Like an unwinding cable car

Haha! I know, right? Totally unintentional, but I'm not complaining xD

Outwardly calm, but inside, his blood swirled with dread for the raging queen. He had done this all for her, and yet in the end, all his efforts had been for her destruction. The guilt that had begun to boil in his heart reached the organ's brim, and he pressed his ears flat against his skull and staggered back at her advance against him. Just days before he had longed for her kind touch - now, he recoiled at the slightest brush of her fur against his own. Her stare was an arrow, shot to pierce him to the quick. It did not miss its target.

"I didn't - I wouldn't - " His words came fumbled as Tuwawi's own, his thoughts no more coherent and his emotions as vulnerable. He couldn't escape her stare, an accusation in itself, heaped upon every word she spurned against him. This was his fault, and his alone, and the heaviness that dawned on him churned his stomach with deep distress. Yet the child was an innocent, and to leave him to die stood against all Malachi had been raised to believe. "I know I've wronged you, but I couldn't just let him starve," his voice shook, but he regained himself, willing himself to stand erect despite his desire to crumble to his knees. His ears still pressed tight against his skull. Was there any compassion left in the queen? Any empathy at all? He lifted his voice in a quiet hush, aware of the danger in the question he posed to follow, but all too desperate to know: "What made you take in Arabella when she was more lost than him?"