This is what she had wanted.
Tangled, trapped in a web woven of Magic and ability. This was the only way she would get stronger; this would be the only way she would get better. (Aela doesn't understand mediocrity. Half-measures like strong as any would never be acceptable. The golden girl will ascend as she intends, or resign to her only other option: to remain a worm, to remain nothing.)
This internal battling (even if her physical body complies with his abilties, her spirit is twisting and turning and constantly prodding those invisible tendrils for a weakness, for a fault, for a mortal flaw) is the only way for her to become stronger. So even as she struggles, she reminds herself: this is what you wanted.
(Wrapped up in the veil of his Magic, Aela keeps twisting. She'll knot herself but she intends to trap him in the process.)
But as she turns one corner, as she tries to wrest her body back, a foreign emotion floods her. She is familiar with the after-effects of a lingering memory; Aela has used enough terrifying ones to know the fear that remains, enough memories through the eyes of Kota to leave behind gentler emotions (a kind girl, some might think, an old soul.) The palomino has used the more powerful memories to her advantage, using their influences to direct most of her interactions. This... happiness that comes streaming in feels similar. Crafted, artificial, forced.
As gifted as Aela assumes she is, this is breaching her limits. (Her body is still moving, her mind is still reeling and now something in her feigns happiness. It demands something of a girl who is never to be demanded anything.) Her slender neck rises and there is a slight lift of her refined head, as she finds something to push against. It lasts only seconds before she is swallowed again by the confines of his Magic. It feels as if he wants to enter her mind, to be welcomed into the most private part of her and that is a barrier that Aela will not tolerate.
Where's the pretty smile? he snickers and so Aela offers him a glimmer of one, appeasing the surface while bracing within.
She is avoiding his eyes (and this comes at the cost of her own power - memories transmit so much easier through sight). The striped girl is trying to focus on anything but the ochre-magnetism of his gaze that keeps asking her to look at him. She won't; she doesn't; she is -
It's a flicker of vision - a lightning strike across her sight that reminds her of the way that Heartfire has altered her vision - that she realizes he is changing. He is shifting and despite her fascination with skin-walkers, this repulses her. (If her pale lips could curl in a sneer, they would.) He is changing, trying to become something that Aela doesn't yet understand. In time, Aela might come to love another. In time, she might even understand the reason her grandmother left this world for the Beyond to search for a walking corpse.
The pegasus is a mesh of what she might come to want; of what might come pass. Probabilities that leave Aela wide enough of an opening to break free.
Her smile, finally free of his grasp, turns sharp and wicked.
Aela takes all the happiness that he had poured into her and replays her happiest memories: Nerine being blasted apart, Taiga burning, Carnage resurrecting Pangea. Over and over again, she flashes them bright and vibrant and full of joy. Full of so much happiness that perhaps he couldn't contain it all; perhaps he would feel so much, his wretched heart would burst from it all.
@[Narcisus] have a novel