But just as she did, the shield wavered back.
She heard itthunkinto that imperfect square, hard enough that the impact juddered up her arms. It made her stumble back and let out a sound of shock. But she got it back together fast. She had to. She could see him across the theater, arms crossed over his chest, looking at her like he had justknownshe wasn’t up to scratch.
And it deepened her frustration like nothing else.
“I stopped it, all right? I did what I needed to do,” she spat, as she yanked that very heavy-feeling blade out of her shield, and threw it back. Though of course it dissolved before it got anywhere near him. And so did the flimsy thing she had managed to conjure. It flickered and then winked out, while he eyed the place it had been pointedly. Before flicking his gaze back up to her.
“Yes, you did,” he said. “With a shield so weak it’s already lost cohesion.”
“It can’t have been that weak. It stopped that thing cold.”
“Because I barely gave it any power.”
“So now you’re pulling your punches.”
He held her gaze for that. Assessing her, it seemed.
Like he suspected she was starting to test the limits of his supposed hatred.
In the end, though, he just shrugged. “All I do is pull them. If I don’t, you die.”
“Well, that’s a very thoughtful gift to give me. Not making me a corpse.”
“No need to thank me. Just think of it as an early Christmas present.”
She let out a scoffing laugh. “Do you actually even celebrate Christmas?”
“If you call unwrapping the single gift I get celebrating, then sure,” he said, a little bored sounding about it. A little bored looking while the words came out. It was only after they had that she saw him stiffen a little.
Like this time, hehadsaid too much. “So you don’t get dozens, from all your admirers. It’s just one special person,” she said, and now his full and very focused attention was back on her.
“I’m not going to tell you who they are. You might as well stop trying.”
“Where would the fun be in that?”
“There isn’t supposed to be any fun. This isn’t a guessing game.”
“Yeah, but if it was one, I think I would definitely go with Cobble.”
“I have no idea how you figure that one,” he said, with an actual laugh in his voice. A pretty convincing one, too. It was just a shame that his face was typically such a stoic mask, really. Because it definitely showed when he experienced an emotion he didn’t mean to.
And that seemed to be the case right now. She could see the hint of tension around his smile. The slight drop that happened, just below his eyes. It even seemed like a flicker of light crossed the surface of his gaze.
It made her laugh back.
“He’s kind, he’s not awful about anything that lives in the Underneath, he has the clout here to get away with keeping a secret like that. And he’s pretty ancient, so he could have looked after you for a long, long time,” she said, as she ticked every bit of reasoning off on her fingers.
While the tension in his face tried to deepen.
A muscle in his cheek twitched, almost like a tic.
Before he managed to get himself back together.
“I’m not a thousand years old, for fuck’s sake.”
“So just hundreds. then.”
“No. I was born in 1972.”