Magda wasn’t kept waiting long. She was settled in the main room, wrapped in a blanket, refusing the aid of the recently arrived witch healer. Though the woman tried to coax her, Magda snapped and recoiled every time the witch moved to touch her. She wanted Rian to see the evidence of Izen’s crime; to witness what had been made of his wife. Her body was littered with bite marks and dark purple bruises clearly outlining Izen’s grip. Magda could feel the warmth of wet blood on her legs, but still she sat, waiting, black eyes gazing into the distance.

It was only when the door opened that she moved. Magda’s eyes, ringed red from crying, calmly drifted to Rian. When he ordered the guards and witch from the room, Magda stood and, once they were gone, loosened her hold on the blanket. It draped across her shoulders like a cape so her body and the trauma it had endured was on full display. She trembled with exhaustion, her features taught with pain.

But all the while, her gaze never wavered from Rian. After all, this had all been for him. Izen would not stand between them now. No one would.

It was all wrong. Everything he was seeing, and even without enhanced smelling, he could smell the iron. The blood… her blood. His sneer grew more twisted as they were left alone and he raised his hands to push the blanket completely from her, taking in every bruise, bite mark, the way the blood ran down her legs. A tremble built in his hands as he reached for her and slowly sank his hands into her hair, a hand on either side of her face.

Rian wasn’t doing it to be cruel, but rather a comfort as he brushed the metal at the back of her neck. As if that was reassurance she wasn’t completely broken. “What. Happened.” He gritted out between his teeth and reached for the tattered clothing… he thought he might’ve felt a bit sick as he took in the dark coloring of the bruise across her skin. Blue eyes locked onto it with such intensity…

Magda did not shrink from him. Instead, she let him inspect her, to take in the violence that had been done. For it was for him, wasn't it? Rian was the audience her theatrical production had sought. Though the situation had been contrived, the cost and suffering had been real. And Magda wanted him to see it all.

With Rian's hand tilting her face to him, Magda's black eyes stared directly into his. She shivered a little as his fingers traced the metal on the back of her neck, but she did not pull away. Her eyes, almost unblinking, had locked onto his, and her voice churned with chaotic darkness.

"Izen was waiting for me in our bedroom. He wanted me to confess disloyalty to you. I tried to talk him down, but he seemed desperate. He said Kaalim made a mistake making you cheiftain. That as second the place should have been his by right. That I should have been rightfully his. And then—and then—"

Magda swallowed, now starting to shake.

She started talking, her voice with an edge he had never quite heard from her before. But something like this had never happened to her, not as his wife. Not with him. His hands moved to strip off what was left covering her body, stripping the cloth away from her and his hands turned feather soft as he traced what parts of her skin weren’t damaged.

Izen. His gentle brother. The size of a mountain as they all were but… Izen was the soft spoken, the gentle one (as much as a man of Coheed could be). What rattled him the most was the fact that he apparently found a cowardly way to show his want to be chieftain. To not come and demand a first blood from Rian, but rather to come into his house and batter his wife…

He took her into his arms, scooping her up and leading back to the bathing room. Brow heavy and furrowed as he sat her next to the bathing tub and leaving the room with a silent rage cloaked over him. He opened the door to make one demand, fresh water for the bath, and then slammed it shut and came back to her. Looking at the blood covering her legs, he had never seen it that bad. “Is this a wound?” He touched a small part of her thigh, “or are you not with child?” It wasn’t asked to be cruel, but for him to understand just how utterly brutal this had been on her.

Rian’s touch was a comfort. It pulled focus from the pain to the softness of his fingers, enough that she let out a shaky breath of relief. She closed her eyes for a moment, tears escaping briefly before she reigned them in again. When they opened, they had softened. Magda’s look was full of the same love she’d had when the word had first left her lips.

Rian would easily scoop her up in his arms. She buried her head against him, breathing him in as he carried her to bathe. When he rested her on the ground, and went to the door, she leaned on the edge of the tub, adrenaline starting to fade and the pain eclipsing it.

When Rian spoke, she turned to face him. Magda flinched from his touch when his fingers brushed her thigh. Her features changed, showing a different kind of pain than before.

“I can’t be sure, but…” Magda swallowed, “It was like this before. With fathe—Andrei. It would happen like this.” And that was the first line of truth Magda had uttered since Rian first entered the hut.

Rian pulled his fingers away, looking at how red the tips were as she spoke. He knew that darkness swirled in Magda’s past, knew he had only the barest idea of what had happened to her before becoming his wife… and even before she was in charge of turning him into a man who could blend in in Nevermere.

Blue eyes moved up to her, mouth in a tight line. He rolled his thumb over his fingers, the red smearing and almost tacky the more he moved them. “Are you telling me… you might have been with my child?” Because this was about to take a turn much much more intense… in his head… and yet he still was trying to find it in his logical mind that Izen… his brother…

Magda could almost taste his anger. It was so beautifully volatile, so raw in its power that Magda trembled to behold it. It made it all worth it, somehow. It was an assurance that what she'd done to herself - what she'd made Izen do - would ensure words would bear no truth to Rian. That he'd be forever silenced, and Rian isolated further from anyone but his wife. Magda shook more violently, trying to reconcile her excitement, pain, and loss into one easily processed emotion.

