Her pentagram eyes, the eyes that used to make veteran fighters flinch when she walked into a room, blurred red and wet as the Hexwitch wept on a battlefield surrounded by enemies who could kill her in three clean strikes.
'Hubby is becoming something no one has ever seen.' The thoughts weren't thoughts anymore, they were coming in fistfuls, ugly and wet and impossible to hold back.
'And they're climbing right with him. Every one of them. Blossom, Ayame, Serika, Lucille, all of them getting stronger, all of them evolving, all of them becoming women worthy of standing next to him while I rot. I'm rotting while girls young enough to be my great-granddaughters leave me in the dirt.'
"I can't keep up..."
The words left her mouth before she knew they were coming, cracked and small and aimed at no one, spoken to the scorched stone under her knees because she couldn't say them to anyone who mattered.
"I can't keep up with any of them..."
