph, a single shiver dove down her spine as a ice-laden needle, the very tip of a knife, dragged in torturous leisure; the dove swallowed, and felt the pressures of this terrible world at her shoulders. Closer still he wove, until they shared the same cool air, and she could feel his hot breath mist against her cheeks - but he was not alone. Additional shadows swarmed at his back, welding into one, who perched in silence atop the keep watcher's shoulders. A predatory bird with a gleam in his gaze - mirroring the cold mystery of her husband's own.

Gwendolyn risked a glance upward, to meet those impenetrable eyes. "Raziel," she began in warm response to his greeting, laying the rabbit's corpse on the soft forest litter beneath her paws. "I was thinki-"

“I’ve had sex with Minori.”

The world stopped its motions around her frigid body. Gwen's heart froze, encased in a layer of unrelenting ice - what?

“I’ve had sex with Minori.”

The phantom king's words waved around her head like bloody ribbons, as though this achievement was a feat in which he took pride, so very pleased with himself. Storm. Julie. It was all happening again, right in front of her distant stare. So very cruel of the world, to toy with her like this; she felt the bubbling of tears as they threatened behind her eyes, but could not bring herself to speak, words burning like ash on her tongue, daggers in her throat.

You are not enough. You were never enough. So pathetic. So stupid.

Tell me it's not true...

But it was. She knew it was - his tone held no glimpse of humour.

"...Why?" She whispered, into the suffocating wind. Had she done something wrong? Had he fallen out of this love so alacritously, when their children were still so new to the world? Or was she simply not enough for him - his love for Kukutux, his... whatever it had been with Minori... was she not enough for anyone? Perhaps. Perhaps... His eyes held so many answers, and yet none all the same. Those cavernous pits of glacial blue, so hiemal in their solemnity. The snow empress' heart lurched in her chest, feeling suddenly the desire to cower, to run back into the comfort of the darkness, to wallow in her sadness alone.

For not the first time in her dysfunctional life, she was afraid. Afraid of the man she loved.