Who: Gabe, Freya & Matt / Kyle & Daisy What: In which dyads interrupt a fun night out and a not-so-fun training session. Also Matt is an idiot, as is his wont. When: Thursday, September 3rd, 2020 (early evening / early afternoon) Where: The King Arthur pub in Glastonbury, UK / The training rooms at Resistance HQ in Los Angeles, California Note: Part 2 of 2.
Kyle was distracted. He knew it, but he fought stubbornly against it anyway. Sparring with Daisy wasn’t enough to turn his thoughts away from Freya completely, no matter how hard he tried to focus. Even the satisfaction of temporary victory over his opponent was as fleeting as any other thought managing to enter his mind that didn’t somehow involve her. She was in his head, and he didn’t know how to stop it. Fighting his way out of something was the only way Kyle knew to handle a situation he found himself at odds with, but this was a fight he couldn’t win.
Any attempts at distraction were ultimately in vain. The longer he and Daisy fought, the harder it was for Kyle to think clearly, to not think about her. That pull he felt towards Freya every single moment that he was awake was becoming untenable, even now, his unease at how powerless she made him feel taking root in the pit of his stomach with every strike and counter.
Daisy, meanwhile, had hit her stride. Every blow was delivered with a singular focus, the kind that should have telegraphed her next move to Kyle’s Force-heightened instincts with ease. But his mind was elsewhere, and he missed her gambit. Her hair whipped behind her as she tested him with an obvious feint – and she openly laughed when he fell for it.
And then she did it again.
“Oh, Roth,” she said with another sharp laugh, “you’re not all here, are you?” She wiped the sweat from above her curling lips with the back of her hand. “I’d be insulted if this wasn’t so much fun.”
Frustrated with his obvious miss, Kyle clenched his fists tighter as he pointedly ignored her barbs. Sweat began collecting steadily along his hairline, dislodging in thick beads to begin their slow, torturous trail down the sides of his face as his movements became increasingly more erratic. The sensation was enough to drive him absolutely insane, but Kyle made no move to wipe the sweat away as they continued, dodging and whipping around each other like demons.
What Kyle still refused to admit to himself, aside from the ever present Freya Problem, is that it was beginning to become evident that keeping up with Daisy was taking everything in him too.
His lack of focus would have been enough to put Adrian Knox in a foul mood, if he were still alive to see Kyle faltering now. Kyle’s guardian had once made him repeat the same movement for hours until he’d been satisfied that his protege’s technique left no room for error. In many ways the man had been like another father to him, after Kyle had lost his own, though far from the understanding kind. No achievement was ever good enough, no goal too high to reach for more. Kyle had spent countless nights killing himself just to earn a shred of his approval. It was that crippling fear of failure instilled in him since he was young that made Kyle such a tireless fighter, and what also made him incapable of accepting defeat. Even to his own detriment.
Any sign of weakness only had to be stamped out.
Kyle found himself fighting two battles. The outcome of either was a giant question mark, but he fought Daisy with the resolve of an opponent unwilling to yield instead of the one who was rapidly splintering under the weight of everything warring inside his head. Defeat was not on the table; though he might (briefly) consider it if it meant that she stopped talking.
“All that time,” she panted between harder and harder blows, “you spent training with him –” There was a flash of something in her eyes before she whirled away from a swing of his arm, but her words were a distraction, finally too piercing to be ignored. “ – and for what?”
A breathless laugh cut through the air as she backed away just enough to show him the cruel triumph in her eyes, Kyle’s eyes dark with rage as he met her gaze and took his own step backwards to begin circling her. She knew she’d hit her mark. “You’re supposed to be our greatest weapon, but you can’t even beat me. You’re crumbling from the inside out.” Her lips twisted at the same moment her hands moved into a new position at her side, preparing for what would come next. “Honestly, Roth, you should consider yourself lucky that he died before he could see you like this. He’ll never know what a disappointment you are.”
Every word from Daisy had done its job to steadily chip away at the remaining shreds of his resolve, but it was her last that finally pushed Kyle over his barely controlled edge. With that final insult ringing in his ears, an old anger surged through him as he whirled mid-stalk, the dig at his guardian the final straw. Kyle moved to advance on his enemy, the personal ire sparked from Daisy’s remarks close to boiling over until, just as suddenly, Kyle halted as a pull he’d become intimately familiar with in more recent months tugged hard at him.
