Mind. Heart. Sinew.

Redana breathes through the rose-pink silk, a long, slow breath. She adjusts the grip on her sword. The heart thumps in her chest, trying to escape. The Auspex hammers her perception with lines, with arrows, with the flow of battle. It hums and throbs and tries to explain to her the basic truth: that they will be overrun.

Green arrows crash over violet lines, over and over. If they hold and simply try to fight for time, they’ll get wrecked, isolated. (A shell explodes into caustic gas: up and to her right. The smell is horrible.) And the Kaeri behind, quick and clever and relentless. She’s lost to them once before.

Die. She could die. She’s going to die. Threads of possible futures snap one by one, until there’s only one left. Run. Run now. You’ll survive.

Her feet don’t move.

Maybe this is how she’ll prove it to everyone this time. That she really is sorry. That she’s sorry for failing Bella, sorry for hurting Dolce, sorry for dragging Alexa out here so that she could lose her arms. The only thing she’s not sorry for is [i]wanting.[/i]

Mind. Heart. Sinew.

“How do I [i]win?[/i]” She hisses, angrily, under her breath. The Auspex’s calculations of war halt for a moment, and then highlight the Master of Assassins. A monster. She’s seen what happens to monsters. She’s still got that thug in armor by her side, but…

But if Redana holds her life at the tip of a sword, maybe even she would yield. Maybe she doesn’t have to end this with killing someone. Maybe, just this once, as many people can walk away as possible. (The Auspex does not agree. But she’s the princess, not the Auspex. And she’s not going to— maybe even that old hag has a story and heart. Maybe even she can accept defeat.)

“Lacedo,” she says, placing one hand on her friend’s wrist. “Give ground. Don’t break, but don’t die for ground. I’m going to cut through.” And then she moves before she can let the fear catch up with her. While she’s moving, she doesn’t have to be afraid. And—

The Auspex roars in her skull, and the world falls away, and is replaced by golden thread, coiling, uncoiling, and the gods in a different shape. They are the space between the threads. They are everything. They are existence, and here, they are present— but look closer. They’re all here. They’re all always here. Her uncles and aunts and cousins, all present, always present, each one the size of the universe itself. Against them she is so small. So very, very small. But she is here.

“Could you always do this?” Silence. The Auspex (which should be part of everything, but is shut up, severed, made as concrete and discrete as Redana herself) simply draws a ribbon through the not-air for Redana to follow. And she darts forward like a hart with victory on its antlers.

[Redana, for the first time, marks [i]Camoflauge[/i] on her Auspex.]