Pepperidge never proves it, but she is relatively certain that Longeye is the one who invents new words to a traditional ranger travelling tune. Seventeen verses, boasting that if you face the Fist o' Ribs on the field of battle, you are doomed to lose — because the Wolf of Underhill marches with them: she will break your ranks, slay your sorcerers, and steal your wives' hearts.
Taelin, though, is to blame for the banner which replaces the one that she carried across the field of the Battle of Underhill: a wolf with bee's wings, carrying a heart in its jaws. She has trouble deciphering the archaic script in which the motto is lettered, but Lilli confirms for her: Death to Nameless Monsters!
"I am but a simple human scholar," she protests to him, and he laughs beneath his terrible helm of office.
"You're our human scholar," he says. "And we are a people of poets, you know; if we choose to be dramatic in our love for you, you might as well tell the sun to let you sleep an hour longer."
"Do not look to me," Lilli tells her, arm linked through the Professor's; "none love you more than I, and do they not nickname me Poet? I am as dramatic as the sea and storm in your praises."
"To think," Pepperidge says, laughing half ruefully, "that I once lived without you, and knew not what I missed. Oh my poet, I knew you were trouble from the day you arrived at the university."
"How else could I be sure of your eyes on me?" Lilli says sweetly. "I knew what I missed, the second you turned that frown at me, oh sweetest wolf; and I desired your smile."
"Like this?" The Professor cups her face, hovering a breath away from kissing her.
"Like that," Lilli murmurs.
"Mercy, get a room," Taelin grumbles good-naturedly beyond them, and they ignore him entirely.
