“Do you think you can just?—”
I don’t answer them. I don’t slow.
Because he’s closer now, and the tension around him has tightened to a point that feels like it’s about to snap.
His hand lifts.
And I reach him.
My fingers close around his arm before I can second-guess it, the contact immediate and solid, the heat of him bleeding through the fabric beneath my grip, and the effect is instantaneous in a way I don’t expect.
He stops.
Not the kind of hesitation I’ve seen before. Not the kind that comes from uncertainty.
This is something else entirely.
The motion cuts off mid-intent, the violence that had been building snapping tight and holding there, contained rather than released, and when his head turns toward me, slow and deliberate, the world seems to narrow with it.
“What,” he says quietly, his voice low enough that it doesn’t carry, though there’s nothing uncertain in it, “do you think you’re doing?”
My scarf slips as I move, loosening at my throat, my hair falling free in a way that feels far too exposed, but I don’t pull away, even as every instinct I have tells me I should.
“Stopping you,” I answer, keeping my voice steady despite the way my pulse is starting to climb, because if I hesitate now, even slightly, it won’t matter what I say.
His gaze sharpens, not in confusion but in focus, as though everything else has fallen away and I am the only thing left in front of him.
“You shouldn’t touch me,” he says, and the words are not a threat so much as a statement of fact.
“Then don’t make me need to,” I reply, before I can stop myself, the words slipping out sharper than I intended.
Something shifts in him at that—not softening, not easing, but adjusting, recalibrating, the tension in his arm beneath my hand changing just enough that I feel it.
“You’re overstepping,” he says.
“You’re about to make a mistake,” I counter quietly. “One you won’t be able to fix.”
For a fraction of a second, something passes through his expression—something too quick to name, too controlled to fully surface—and then?—
Movement.
Not from him.
From behind.
It’s wrong in a way that hits before I understand it, a shift where there shouldn’t be one, too close, too fast, and Verr reacts instantly, his arm twisting free of my grasp as he moves past me in a single, fluid motion.
The strike is precise.
Final.
The figure behind him collapses almost immediately, the sound of it sharp against the stone, and the world follows a heartbeat later as the surrounding voices fracture into noise.
“What just?—”
“Guards—”
“Who is that?—”