Freya. Panting hard and temporarily frozen in place, Kyle blinked once. Twice. Three times, as his eyes locked on the very real vision of a familiar head of blonde hair and fair skin. She was still there. How was this possible when he hadn’t…
Eyes narrowing briefly, a mixture of confusion and concern flickered across his features in the span of a moment, only half aware of the company he still kept as Kyle’s lips parted without his permission on the sound of her name.
***
Freya was almost relieved when the pub erupted into chaos. Instinct took over, blessedly making it impossible to dwell on the momentary but crucial lapse that sparked the explosion. That would come later. Now, her training assessed the threats, her reflexes evaded them, and despite the spike of adrenaline fragmenting the pandemonium into more easily processed components, her mind was remarkably free from the weight of overthinking. For the first time all night, she felt clear.
But that clarity did not extend to her surroundings. A wall of bodies separated Freya from Matt and Gabe, and she lost sight of them before she knew what was happening. She tried to feel them through the Force, but for all her concentration she picked out nothing more than their twin concerns for each other (and for her), barely rising above their instincts for survival. With the amplified storm of volatility rolling off of every person surrounding her, she couldn’t get a strong enough fix on them.
She couldn’t find them.
And then, suddenly, she did. A gap in the crowd revealed the two comrades standing back-to-back, and Freya let go of a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. One of the men from earlier had decided to make good on previous threats, approaching a motionless Gabe who seemed to be sizing up his opponent before tilting his head in a subtle crack of his neck as the other man lunged, and Gabe swiftly knocked him down. His position was still defensive, but shrewd. Almost protective. Calculating his movements to keep himself firmly planted where he was between his friend and whoever might try to come through Gabe to get to him. Matt, on the other hand, threw himself into the fray with wild abandon, seemingly having the time of his life. But appearances were deceiving, and Freya’s eyes saw more than most. It was the distance that gave him away, she thought. Much easier to see from here that his rapid-fire taunts and liquid-sharp fighting style barely disguised a tension in his shoulders that she just now realized had been there, invisible up close, every time she’d seen him. Every time he wasn’t on mission.
Suddenly his protracted efforts to start a fight in the first place didn’t seem quite so simple.
An ache of sympathy pierced her. She knew exactly how he felt, but there was no time to dwell on that, either. She wanted to join her friends, to have their backs in a fight as only a Jedi could, but her every attempt to push through the crowd failed. There were just too many people all converging in one spot, violence sticking them together like glue. A part of her knew she had the ability to force (or Force) her way through the mass if she really wanted to, but the rest of her knew it wasn’t worth it. These people weren’t threats, not really. They were, at worst, moderately inebriated and overly susceptible to hotheaded impulses. More of a danger to themselves than they were to her or the pilots. Sometimes it was easy to forget that Matt and Gabe were seasoned soldiers who could more than handle themselves. Another glimpse through the crowd confirmed what she already knew: they would be all right without her.
But she could still help, even if she couldn’t get to them.
Instead of pushing against the flow of the throng, Freya surrendered to it and let it carry her to the outskirts. Here it was less of a press of bodies and more a collection of sporadic one-on-ones, where she could easily avoid getting drawn into a stranger’s fight. An alternative path presented itself, and she took it, circling the brawl, observing it, mitigating some of the damage from afar.
First things first, she thought grimly, weaving through a few enthusiastic outliers. Behind her she sensed the man in red who had stupidly thought she’d be an easy target, approaching her with unmistakable determination. She half-turned, barely sparing him a glance before she reached out with the Force and mercilessly pulled his consciousness from him. An ugly move, but a necessary one. He’d already proven that he, more than anyone here, was dangerous. Better to let him fall to the ground like a sack of potatoes (an insult, regrettably, to potatoes) and get lightly trampled than to give him the opportunity to come after her again.
After that, Freya let her instincts guide her. The action at the edges was less intense, yet it still had a rhythm, a beat, just like any other fight. She slipped into it, as easy as breathing. Observing, sensing moments approaching that only she could divert before someone went too far, she blocked blows but never delivered them, pushed broken glasses and chair legs out of reach just before a hand grasped them, yanked overeager pilots unceremoniously out of an oncoming circle of bruisers. (Matt’s indignant yowl sounded surprisingly catlike to her ears, a detail she would definitely be sharing with Gabe whenever they got out of this.) All of it was just another dance, oddly peaceful despite the violence. Another extension of the Force.
