She's trained herself to be strong, to be solid, to be unbreakable, a woman of stone and ice who can withstand raging storms without yielding. But ice and stone are brittle. They can shatter, or they can be chipped away. She has to be like clay, or rubber; something that can be bent and twisted and molded but never really gives in. It goes against her every instinct but she wants to survive this. Not because she has any particular will to live; Maria has long since accepted that she'll most likely die in battle, because that's what soldiers do—
Her eyes snapped into focus on the man in front of her, and immediately, she was scrambling away, slashing out at him with the knife. "Don't touch me."