Flushed from throat to hairline, the color of it deep and real, not the abstract aesthetic flush of something decorative but the full vascular reality of a woman whose body was running every program available. The silver-grey hair was damp at her temples.
Her lips were parted.
The tears had stopped — or the compound had stopped them, or something else had redirected the available physiological resources — but the tracks of them were still there, dried silver lines from the outer corners of her eyes into her hair.
She was looking at him.
Not at the ceiling. Not at the haze. 'At him.' The specific focused quality of someone who had decided to look at the thing happening to them rather than away from it, because looking away wasn't working.
Viktor held her gaze.
Then his hips moved.
It started slow.
