She uncrossed and recrossed her arms, scowled at a passing cloud as though it had personally witnessed something it had no right to witness, and hauled her attention — with the brute force usually reserved for sword forms — back to the perimeter, the exits, the Monster's last known position, anywhere, anywhere that was not the sun-gilded geometry of the Young Master's bare—
She took her mind from there. Firmly. By the collar.
The cloud, mercifully, told no one.
Phei saw the looks the others gave the makeup woman for it — the narrowed eyes, the muttered bitch traded behind cupped hands, the whispered theories about what she thought she was doing.
But she wasn't simply taking advantage of him.
Well — she was.
But there was more empathy in her than a single soul on that set ever thought to credit her with, because she had clocked, early and without being told, that Phei disliked being handled like a mannequin by strangers who touched him however they pleased.