That in itself was calming. She’d spent so much of the night feeling out of her depth. She didn’t feel that way now. She felt –
The pull, out of nowhere, from outside of herself but deep within simultaneously. Familiar but wrong, somehow, more like a riptide than the gentle comfort of connection she was used to. This time it was cold and inescapable, a wrenching in her center, stealing her breath.
The noise around her abruptly silenced, replaced by some sort of unidentifiable white noise coming from the other side. His side. Eyes wide, she forced herself not to panic, turning cautiously to find him.
There, in a corner more or less untouched by the brawl, was Kyle. And for a moment, there was nothing else in the world. Only him.
Freya exhaled, a curious mixture of relief and confusion creasing her features. Strangely, it wasn’t a shock to see him standing across from her, mere feet away. Nor was it upsetting. She’d wasted so much time fearing that their bond would bring them together at an inconvenient moment, that her most closely held secret would be found out and she’d have to reconcile the two halves of her life she kept separate, but those worries disappeared as soon as she saw him. Even now, it didn’t feel wrong to see him. It felt like something missing had finally been returned to her.
But then she truly saw him, and her relief evaporated.
Ragged breathing. Hair plastered to his forehead, sweat visible on what little skin was exposed outside of his… armor? She swallowed hard, her mind quickly cataloging the details, her stomach sinking at what they meant. He was dressed the same way he used to dress when they’d first started their arrangement. When he still thought she was a threat. Only two differences reassured her – no shoes and no lightsaber, at least not that she could see – but it was a minor consolation at best. She knew what he was doing.
He was training. For what, she didn’t know (or want to know, a treacherous voice whispered in her mind), but he was in the middle of some kind of fight with some unknown partner, clearly. A partner who was also… an enemy? That made no sense, but she saw lines of hatred deeply etched into his face despite the softened look of confusion and concern he focused on her now. She’d seen that hatred before, a long time ago. A lifetime ago.
Her throat was too tight to let any sound escape, but her eyes locked with his, asking a question she couldn’t voice. But somehow she already knew the answer, and her body reacted without hesitation, reaching out to him, stepping forward, mouth parting –
***
He had enough presence of mind still to catch himself before her name actually left his mouth, but the pull of her through the Force threatened to overwhelm him completely. Freya was the very blood pumping through his body, surrounding him and settling in him as only she could, and a voice inside a memory whispered to him as his mind reached for hers.
Be with me. Kyle’s breathing slowed, and then, everything else slowed down with it.
She looked exactly as he often saw her, cheeks holding the smallest shade of pink to them as they were often flushed from their own training sessions. He spotted the delicate wisps of blonde that normally hung in front of her eyes, now hastily pushed back onto her forehead with the visible presence of sweat. Was that her harsh breathing he could hear alongside his own? The look of mild confusion in his features quickly morphed to one of careful curiosity, wondering what it was he couldn’t see beyond her. Was she in danger? Something foreign gnawed in the center of his gut, swallowing a sudden desire to cut down any threats to her safety in his path.
As if she read his mind, that was the moment Freya locked eyes with him and took a step forward. Kyle’s breath hitched in his throat, watching as she reached out to him with a hand, something inside of him wanting very badly to take it.
Join me. Please. Ben’s voice echoed within the cavernous walls of his own mind, throat moving as Kyle swallowed, just as he once had. Holding her gaze with an intensity that surprised even him, every cell in his body was screaming to be near her as Kyle very nearly took a step toward her himself. That was when disaster struck.
Kyle sensed the threat, but almost didn’t react fast enough. He’d mistaken Daisy’s momentary distance for temporary safety and saw too late her change in stance, the fluid motions paired with two extended fingers that charged the air between them with carefully controlled electricity. All she needed was a moment, and when it was over, she channeled the lightning at her fingertips and aimed it remorselessly at his heart. With a mixture of wordless fury and regret etched into his already muddled features, Kyle abruptly broke their connection.
***
And then something changed in his eyes, too quick for her to see, and he was gone.
The raucous noise of the pub came crashing back down with awful finality. His name died on her lips.
