She didn’t look back.
Forward. Always forward.
Then—
The press of cold metal met the base of her neck.
A voice followed, spilling over her senses in a warped rush of sound—syllables folding, breaking, reforming as the Weaving’s power clawed its way into place, enabling her to understand and speak the local language.
“—where… come… from?” The distortion tightened, snapped into clarity.
“Now, where did you come from?” The words fell into arrangement as the voice glided over her senses, tenor-warm and dangerously close.
Her body reacted before her mind caught up, heat blooming low, traitorous, and sharp as hunger.
What the fuck.
She crushed the reaction beneath a snarl of will, forcing her spine straight against the blade’s edge. Anger came easier. Shame, too. She hadn’t heard him approach.
Sloppy.
Her senses remained tangled from the fall, from the tearing apart and piecing back together. And her mind scrabbled for footing.
Find the words. Say something normal. Buy time.
“Just…um…taking a…walk?”
Idiot. A walk? Really?
Her armor gave one last pitiful spark against her skin before dissolving in a slow, shimmering cascade, motes of fractured light floating down around her like the scatter of cosmic embers. Metal sloughed from her limbs, leaving her in nothing but loose black cotton pants bound at the ankles and the wide strap of cloth wrapped across her breasts.
“Stone and silence!” The blade pressed harder.
She felt the sting, the warmth of blood welling thin at the break in her skin.
“What happened to your clothes?” The voice was closer now.
She hadn’t heard him move, but heat bled from his body to hers through the narrow sliver of space between them.
Stars, I’m tired of it all.
She exhaled, letting it sound like boredom.
“Look, man, whoever you are, wherever this is, I’m really not in the mood.”
Her body folded forward without warning, pitching her into the empty space ahead. Then, she dropped into a crouch, sliding under the knife and around his flank in a soundless sweep.
Straightening, she pivoted behind him until her palm hovered just shy of his spine.
“I don’t need a knife to carve out your lungs, friend.” Her lips thinned against her teeth. “Just walk away.”
He shifted, one step forward—measured, casual—then turned. His attention roamed over her from head to toe, slow enough she felt the pressure of it as if he’d laid hands on her bare skin.
He had long black hair tied in a high tail; no stray strands escaped to soften the severity of his angular face. High cheekbones, sharp enough to cut glass. And eyes dark as pitch with the faintest thread of violet glinting when the light caught them wrong.
“You’re just a woman.” His mouth stretched, not quite a smile, more an invitation to mistake him for less dangerous than he was. “Nearly naked. No weapons that I can see.”
His fingers flexed against his side, squeezing over ruined fabric as his stance faltered with a shallow inhale drawn through clenched teeth.
