The glaive point pressed under his jaw, close enough that he felt the edge only as a faint pressure. Around the yard a hundred mouths opened in silent cheers, but no sound reached him through the falling snow.
Yenna's lips shaped a single word that he could read from across a room: yield.
'No Chain rattle, no breath, not even my own pulse, so this is what drowning in snow feels like.'
He shut his eyes against the glitter of the flakes, since sight was all the storm still allowed him. Then he reached inward for the thread tying him to Loccy, finding a slow drum waiting in the dark.
"Not yet," he said, feeling the words in his teeth instead of hearing them.
Her heartbeat came through the bond like a fist knocking on a door, steady, warm and entirely unbothered. He rode that rhythm the way he once rode runaway carts downhill, trusting it to hold him up.
'Thump, thump... she's chewing in time with it, I can feel the pastry through the bond.'
