Mount Apikuni i mean, when he made love to me, it was like he was fixing a carbouretter or sommink—

"Of course I did,"  lurching, rising;
"Ze offer will stay to stand. I am Undómiel,"  some faltering faith within myriad-melancholy and hazy halfsights; answering to what attentions that had been bereaved of her. Foolish, starlit; chords straining in a manner that might surely convince to the point of intimidation of her own position within her Court. Perhaps, if she set the crescent of her jaw the way she's known the keepborn philosopher was wont to do  –  perhaps, if she furrows her brow and broods as the brown-eyed snowsylph's rook did  –  perhaps, if she put a smidgen of scrunch snarl into her snout, it would sway Bhediya into assumption that, indeed, she is Undómiel and that her word is not to be taken as—
"I mean it, you– you druid,"
pulling ruined lips back back back to brandish slim-scythe fangs to the smile that the inkstain so proferred  —  infuriating, because she knew, she knew that there was nothing she could do against it; there was nothing she could do with the flush beneath her own features. Shame, always shame, from that morn, and now:
her stupidity for having stept right into this untread snare.