He retreats four inches.
He returns to hovering.
Bram's hammer pauses. "Indestructible."
"He thinks she's playing hard to get."
"She is not."
"She isn't. He's confused her policies."
Footsteps behind me. Light. Quick.
"Healer."
Kestria. Ladder-flushed. Dust on one cheek. Three pieces of thatch in her hair.
"Wolf."
"Someone is wearing my brother's shirt again."
"This one is mine."
"It is now." She grins, and she looks too much like Keer when she grins, so I look at the rail. "This one was clean. Mine wasn't."
"Mhm."
"We had been up all night."
"Woah, I don’t want to know."
"Kestria."
"There's a tactical hydration phase, and there's a wearing-his-shirts phase, and one tends to follow the other, and I did try to warn you about this, and you said tactical hydration."
"Itwastactical hydration. He gave me water. Once. Well, actually twice—there is no shirt clause in tactical hydration."
"There's a shirt clause now. Pack-wide. Axan has a bet."
"Axan can bite me."
Kestria's eyebrows shoot up. "Mel."
"What?"
"Don't say bite me."
"It's an expression."
"Not in this clearing it isn't."
I open my mouth. Close it.
"Oh. Right. Yeah, that's a—that's a whole thing, isn't it."
"It is."
"Keer would—"
