Cassarae was calmer than she thought she should have been, especially with Tomoe's sword already close enough that its grey-black light reflected across her eyes.
One hand had found its way to her belly without conscious thought, resting over the child growing there while the other remained wrapped around the Executioner's Blade, but there was no panic in her chest and no desperate search for some last-second escape.
Instead, of all things, Cassarae found herself thinking about swords.
Before the Executioner's Blade ever appeared, she had already used one, and back then she had thought she was pretty damn good considering she had no guidance.
There had been something freeing about it, a faint rhythm and song that settled into her head whenever the steel moved through her hands, and while she wouldn't have called it Sword Will back then, she knew now that something had been there.
