Elise groaned in frustration when Valence recovered in time to roll away from her attack, leaving her to slash at the ice beneath him, and she still lacked the strength and the balance to give chase. Her face quickly warped in grief again, as she expected her failure to be the end of her again. She braced herself against the ice with one gloved hand to keep herself from tipping over.

	What did he say? He brought her back? Elise stared at him in confusion. Nothing the man said ever seemed to make sense to her, and she was fairly confident she'd heard him correctly, both now and before. Had she... had she really died. Had he really somehow revived her? How was that even possible? And why would he do it to her, his enemy, a mere girl to be discarded so that her father and her kingdom would be weakened?

	His eyes opened, locked with hers, and suddenly Elise sharply took in a breath, instinctively removing her right hand from the floor to press it against the side of her head, and immediately slipping onto her hip in the process. She could feel something... [i]foreign[/i], invading her mind, and suddenly Valence seemed to stand out to her like even the room they were in no longer existed. She could feel hints of his surprise, his... shame? Was it shame, or sadness, or perhaps both? Elise couldn't tell, but she could recognize the feeling as not her own.

	At the same time, she felt immediately exposed, unable to hide her exhausted state, her confusion, her fear, overwhelming fear that she did everything she could to suppress visually. All of it was tinged with her despair, as everything had been since her mother was murdered. Valence's sword slipped from her hand and clattered onto the ice, as she brought her other hand to her head, as though cupping it would somehow hide her from him. With her right, she pushed herself back up into a sitting position, unconsciously sliding a foot away from him. Her eyes shot up to his, her anger and spirit clearly undiminished.

	"What did you do to me?" she demanded to know. "Get out of my head!"