His hand came to her face.
Her eyes — the Chief's eyes, the cultivator's eyes, the amber eyes that ran compound decisions and cultivation assessments and had been running triage on the situation at forty meters — were looking up at him with the specific, present, undefended quality of someone who has run out of their normal operating resources and is therefore running on a different set.
"Senior," she said. Quiet.
"Chieftain."
"This is—"
"I know what it is," he said.
His leg came between hers.
The specific, geometric, unhurried arrangement of two bodies — not violent, not rushed, the flat, certain movement of someone who had decided on the architecture and was assembling it with the patient authority of a man who was in no particular hurry because the outcome was not in question.
She felt the weight of his leg against her inner thigh.
She felt other things.
