The ropes went down.
He felt her throat working—the involuntary, desperate swallow of a woman whose options had narrowed to one—and felt her failing at it, the overflow finding other routes, the evidence of his claim on her appearing at the corner of her mouth and at the bridge of her nose and at the corner of each dark eye with the specific, thorough completeness of something that had been building for several minutes and was now expressing itself without editorial.
He released her hair.
She fell.
Not dramatically—the specific graceful collapse of a body that had been maintaining structural integrity through pure combat discipline and had received the signal that the immediate threat had resolved, and was issuing its own assessment of what the last four minutes had cost it.
She hit the wet grass on her side. Her chest heaved. One palm on the earth, the other not quite finding a position.
The leather strap had given up any pretense of geometric precision.
He stood over her.