Freya stared at the space Kyle no longer occupied. He broke the connection. Why? Why, if he’d made it in the first place? Or if they both… She shook her head, the mechanics still eluding her, but in the end they didn’t matter. They had only ever been able to find each other in the Force when they needed each other. In one way or another. Whether they knew it or not. It seemed so obvious now, a truth clarified in a few crystallized seconds. All this time, that had been the common thread. Need.
Did I need him tonight? Her eyes drifted down to her still outstretched hand, the jumble of events leading up to this moment coalescing in hindsight into a single answer.
Yes.
She closed her eyes as another followed. And he needed me.
The epiphany left her with nothing but profound sadness and helpless frustration. She couldn’t do anything from here. She couldn't help him. She wanted to.
She wanted –
“Hey, kid!”
Matt’s voice rang out like a bell above the din. Freya inhaled sharply, stuck somewhere between annoyance at the interruption and weak-kneed gratitude for it. Swallowing everything that felt too big for her throat, she turned just as Matt’s hand rested on her shoulder. Hardly a moment to spare to reassemble her features into what he would expect to see – breathless relief that he’d beat the crowd to find her, tinged with what remained of the irritation that he’d started all this in the first place – but her plan abruptly changed when she saw the comfort of his familiar face. Before she knew what she was doing, she had already thrown herself at Matt’s chest, hugging him tightly. Surprising them both, for very different reasons.
“Glad you’re still in one piece.” His shirt muffled her voice, and she let herself cling to his automatic (if a bit confused) return embrace for a second less than she wanted before pulling back. “Though not exactly unscathed,” she added, catching sight of a blackened, swollen eye and giving him a wry look that said you definitely deserve that.
“What, this? This is nothing. You should see the other guy.” He shrugged out of the hug and shot her a one-eyed inspection that seemed far too perceptive for comfort. “What about you, are you alright? I saw – I mean, I thought –”
That one good eye glanced behind her, a little too quick to be casual. “There somethin’ freaky in that corner?”
Freya almost laughed. “Freaky” hardly covered it. But the observation that might have sent her into a spiral an hour ago left her surprisingly unaffected now. Maybe because her worst case scenario had already happened, and nothing had really changed at all. (Well, she thought, recalling the striking look in Kyle’s eyes just before the end, almost nothing.) If Matt had seen anything, she would know. He wouldn’t be able to hide it.
“No, everything’s –” She started to answer, her eyes sliding to the side as a figure staggered out from behind Matt, positively drenched in red. It took two blinks and a gasp before she realized who was underneath all the carnage. “Gabe?”
Gabe was too busy gingerly holding his nose to wave as he emerged from the mass of brawling bodies beside his friends, the man’s normally clean cut face and the front of his formerly white t-shirt covered in an alarming amount of blood. The fight had clearly gotten away from him and Matt both, despite their best (or not so best) intentions, having lost each other in the crowd only to reunite with Freya looking much worse for wear with their respective injuries.
After a moment Gabe dropped his hand and looked from Matt’s black eye back down to his own blood drenched shirt before flashing Freya a grin that was more of a grimace. “What? Something on my face? Ay Dios mío, she looks like she’s seen a ghost. No worries, hey, you should see the other guy.”
Same old, fun loving Gabe, but his eyes flashed briefly with something a little bit darker, a look that always found its way into his features just after a fight. A deliberate edge that suggested he might not go looking for a fight like Matt, but he was always more than ready to meet one.
Despite his bravado, Gabe’s nose was clearly broken. If the sight of him hadn’t been enough of a clue, the way he winced right after his hand dropped to his side and he flashed Freya a more sheepish look was surely proof enough, though it didn’t stop him from giving Matt a pointed shove as his co-pilot cracked another ill-timed joke.
Freya looked back and forth between the two of them, fondness and bemusement punctuated by an unshakeable feeling that they deserved better than her. She hid so much of herself from them – and they, nothing from her. Matt Silva and Gabe Martinez were always purely themselves, for better or for worse. Tonight might have tilted slightly more toward worse, but that was half the fun of being around them. And half the balm. They had no idea the gift they unknowingly gave her in allowing her to believe that she belonged alongside them and nowhere else.
She had never been entirely sure, before, where she belonged. Tonight, even less so. But she was grateful for them all the same.
“I think it’s time to go,” she said after a long moment, one corner of her lips tugging into an unreadable half-smile. “If we stick to the walls, we should be able to get out without any further damage to your beautiful faces.”
