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

Her energy fed his own. Her pain, her horror- all of it was the life source of the parasitic mess that he had become. And oh how the tables had turned...how she had thrived on his company, his existence , and how now he needed her reactions, her torment, her growing madness. It was what kept him going. To come back to her and watch her crumple, only to take her hand and build her back up-
and closer to him. 

He wanted to mold her into the perfect...what? She was already perfect. Yet her pain was not yet complete. Her misery had not yet peaked. And her mind had not yet scabbed over and healed. 
His Gwendolyn was unfinished, no matter how perfect he believed his Empress to be.

”To keep her close. Our members fade with every growing day. And I feared her loyalty was as well, with her spawn residing here and coming of departure age. Her eyes wandered beyond the borders, and I will not risk it being what downfalls our own security, as well. Our children need a fortified home.” He did not mention him purposefully keeping Higoro out, that sniveling whelp of a man. He couldn’t trust the rangy bastard as much as he could snuff his fucking life out with so much as an ease of pass. And he damn sure wouldn’t let the little shit in unless he could prove otherwise. 

His crown tilted to the side only a degree, studying the woman who trembled with internal agony before him, his frail and easily pained keyholder. “I truly am doing this for the protection of us all...you wouldn’t dare believe I did this to hurt you,...” both he and the hawk stared direct into the winter queen’s sapphires, almost on the same accord as his baritones lowered only a decibel. 

“Would you, my love?”