I stayed in the doorway and looked at the man who had broken every bone in my body the last time I had seen him. The memory was physical. My ribs remembered the boot. My hands remembered the freezing cold of his wrist. The specific agony of lying in the forest with a stick aimed at my heart.
Our eyes met in the mirror first, cold purple meeting mine in the glass. Then directly.
I walked in and closed the door behind me. The latch clicked shut with a quiet finality.
He stood slowly from the bed. Came toward me. Then pulled me into a tight embrace. I held him back, arms locking around his frame.
"Azure," I said.
Then I felt it.
The flat chest rounding against mine. Shoulders narrowing under my hands. The spine curving differently. The specific, fluid shift of a shapeshifter releasing a form they had been holding far too long.
"Azure," I called her name again, softer.