Matt let out a bark of laughter, but for once didn’t argue. “Lead the way, kid.”
Freya nodded, then turned to Gabe, holding her hand out in a gesture that brooked no argument. “Gimme the keys first.” Usually better at schooling her face, she couldn’t stop a grin from splitting her lips. How could she, when this was the first emotion she’d felt in hours that didn’t come from a place of guilt? Tonight had gone many unexpected places, many that she would still have to confront later, but at least it was ending on a high note. Something she’d been itching to do for a long, long time. “I’m driving.”
***
In one of his rarer moments where he actually started to take on a little of his best friend’s (and head mate’s) more… charming personality traits, Gabe barked an exaggerated laugh that immediately got lost in the lawless chaos around them. Chaos that they were at least partially responsible for starting, which neither Matt nor Gabe looked particularly guilty about in the moment. On the contrary, they looked almost at home in the middle of a war zone.
Shifting his gaze rapidly from Matt to Freya like he was waiting for one of them to see the joke, Gabe’s temporary amusement quickly gave way to wariness as it appeared to finally dawn on him that Freya might not actually be joking, and the laughter died on his lips.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa - hold up. You? Driving my baby?” Gabe’s eyebrows shot halfway up his forehead, raising both hands in the air like she was holding him at gunpoint for his car keys, and she might as well have been judging by the look of horror written all over his already bloodied face. The idea of anybody who wasn’t him driving his car wasn’t one that sat well with Gabe Martinez, going so far as to jab an accusatory finger in Freya’s direction with a tone that suggested he was under the delusion his word was final. “You’re delusional, chica.”
Beyond them the sounds of fighting in the pub were still going strong, and maybe taking a turn for the worst. The sounds of breaking glass and bodies colliding with furniture was becoming more frequent, and the rest of the room was bound to notice their withdrawal from the fight sooner or later. Now that they’d made a mess, it was time for them to leave.
“If you say so,” Freya said with a scoff and a Look, “but he’s a Cyclops, and you’re a waterfall.”
Next to him, Matt conceded to her pointed glare as graciously as he could muster. “I mean. She’s not wrong.” His good eye evaluated the damage, mildly disgusted and impressed by Gabe’s wounds all at once. “Man, you look like Carrie at the prom.”
Freya positively beamed, though there was something strained about it around her eyes. “Keys, please!”
There was really no point in arguing with her, not when Gabe couldn’t go a few seconds without one hand flying up to hold his nose again. Despite his protests that he could drive just as well one handed, both Freya and Matt seemed skeptical that Gabe could even see straight through the broken nose (he couldn’t) in order to drive safely. He still held his ground valiantly, but in the end, he gave in and gave up his keys. That didn’t stop him from making vague threats to her wellbeing if she so much as scratched his most prized possession, but ultimately, the night ended with Gabe reluctantly collapsing into the backseat of his own car and proceeding to lie down with a hand and a towel over his nose for the entire ride home.
The drive was uneventful from there. None of them seemed to have the energy to talk, let alone hash out the unexpected turn the night had taken. Some other time, maybe, when it wasn’t so fresh. When it would be just another wild Matt-and-Gabe (and Freya) story. [While Gabe concentrated on trying to keep his blood in his body,] Matt draped one elbow over his open window and leaned into the cool breeze, both eyes closed and his mouth an uncharacteristically thin line. Freya, meanwhile, focused on the road, brow furrowed as her fingers tapped the wheel along to the song playing on the radio. She drove his car like a dream, pushing the speed limit but somehow managing to glide through all the bumps and curves of the country roads without sending her injured passenger flying or risking any damage to the car, minor or otherwise. It wasn’t really a surprise, though. More like confirmation of something he already knew. Rey was a hell of a pilot, too.
The sky outside darkened the farther away from town they drove until the only light was the tiniest pinpricks from distant stars. Out here in the middle of nowhere, you could almost pretend you were flying through space in a single-engine fighter, but the illusion never lasted. Soon enough, electric light crept in from the edges as Freya neared the Camelot checkpoint. She slowed, and the light blocked out the stars completely. Nice while it lasted, anyway.
Freya said something to the guard about alerting the med team about two idiots needing patch-up jobs, prompting a sheepish hey! from both the front and back seats. The guard laughed, told them she’d give them a call, and waved them through. Soon enough, they were pulling into Gabe’s spot in the garage, safe and sound.
