His shoulders fill the frame of the mirror. The silk catches the amber glow of Grimshaw's enchanted lanterns and drinks it, turning the fabric into something liquid, something that moves like a second skin over the architecture of him.
It doesn't look out of place.
It looks like the tuxedo was built around it. Like Grimshaw designed every stitch to frame the brutality of him in silk and call it art.
My fingers grip the crate. The compress slides off my arm and hits the floor with a wet splat. I don't pick it up.
Dash turns from the mirror.
Not quickly. Not with any urgency. He turns the way a predator pivots when it hears something small moving through underbrush. Deliberate. Measured. Each degree of rotationcontrolled by muscles that could rip the silk clean off his body if he flexed wrong.
He doesn't flex wrong. He moves like the fabric is part of him, and that is so much worse.
One step off the fitting platform. His boot heel strikes the stone floor and the sound reverberates through the cramped shop. Second step. Third. The space between us, which was a comfortable twelve feet when I was on my crate and he was being fitted, shrinks to eight. Six.
Four.
His chin dips. Those deep-set amber eyes lock onto mine and hold, the vertical pupils narrowing to sharp black slits against the gold. Reading me. Assessing me. Running whatever internal tactical calculus mercenaries use when they identify a target's weakness.
I am broadcasting my weakness in high definition.
Three feet. Two.
He stops close enough that I have to tilt my head back to maintain eye contact. My neck cranes at an angle that is frankly ridiculous. The top of my skull reaches his collarbone. I know this because his collarbone is right there, framed by the silk collar, a ridge of skin pulled taut over bone thick enough to stop a blade.
He lifts his left hand.
My heart detonates.
He adjusts his cuff.
Slowly. Precisely. His thick fingers find the silk where it meets his wrist and roll it a quarter inch, smoothing the fabric over the corded muscle of his forearm. The motion is small. Surgical. The kind of movement a man makes when he is completely aware of every inch of space his body occupies and wants you to be aware of it too.
The silver scar tissue on his forearm catches the light as the silk shifts. Rope burns from the fitting. Already half-healed. The new marks layer over old ones, pale lines crossing skin in a pattern that tells a story I don't have clearance to read.
He switches to the right cuff.
Same motion. Same devastating precision. His wrist rotates, the tendons shift under his skin, and the silk obeys him now. Not a ripple of resistance. The fabric that tried to strangle us both twenty minutes ago lays flat and docile under his fingers like it wouldn't dare.
"Your heart rate is elevated."
The words drop between us. Low. Matter-of-fact. The observation of a professional assessing environmental conditions.
"I just wrestled sentient fabric."
"That was twelve minutes ago."
"I'm a slow recoverer."
His head tilts. One degree. His nostrils flare once, just barely, and something about the way his pupils dilate tells me orcs can smell things humans can't. Things like adrenaline. Like the blood rushing hot and stupid under my skin.
"Your pupils are dilated," he adds.
"It's dark in here."
"There are nine light sources in this room."
I count them. There are nine light sources in this room.
