#654

Something was wrong. She'd known Gabriel had gone, had left to take Cernunnos to Alaine, and she had expected him back shortly after despite his wounded leg. As far as she was aware, he hadn't come back. What was keeping him? Where was her mountain of a father? The man who had promised himself immovable? As days ticked by without him, she found herself scouting the borders in the hopes she would catch his return. Cream paws carried her along the skull-lined edge, crimson gaze following the southeast, where the dog pack sat. She waited, so patiently, to see his familiar face as it came back to Inferni where it belonged, but as the sun set on each new day, she was disappointed. His disappearance worried the princess, who feared for her father as much as she feared for her brother and loved them both with a love that craved their return of the same emotion. Had he fallen ill in his old age? Was there no one to help him? A whine came from the usually cold Centurion as her mind passed over the possibilities.

The call of a raven brought her attention to the front once more, and she turned to look for the vile creature — Ibsen was all that remained, but it wasn't Ibsen that came to her now. Marlowe's other child, the one left...well, she didn't care to know where he'd been left, all that mattered was that he came to rest on a low branch now with something glittering in his talons. Zola. A frown colored her features. "What do you have there?" One hand reached out to look at the swinging item and it was dropped on her padded palm before the bird took off once more to do whatever it was he felt he wanted to do. She was left to focus on the item given to her, turning it over in her palm. As the proper face of the pendant came into sight, a sensation of dread washed over her. Staring back at her was the silver face of a medallion she was all too familiar with — Saint Christopher, that hung at one time around the neck of the elder de le Poer male.

It was slipped around her neck without hesitation, distress coming down into her chest as she realized the truth of why Gabriel hadn't returned. He isn't coming back. He had left them, and for what? The golden woman in the dog pack? Hadn't he promised that he'd never leave for a woman? But it was so easy to think he had lied, for even then she believed he wasn't being honest with her. Both Ezekiel and Gabriel, as much as she devoted herself to the two of them, were subject to the princess' belief that they lied so frequently.

She shook her head, not wanting to believe that he would simply forsake his eldest children for a family he hadn't been there to care for. Why should he? Didn't he love them? Hadn't he loved their mother? But Faolin had left them all, and in doing so had ruined something that could have been good. Perhaps she'd been wrong -- perhaps she needed Gabriel as much now as she had needed him in the past, to save her from her demons and from the all-consuming sins that rolled through her like blood.

With a sigh, she turned her head from the borders, studying the pendant in frail fingers as her legs carried her in the search for her brother, starting first with the horse that had been wounded in days prior. Though she wanted not to believe it, it was best to tell him now that they were alone once more, and that he was the rock she needed to stay attached to the earth.