Tensions rise quickly, but not - and perhaps this for the first time - through any fault of Leilan's. He is not the only one that can rile a crowd when the mood strikes. She can see the stiffening of the bay under her words, but the roan seems unperturbed, perhaps rightly guessing at their nature. She spares a glance for his scales and ice and changing eyes, and her lip twitches slightly, but she subdues the distaste that longs to write itself across her scarred face. He seems to take note of the flickering figure as well, and Neverwhere wonders if one of the stallions has a magic that's gone rogue. She has heard of such things, uncontrolled magic, it makes the skin on her shoulder jump.

His gaze shifts away from Brennen to the sound of hooves pulsing quickly across the rocky coastal soil, and her ears follow first, before she turns to see. A familiar figure, roan and bone, but not one that she has had an opportunity to speak with yet. There is a brief sense of unease in that, it should not be Neverwhere that must answer to Heartfire's daughter for the mysterious circumstances of her mother's disappearance. And, perhaps, she might have gone to Brazen sooner. To Eurwen, to all of them. But she had accepted the crown, and then she had run. To the Field, to the Meadow, to anywhere that wasn't Nerine, blind in a different way than before.

Still, despite that feeling of... regret, perhaps? Despite that, Brazen's arrival comes with a familiarity that bolsters the brown mare. Though they are nearly strangers, and though the magic that Brazen carries is so obvious and unusual that Neverwhere should want to scowl and step away, the heat and anger that lick at the back of her throat are soothed, the tense ripple of her clenched jaw smoothing away. Frostbitten ears curl forward when the conversation pulls away from her to Brennen's relationship to the the pair of roans. Quite a few generations to reach her from him, and where Leilan demurs, the dapple has no qualms, those very words ready on her tongue but Brennen turns back to her with scolding words and cool eyes, and her snide comment dries up, becoming instead a sharp snort, her head rolling on her neck so that her mane goes in all directions. Amusement flickers in her eyes, for any that might catch it behind the cataracts and swirl of mane.

Enter the fox, arriving in their midst with such boldness that she knows he must either be shifter or companion, but she cannot mark the difference. He ricochets off Leilan's chest, knocking his head off the thick bone of the scaled horse's jaw hard enough that she can hear the impact, then lands on silent feet and presses into Brennen. Not enough to decide, but she turns away to greet Eurwen and looking back, finds a third stallion in their midst and the fox gone. He keeps silent, but his nearness to the Champion marks them as friends, and if Brazen is anything to go by, perhaps family, as well.

But never mind that. Neverwhere makes room for Eurwen in the small gathering, pleased to have at least one horse here that is not new - or mostly new - to her. At least one that will not ask her to explain herself (and perhaps the others will not, either, but she does not know them at all to say.) The spotted mare admonishes Leilan - her father - then eyes her suspiciously, knowingly. In response the dappled mare lifts her chin, eyes narrowing, and then that sarcastic curling half-grin bares her yellow teeth. She is long past furious and overwhelmed.

"You do draw a crowd, Brennen," her voice is full of a well-practiced dryness, "at least, I assume it was you that called them here." Her eyes fall pointedly on the anonymous fox-shifter and Leilan, glittering in his scales and his ice. They smell like cold beyond even what Nerine has to offer. "Well, it's better than I could have done myself." Years of disuse have lent a rust to her voice that keeps it husky and low in spite of the great deal of talking she has had do to recently. If she were to cry out for a kingdom meeting, it is unlikely anyone would even hear her in the great open expanse of wind and sea that is the northern kingdom.

"Heartfire has gone - been taken," perhaps her attention should fall to the Champion, but it lingers instead on Brazen. She should have been told differently, "I really don't have more information than that. I don't think she had much time, the visions were rushed and--" and they hurt, she thinks, "well, they were not controlled, and she always had control."

She does look at Brennen then and stubbornly considers saying nothing, but she is not as foolish as she may act and the line they are walking is a thin one. Still a part of her claws at the words as they leave her lips.

"My name is Neverwhere."

The Queen, God help them.