Moonspear the cold and the bare grasped

Luck will only get us so far, and how true that was. He could think them lucky all he wanted; the truth of the matter that lied ahead had less to do with luck than it did their ability to accrue resources. Just as he knew there were ways to curb their consumption of said resources, starting with the bottom-fed.

"I was under the impression we hadn't much generosity to begin with," he rejoined, "there's been little in the way of hesitance regard who to dispatch and when." Even ones he would have preferred to retain had been driven out and away. Yet a smaller grouping would suit them through a less robust period as he thought aloud—"Yet so long as the children don't suffer I've little desire to tend to errant wards at our claim." His gaze sought hers, a resolute duskiness lurked therein. "They'll either wander on or make a mistake too short lived to dwell upon and regret." A grim reality, one that played to the hearts he knew she and her sisters carried. A blood sport he had little taste for, yet would endure if it spared his children not to hunger.

He wanted them to hold onto that naivety a while longer.

And he wanted reality to stay at bay.