The ignition turned off quietly (because, of course, Gabe’s baby was always perfectly tuned), and the driver’s door opened and shut before either passenger had a chance to move. Matt’s head followed Freya as she walked around the car from the outside, then opened the door closest to Gabe’s still prone head. He made a move to sit up, but Freya stopped him, quickly kneeling down to his level and placing a hand on his shoulder.
“Not yet.” There was always something unreadable about Freya, which somehow made it all the more strange to see the placid determination on her face from his upside-down vantage point. “Let me just…”
And then Gabe felt it. Something. The Force? From Freya’s hand and into his shoulder, a river of energy seeking something and finding it in the broken bones and burst blood vessels of his nose. It was gentle (if not completely weird) until it wasn’t. Gabe held himself together as best he could while Freya’s healing did its work until the final snap of bone back into place made him wince audibly, blinking away the last shreds of pain while his eyes seemed to be adjusting to unimpaired sight. Once they focused, he squinted them skeptically at the young Jedi. “You couldn’t have just done that back at the bar, huh?”
Smiling, Freya deposited his keys on his chest. “And miss my chance to drive your baby?”
An impressed whistle came from behind Freya – Matt, of course, peering from around the open door at Gabe’s fully healed nose. “Nice work, kid,” he said, clapping her on the shoulder. “Got any left for me?”
“Sorry, old man” Freya stood, alternately flexing, clenching, and shaking out the hand she’d put on Gabe’s shoulder. Did it hurt the Jedi when they healed someone? Judging from the strain showing under Freya’s eyes, it must’ve cost her something. Made sense, given what little he knew about Force healing. If it didn’t cost anything, Jedi like Freya would give away all the Force energy they had. “All tapped out. Besides,” she added, elbowing him in the side as she passed by, making her way toward the exit, “You deserve to keep that shiner.”
Matt briefly looked miffed before shrugging it off and catching up with her, throwing an arm around her shoulder as they walked. “Raincheck, then?” Now miraculously healed, Gabe had managed to peel himself from the backseat and slam the door shut before trailing close behind them, muttering something under his breath about feeling used to get to his ‘baby’.
The grounds were crawling with shadows as they made the short hike from the garages to the castle, their path lit only by the warm, yellow glow illuminating from the windows of Camelot itself, inviting its battle-worn members inside the safety of its walls. Even at night every inch of Camelot’s lands were probably familiar to the people who found themselves roaming it so frequently, but none so familiar to them as the looming figure of Lydia Evans standing with her arms crossed at the top of the stairs nearest to the entrance into the castle.
The closer they got, the angrier she looked, and Gabe groaned under his breath as he nudged Matt with an elbow. “Any chance she hasn’t already heard what happened?”
“Oh, no chance at all,” Matt shot back with a brightness that didn’t match the deer-in-the-headlights look in his one functional eye. Freya snorted but said nothing. They were in for it, all three of them, no doubt about it. But as always, Lydia had eyes only for Matt, and he knew it.
Still, you had to hand it to the guy. He took a deep breath, set his shoulders, and grinned his way into the oncoming storm.
***
Back in the training room, before Gabe’s bloody nose and the long car ride home…
In the time it took for Kyle to blink, she was already gone. Their connection broke like the snap of a tether sending him reeling, and for a moment all Kyle could hear was his own uneven breaths, becoming a subtle roaring in his ears that drowned everything else out. He was alone again. The private self-loathing and emptiness that washed over all of his senses in her wake threatened to overwhelm him, but before they could, Kyle turned away from the sight of her disappearance to refocus all of that confusion and bitterness on Daisy.
He pulled his lightsaber from the inside of his jacket with supernaturally fast reflexes, spinning to meet her attack with the sinister red beam of his weapon lighting his movements as he angled it in front of him to absorb the brunt of her hit. The lightning meant for his heart missed its target, and within seconds, Kyle was bearing down on her. Electricity crackled along the edges of his saber as he aimed it directly at her throat, practically snarling through his teeth. “Yield.”
Daisy didn’t flinch, barely seemed to register the deadly laser mere inches from her neck. Her eyes never left his as she raised her hands in surrender as mocking as it was wise. “I yield,” she said, her voice deepening into a smirk as she continued. “Give yourself a pat on the back, Roth. You showed me exactly what I’ve been doing wrong.”