Arrow Lake one breath, it'll just break

Her world felt aflame—the very same as it had when the maplewood had burned around her. The chaos—the cries. It was something that remained tucked away in her heart, and just as she had felt helpless and useless then, she felt the very same now—whether it were flames devouring her family or wolves, the result in the end would be the same.

“Ramesses is a man who has built a kingdom on religion and fanatical beliefs and embellishments. I don’t need to be a tactician or soldier to know the very real danger of that,” she noted to him—for did Mereo not play their role, then to continue to humor the Pharaoh’s ego?

She moved—his gaze intense toward her, and she drifted further from him and to the edge of the waters, her eyes hard upon it, every inch of her being very much perceptive of his nearness to her now. Cold, calculating—the very same aspects of him he had revealed to her during their few conversations prior, when the man would place his wall before him.

“I would like to trust you, Germanicus,” she whispered—her tone smoky with the emerging of grief. “And you need to understand that I will do anything it takes to protect my family. So I’ll ask you to be honest with me—Epoch is not your ally. Something severed between you and Arsenio. I don’t need to know why, that is between you and him… What I want, is your word that if anything comes from this, it’s Epoch that you back—not Akashingo.” She didn't want to look to him now--but her eyes pressed to him, intricately studying him, looking for anything that resembled an ounce of honesty upon his coldly masked features.