---
She huffed, then leaned in, quick as a snake, and pressed her forehead lightly against his.
The contact was brief but intense. For a heartbeat, their cores touched more directly than the Soul Road usually allowed. He tasted her power, hot and sweet and dangerous, and she tasted his stubbornness, worn and scuffed but not yet cracked.
"Do not die," she whispered.
"I am very busy not dying," he said. "It is practically a full time job."
She stepped back and turned away, moving toward the inner wall where the old egg pedestals ringed the chamber. As she went, small sparks flared under her heels – not fire, exactly, more like tiny bursts of light that sank back into the stone as soon as they appeared.
Akayoroi watched her go with the wary respect one predator gives another.
"She will change things," the queen murmured. "Not just battles. The way your people think about you. About themselves. About what is possible."
"I know," Kai said.
"Does that frighten you," she asked.
