Winter takes the nod as a go-ahead and leans against the wall, sighing. This isn't going to be an easy thing. Nothing could ever be easy anymore, of course, but somehow this feels even more so.

"I accept that you've made a mistake. But I don't think it's the one you think it is," she says, voice hard but not accusing... yet. "I agree that we can still recover from this. And it's not your fault that we were attacked." The fact that she's still willing to take responsibility for the settlement's safety, evident in her unconscious use of we, surprises even her, and she pauses for a moment. "I don't know enough yet to concretely assign blame beyond that. But there is one thing that bothers me about all this. A big one."

She looks straight at Lazarus, and rather than the anger she'd expected to be showing him, it's raw hurt. This hasn't rubbed her the right way, and it's not going to do her any good to hurt him when he's already hurt so badly. "I am an ice mage. I could have helped with this! So why didn't you call me?" This is the crux of the issue, for her. Everything else is forgivable, they can fix things, nobody was killed. But... why not her?