The moment he dropped in front of her, her breath caught hard in her throat. One second there had been distance, a sliver of space and maybe the foolish hope that she’d imagined some of it, and the next he was there. In front of her. In her space. Leaning in with a kind of gleeful curiosity that made her stomach turn far more than open anger would have. Anger, she understood. This felt worse. Lighter. Almost playful. Like cruelty came easy to him. Then he grabbed her arm. The pressure made her flinch before she could stop herself, pain lancing sharp and immediate where his hand tightened. Too strong. Far too strong. Human hands didn’t feel like that. They didn’t press like iron wrapped carelessly in skin, like one distracted twitch of his fingers could splinter bone.
Rainwater slid down the side of her face as hazel eyes snapped toward his bandaged hand, then back up to his face. Her pulse began to climb, loud beneath the steady fall of rain. That comment lingered between them. You look completely human. Something about it hit lower than it should have. For a second, emerald flickered beneath the hazel. Quick. Reflexive. Unwanted. The witch swallowed hard and forced herself to breathe. In through her nose. Out through her mouth. Slow. Careful. Normal. She had spent years learning how to make herself smaller in moments like this, how to soften her voice, how to give people no reason to escalate. Most of the time, it worked. Most of the time, if she stayed calm enough, polite enough, harmless enough, she could walk away before anything inside her had reason to wake.
“I think,” she said, voice quieter than she wanted, “I’d really rather you didn’t do either of those things.” It came out almost dry. Almost a joke. A thin, fragile thread of composure stretched over fear. Her free hand hovered near his wrist but didn’t grab him. She wanted to. Every instinct told her to pry his fingers off, to shove him back, to run. But another instinct, older and colder, warned her that sudden movement might turn this from threat into bloodshed. So she stayed still. “Also,” she added carefully, eyes flicking back up to him, “that is a really concerning amount of enthusiasm for dismemberment.”
The humor didn’t last. Not with the way he smiled. This wasn’t a mugging. It wasn’t some drunk stranger with bad intentions. He had followed her with purpose. Someone had sent him. Someone had pointed him in her direction and called her a monster, and now this man stood in front of her expecting something worth tearing apart. Her throat tightened. “Who sent you?” The question came out soft, but steadier than she felt. She didn’t try to yank herself free. Not yet. Instead, she shifted just enough to test his grip, a small pull that said she wanted distance without challenging him outright. Her body was tense from head to toe, but she kept her voice gentle, almost pleading beneath the calm.
“I don’t know what they told you,” she said, “but I don’t want to fight you.” And that was the truth. She didn’t want violence. She didn’t want blood on the pavement, didn’t want screaming, didn’t want to wake up hours later with no memory except the taste of copper and something dead at her feet. She had worked too hard to build a life that looked ordinary from the outside. A dance studio. Groceries. Rent. Music on the walk home. Little rituals of normalcy she clung to because the alternative was admitting she had never belonged to that world at all.
Her gaze lowered briefly to his hand around her arm. “You can still let go,” The witch said softly. “You can still walk away.” It wasn’t a threat. It was a request. Maybe even a warning, though not the kind spoken with teeth. There was no pride in it, no challenge, no sharp edge meant to provoke him. Just fear. Honest, quiet fear. Because beneath her skin, something had noticed the pressure on her arm. Something had gone very still. And Gabriella, more than anyone, knew that stillness did not mean peace.
