Aela had wanted to wound Cheri's pride. She had hoped that at the very least, the dark-spotted mare would snap back at her in a predictable way. But the appaloosa makes a wry joke of her own, and not for the first time, the Empath recognizes that there was very little that was predictable about the future Queen of Loess.
"I'll let you enjoy it," she says with a flourishing smile, one that brightens a little with her own humor (Aela always has found herself quite funny). "For your big day and all." She won't add that the Pampas Prince and herself crossing paths before Cheri's coronation was unlikely; not when Obscene had been so intent on keeping his space from her.
But their banter pauses, for a moment of Cheri explaining something that makes the slender golden mare seriously consider her against the glaring sunlight.
The earliest steals had been more about opportunity. Tephra had grown eerily quiet, and knowing how much that both Obscene and Skandar hated that volcanic country, Aela had thought that stealing from the Western kingdom could settle many scores. But she had swiped away Islay, and then Enoch, both from the islands, without any consequence. The most recent captive from that same place - her niece, Sickle - had been taken from the kingdom seat and there had been nothing; nothing but the feeling that they were being watched in the quiet flower fields. That something was waiting for the Flower Court to take a wrong step, and as she glances at Cheri, Aela wonders if this might have been the source of the prickling sensation up her slender spine.
But no, she thinks as the Loessian heir raises her pretty head, that hadn't been the angle that Cheri had meant.
"I can always change my mind," Aela lightly says to the other mare. Perhaps there would be a benefit bringing Cheri to the Pampas, and she considers the thought. If the laws of the land had been different, Aela might have done it. But being bound as she was, the golden Empath could only consider it one more reason to continue on her current path; to keep stirring chaos in the hopes that the world that would come after would make more sense.
"But perhaps you might consider this a lesson learned, hmm?" she says, staying by the water's edge as the other mare started to move away. "Don't underestimate me, Cheri."
@Cheri
They doused your soul in water,
but the flames raged higher.
And they called you devil's daughter,
such a pretty liar.