Do you know what would be easy? Giving herself to Mother. Taking Oberon by surprise in this moment of quiet conversation. Showing him how much [i]more[/i] his daughter has become. It would be so simple to turn on her heel and reach her hand, her careful, thoughtful always tapping hand inside him, right through his chest and grasp the core of him. To tear apart all these lies. Pulling, pricking, testing, teasing, unwinding and unbending until there's nothing left of him but his petty little Truth. Pure, ha! What is Want when you have nothing? What is Want when your plans are shattered, your minions lost, your treasures broken? Nothing but a pathetic child whining into the night that it's cold and dark and scary. It would be so easy to join with Mother and fill those pricking fingers with just a little fire, to burn away the dross and scatter that scared little boy to the four winds. Not even so much ash. To let her fire burn away everything. To race through the roots of Argossa like a scouring, righteous flame and burn and burn and burn and burn and burn until there's nothing left of him and everything could go back to being as it was. As it is supposed to be. 

It would destroy her. Shiva's eyes would turn red and she would go mad amongst the Garthim and topple them from the tree. Oberon's cold would wrap itself all about this frail body she's inhabiting. She would give her everything. Sacrificing first her magic. Then her strength. Then her empathy, so dearly bought. And last of all her courage that held fast in a frozen heart for a thousand years. She would give it all up and become part of Argossa and beyond Argossa until she had burned through every inch of Hyperborea and wrapped it in her warmth. Maybe, forever afterward, people would remember her as that which turned away the last of the Riders, the last of the visitors from beyond the world so that all the princesses could be true and loving. Maybe nobody would ever know, save perhaps Ourania, if she were inexplicably to mist up a bit more than before at princess weddings.

She would never get a chance to say goodbye. Maybe it was that, of all things, that made it just a little less easy. A little less simple to let it all go. A bit tricky to give in to a thousand years of rage at this man who could not see ANYTHING outside of his own ego. It burned within her. But she wouldn't get to say goodbye. Not to her wonderful friends, so many of whom she still needed to know better, the way Alina and Adila knew them from a lifetime of games, contests, and joyous hugs. Not to Rita, who deserved all the happiness and warm sunbeams in the world. Not to Adila, who was just starting to flourish and embrace herself. Not to Alina, who couldn't see how beautiful and wise she had become. Not even to her favorite little fox princess who she was going to marry in a special little magical Konkon ceremony with a Rider princess twist.

So Kazelia did the hardest thing in the entire world right now. Maybe the hardest thing she had ever done. Even harder than when she went out into the snow and left her real mother, harder by far than facing Oberon in Feloria or at Hobling Keep. She nodded and said "Ah, love. Maybe this world really has gotten to you, Father" and she took his hand and let him lead her towards the ceremony. She did it all without trembling even, or maybe she trembled a little, but it was only right that a daughter be appropriately afraid of her father.