Her violet eyes were on Ayame, her expression the same unreadable mask she wore to battlefields and breakfast alike, but her hands kept meeting, steady and quiet, and the pride burning behind that flat face was so obvious that anyone who knew her would have called it the loudest thing she'd ever done.
The guilt hit Ayame like a fist to the chest.
It arrived without warning, cutting through the joy and the love and the grin and everything the clapping had given her, because the woman walking toward her was the sister she had chosen not to save.
When the decision had come down, when the hours mattered most, Ayame had told Quinlan and the others to use this chance to become stronger instead of rushing to Black Fang's rescue.
The tactically sound call. The right call, probably. The call that had left her sister getting brutally tortured in enemy hands while Ayame grew stronger.
Ayame's eyes were already stinging when her body moved before her mind could talk her out of it.
