It did burn. It always would. Children laid out on her embalming table, young corpses riddled with bullets, because a police officer had only seen a thug. Men and women's bodies ripped apart, their lives ripped away, through unspeakable violence, intentional acts of cruelty or hatred or callousness.
Qebhet had been birthed of human compassion: of a mortal need to honour and remember their dead, and a longing to know they would be cared for in the afterlife. She knew the immense love they were capable of, and yet so many chose the opposite.
But there was comfort in Hecate's touch, like the glow of moonlight rippling silver on a river's surface. Comfort, too, in a warm mug of coffee, and the sleepy weight of a snake coiled on her wrist, and the familiar presence of spirits loitering curiously in the corridor outside the break room. Qebhet always tried to be grateful for the small things.
She sipped her coffee, looking pensive. "Boys who follow a god of slaughter, and shoot at strangers from stolen cars... I wonder what kind of fortune led them to such a place." As well wonder what led any mortal into cruelty and violence, she supposed. "But you said not all of them were Ares'?"