Cecilia looked at Noah.
He hung in the air between them, his skin pale, with his dark hair falling across his face. She could see the dried blood across his face, which seemed to have poured from every opening he had there, and the shallow rise and fall of his chest.
He looked smaller like this. Younger. Stripped of all the careful distance he kept between himself and everyone around him.
She looked away.
The dagger sat in her spatial ring, invisible, weightless, and she could feel it the way you feel something you've carried long enough that its absence would feel wrong.
Her brother had left it to her as the last guardian, with only the instruction to keep it safe. And she had kept it safe. Until now.
Lady in Dark stepped closer, boots crunching softly over ash and broken stone. Behind her, the battlefield continued its work. Lightning crashed somewhere to the east. The bone spider had one of its legs shattered by her stone golem.
