Chulteka stared at him.
Her wrist in Yu Xiang's hand.
The arrays overhead.
The nine-tailed woman against his chest.
The pregnant belly.
The composure of a man who has just kicked the head off her partner and is now asking questions while holding his wife's tail with the casual intimacy of someone doing two things at once that each require approximately equal effort.
She had been cold for three centuries.
She had emptied cultivation sites on four continents.
She had devoured souls the way other people eat meals — regularly, without sentiment, as a resource management strategy.
She had never, in three centuries, felt what she was currently feeling, which was the specific cold of being the least powerful thing in a conversation and knowing it clearly and having no immediate remedy.
Her pussy was still wet.
She noted this.
She noted which direction it was wet toward and found this information objectionable.
"...Who," she said.
Her jaw was tight.