"Don't make me answer that," Magda shook her head, voice ever so small as tears dropped down her cheeks. She didn't even know whether or not they were real.

She shook but Rian didn’t move. He needed to hear this, to have the air sucked from his lungs with this brutal truth. His jaw worked as he stood and turned from her. The first thing he saw was that damn mirror, the one that so very much looked like Nevermere.

But all he saw in it was himself, so very Coheed as his chest rose and fell heavily. As the bloodied and broken image of Magda was behind him. He saw the red again, and without a second thought, the rage rippled through him as he took hold of the mirror and threw it to the other side of the room. Shattering the glass and sending it scattering across the floor. His wife. His. Whether he deserved to be chieftain or not… Magda was his.

A roar ripped from him, a battle cry as he turned to look for the next item he could break. Grabbing a container that was surely a bottle of perfume or something of the like of Magda’s, hurling it towards where the mirror had been destroyed. His. Was Coheed next? His home? He broke everything in the bathroom he could hold and touch. Anything his hands and arms could rip free. Not even flinching at the idea of Magda watching this.

Magda followed Rian’s gaze to the mirror. She saw reflection, yet for the first time, Magda felt as though she didn’t recognize herself. What she was not a woman but a creature; a monster, much like the ones that still stalked her in her sleep. But Magda didn’t flinch from the vision. She looked upon the creature with satisfaction. After all, it was safer to be a beast than a harlot.

Rian’s rage tore her from her reveries. When the glass shattered to the floor, she did not flinch. She let him rip through their room in a whirlwind of destruction, watching him with a dark sparkle in her eyes. She wanted him like this; angry, violent, ready to kill the man that had taken his wife. For if Rian didn’t do it…perhaps she’d do it herself.

Strangely, there had been no moment more affirming of her love for him than this one. She loved him liked this; loved him always, but particularly like this when his chaos was wound so tightly with her own.

Magda would stand there, watching him, letting him wreak havoc as long as he’d like.

There wasn’t much else to break, mirrors shattered, perfume filled the air from her special ones from Nevermere. The bottles dripping the liquid on the floor. Was his chance to father another child just ripped from him in a selfish act from his brother? Someone he loved and trusted? Someone who had been the first to show up to get him from Nevermere after his year in the dark and the torture he had endured? Someone he thought wouldn’t hurt him…

Heavy panting left him, his shoulders rising and falling until he was able to even it out. A knock at the door signaled the water had arrived and he commanded it be left outside. He’d bring it in on his own. Another pause, before he slowly turned back to Magda, his eyes unable to help themselves as they moved back down to the blood stained thighs… “get in the tub.” His voice so full of gravel he hardly heard it as his own.

He’d open the door, and bring in each container of water to pour into the basin in their bathroom. To wash her of what had happened. He already had several witnesses see her, he didn’t need anyone else to know the utter destruction left behind. A hand reached out, fingers brushing her stomach, just a small touch before he retreated with a new harsh line across his forehead as he continued until the tub was full. “He’ll answer for this.”

Magda obeyed; the tone in his voice suggested no alternative. She moved over the lip of the tub, wincing as she did, hand flying absently to the metal on the back of her neck. Suddenly she felt very cold, so cold she started shivering. She sank down into the belly of the basin, letting Rian pour the water in, its warmth sinking into her bones. Magda knew that it was she who was hurting him—not Izen. After all, it was under her command that Izen had wounded them both.

But still, Magda felt no guilt. No shame. However much Rian might be hurting, it was necessary pain. Necessary to keep him on the path that Magda intended. Necessary for their marriage to endure without voices of suspicion putting themselves in Rian’s ears. This betrayal would harden him, perhaps drive him to be more the man Coheed needed. The chieftain that could claim this kingdom for them both, once and for all. There was no line Magda wouldn’t cross in the pursuit of their dominion. Not one.

Magda lifted a gentle hand, genuine affection filling her eyes with soft, fragile light. She drew her fingers along his cheek before a switch flipped, and the black flint of unsettled madness returned to her eyes.

“See that he does,” Magda whispered, “Or I will see to it myself.” She’d lean in to kiss him as if sealing a promise. For there was only one punishment Magda would accept.

The anger that had taken over hadn’t quite smothered the feeling of total loss that was within him. Izen. The image of his brother that seemed so vividly sharp and yet blurry all at once. As if he didn’t know the man he grew up with. Where had he gone wrong?

Magda’s dark eyes held him captive for a long moment as she dragged her fingers against his cheek. But why her? Why not just come after him? And the anger started to boil again as she whispered her demand and she didn’t need to say what she meant for him to understand. The sharp pain was there for a moment, then her lips were on his and he curled around her. As if he could build a wall around her he would in that moment.

Unsure, he kissed her back, his hands gentle despite the destruction around them. Cupping her cheeks, leaning into her.