She broke then and there.
The tears came all at once, hot and disbelieving, spilling over his thumbs, and the sob that followed had waited so long inside her that it came out small and wrecked, like it had forgotten its own shape on the way up.
Ayame's hand came up over her own mouth. Her eyes filled, and she stayed exactly where she was, because this was not hers to interrupt.
Quinlan drew Black Fang down, gently, out of the ruin of her pin and into his arms, one hand cradling the back of her head, the other spread warm across her back, and she went, all of her, no resistance left anywhere in her body.
Her face found the hollow of his neck.
And there, hidden from the firelight, hidden from the hall, hidden from every eye that had ever watched her for weakness, Black Fang nodded.
They stayed that way for a while, her tears cooling against his collarbone, his heartbeat arriving against her chest through both their ribs, slow and enormous and certain.
Then...
