It's blood magic, what she is suggesting to the skin-shifter.
Perhaps the most powerful and potent of magics, she thinks. (And it shows how young she still really is, how far she has yet to go in her immortality.) But Aela's blue eyes are brights - almost feverishly so - as she studies the tree that Skandar's fire alights for them. Her head lifts as she glances over the bare branches, the scorched remains of what almost was.
Straia had been Dominus of Pangea.
And then she had been nothing at all.
All those dreams swallowed whole. All that ambition buried beneath the ground like a body cradled in a grave.
She knows that Skandar is thinking of the same things as she. She can catch glimpses of his memories crackling between them like the firelight. It's a lesson learned for Aela and yet it does nothing to temper her own desire to grow, for more. Her mind is almost always dreaming of empires falling and rising, of kings crashing and coronations with climbing crowns that have some connection to her. To them, she realizes as she glances at the burning stallion beside her.
Aela has always known that she is destined for great things - for things far grander than the fog and obscurity than the North would have confined her to - but what that greatness would be was yet to be seen. (But how fitting is it that Aela catches sight of it here, blazing in what had been the tree that foretold so many destinies to those who lived in the Old Lands?) What does Skandar see, she wonders? Does he see anything at all as they stare at the forlorn limbs and the decaying remains at what had once been a symbol of untapped power?
She is still thinking that blood is the highest price that Gods might demand (it doesn't occur to her to yet that there is power in other things, that if Gods really exist that would more than mere mortal blood; that the riches of life are seldom just power and titles; that they might want the love they share amongst themselves for them, that they might one to take everything they held dear to keep those below glancing skyward). Aela knows she will have to bleed and though the flashes that she sends to the constellation-marked stallion come quicky - almost without thought because she is so consumed in the act that they are about to commit - some part of her doesn't realize that he will decide so suddenly. Her blue eyes are looking at the tree before him as his glowing eyes hone in on the slender slope of her shoulder, as the two points fixate and then -
And then she is suddenly burning.
Apart from the single word that she has shared with Skandar (the only one, an unpracticed whisper barely audible above the wind), she has never uttered anything. Their language has always been spoken through their minds; an understanding that comes as a flash of images. But now Aela cries out in pain as it sears white-hot between her shoulders, as it spreads through her as she starts to glow in rage. He had... marked her? Her golden sides are heaving when her head swings towards him, as her blue eyes lock with his, storm-eyed and wind-wild.
She takes one step towards him as the blood continues to run down her leg, as it paints her pale stocking. Skandar's skin is cooling, she realizes, as the stars and constellations start to dawn on the canvas of his god-like coat. Aela slows for a moment, remembering that they needed to bleed for this to work. (But she can't quite get the fire from underneath her skin to still and it is there, blazing beneath her palomino coat.) The fiery mare takes one step closer to the star-marked stallion and then another before she stops a breath away from, hovering close enough that his fire-glow illuminates shadows of her anger burning in her eyes.
(There is blood on the roots of the tree, a path on the ground that leads to him like an offering to an altar.)
Aela thinks that she is glowing; that it is coming from her striped markings, from her pale socks. What she doesn't realize is that she is burning. She might have caught the reflection of the flames if she had looked to the red eyes of @[Skandar] but she is watching the cosmos of his skin - the stars where destinies are written - and she decides that she will write hers on his. She reaches out - fire-skin inferno that she is - and goes to mark him as he had her, to set him ablaze as he had her.