Gwen blinked.
The question punctured something. She stared at him, the whole scaffolding of her tirade suddenly without a clear target, the words she'd been building falling apart.
"What?"
"Your bow." Viktor nodded toward the building. "And the quiver. You're coming with me to the capital. You should be armed."
A pause.
Something moved across Gwen's face. Not quite softening — Gwen didn't soften, she had architectural commitments to not-softening — but a shift, a recalibration, the look of someone who had been throwing punches at a wall and found a door instead. Her jaw closed. Her eyes narrowed.
"...Fine," she said, with the exact same weight her mother's 'fine' had carried three weeks ago, which Viktor had also stored for later. "I'll go and come back now."
