The glass slipped.
It wasn't a dramatic arc through the air — no cinematic slow motion or crash — just a subtle, silent betrayal of physics as Dianna's elbow nudged it off the edge of the counter mid-gesture. She was about to launch into a diatribe about punk rock art. Just to get off the weight of whatever the hell that moment was. And her arm caught the fragile crystal container as she wound up to start talking.
Roxie moved before she thought.
The world stuttered. A blur of motion, a soft clink, and then her fingers were wrapped around the glass like it had just appeared there, caught an inch above Dianna's lap. Just off the edge of the counter.
Dianna blinked.
Roxie froze.
"You just—" Dianna pointed at the glass, stunned that she wasn't covered in water.
"It was falling," Roxie said too fast.
Dianna stared at her. "Yeah, I noticed. And then you… teleported under it?"
"No! I just—um—" Roxie glanced at the floor, then back to Dianna. Her brain hurled itself against the walls of panic and landed on: "I used to play a lot of rhythm games."
"…What." That was so out of character for this giantess that Di's brain had to loop it back.
"You know. Like, uh, DDR. Guitar Hero. Beat—Beatmania. It's all… timing. And reflexes. So, I guess my hand just—went." She attempted a shrug, but it looked more like a bird puffing its feathers.
Dianna leaned in slowly. "You're telling me Dance Dance Revolution made you a glass ninja?"
"I—" Roxie's ears turned bright pink. "Yes?"
There was a beat. Then Dianna snorted. "Okay, nerd. I swear, you are just layers of secrets and kitchen drama."
Roxie gave a mortified little squeak and set the glass back on the counter with unnecessary delicacy, as if any further sudden movements might give her away completely.
Dianna was still laughing. Then the thought boiled up.
Wait... Roxie played DDR.
No. No, she didn't.
Dianna shook her head, still laughing. "There is no way you dance."
Roxie blinked. "What? Why not?"
"Because you're—" Dianna waved a hand at her like it explained everything. "You're all tall and solemn and emotionally constipated. I refuse to believe you've ever danced in your life."
"I am not emotionally constipated!"
"You are the human equivalent of a marble angel," Dianna pressed on. "Dignified. Elegant. And completely incapable of stomping on plastic arrows in a food court."
Roxie raised an eyebrow, arms crossing. "I'm sorry, are you trying to start a fight?"
"I would give up all my earthly possessions and burn in hell for the rest of eternity if it meant I could see you play DDR just once."
"Dianna!" Roxie gasped, half-scandalized. "That's blasphemy!"
"It's worth it."
Roxie gave her the driest look she could manage. "You're impossible."
"Tell me I'm wrong."
"If you had a pad, I'd show you," Roxie shot back, half-laughing now, half-threatening.
Dianna's eyes lit up like it was Christmas morning. "You are challenging me."
Roxie turned to grab the water pitcher, cheeks faintly pink. "I said if."
Dianna leaned on the counter, still grinning. "You have no idea what you've just done."
Roxie had just turned back to pour water when Dianna suddenly barked, "Don't move."
Roxie froze mid-pour. "What?"
"It's too late to back out now." Dianna was already turning, already bolting away from the kitchen like she'd been launched. "You started this!"
"What—Dianna—what are you—"
But it was too late. Dianna disappeared around the corner, and a moment later, Roxie heard the thunderous sound of someone taking the stairs two at a time, followed by a thud, a yelp, a muttered curse, and then the distant sound of a closet being torn apart.
Roxie stood there, hands still awkwardly braced on the counter, glass in one hand, pitcher in the other. "Oh no," she said faintly. "Oh no no no…"
She was not getting out of this.
A minute passed. Then two. Somewhere upstairs, cables were being untangled with violent intent. And Dianna was yelling things at her. But Roxie chose not to hear her. Roxie set down the pitcher and leaned on the counter with both hands, her heart thumping.
Her mouth said panic.
Her eyes said doom.
But inside?
Inside she was glowing.
She bit back a grin, then failed, and bit back another. The kind of fizzing anticipation that felt like being dared to jump off something a little too high. A little reckless. A little fun.
Because she hadn't danced in years. Not really. But rhythm was rhythm, and her body remembered the way it felt to move. And Dianna… well, Dianna had no idea what she'd just unleashed.
Roxie sighed dramatically to the empty room. "Lord, please forgive me. I'm about to ruin this girl's entire day."
And then she laughed.
---
Dianna hit the top stair like a bullet, nearly wiped out on the landing, caught herself, and threw open her closet with the fury of a woman on a divine mission.
"Okay, okay—where is it, where is it—don't fail me now, cardio guilt—"
She was halfway buried in a mountain of mess—yoga mats she'd never used, an unopened pull-up bar, an old waffle iron for some reason—when her hand struck gold. Or rather, nylon.
"AHA!"
She popped her head out of the closet, hair sticking up, eyes gleaming with victory. She grabbed the old DDR pad and yanked it free like it had personally wronged her.
"I DIDN'T THROW IT OUT!" she shouted down the stairs. "YOU'RE DOOMED, SHAPIRO!"
Back to rooting. Somewhere in the corner was the ancient game console she hadn't touched in two years. It took a minute—more if you counted the time spent cursing—but eventually, she surfaced with it in a triumphant tangle of wires and righteous vengeance.
"I BOUGHT THIS TWO YEARS AGO FOR CARDIO," she called between grunts, dragging the controller bin free. "USED IT TWICE, NEARLY DIED, SHOVED IT IN A CLOSET AND FORGOT IT EXISTED UNTIL THIS VERY MOMENT."
Dianna slung the controller cords over one shoulder, grabbed the pad in both arms like it was sacred cargo, and barreled back toward the stairs.
"LET'S SEE YOU DENY YOUR DANCING DESTINY NOW, YOU BEAUTIFUL FRAUD!"
----
The clatter of bare feet on hardwood announced her before the triumphant cry did.
"I FOUND IT!"
Dianna burst back into the kitchen like a victorious warlord, hoisting the tangled console and folded dance pad over her head with both arms, grinning like she'd just looted the Holy Grail. The wires swung dangerously. The pad unfurled halfway, a trailing banner of chaos.
Roxie turned—and for a second, she was a child again.
Not the hunted girl curled beneath cargo nets in a sinking boat. Not the ghost in the margins of a sketchbook. Just Roxanna Shapiro, twelve years old, sweaty and breathless in a Florida arcade, stomping on glowing arrows until the machine cheered. Body in motion. Heart wide open. The only place she'd ever moved without shame.
The memory struck her like music.
And her face lit up.
Not her careful smile. Not the practiced stillness. But joy, unguarded—stupid, full-body joy. She laughed, one hand flying to her mouth, and the noise that came out was something sparkly and bright and very, very un-Titania.
Dianna nearly dropped the console in shock. "Oh my God," she whispered. "You're glowing."
Roxie was glowing. Practically bouncing in place.
"Fraud?" she said, eyes glittering, pointing a playful, accusatory finger. "You called me a fraud?"
"I—yes?" Dianna blinked. "You said 'if,' I'm just delivering the 'if.'"
"You challenged me," Roxie grinned, already moving, already clearing the floor like a soldier preparing the battlefield. "And I accept."
"I thought you were gonna faint!"
"I was being dramatic." She flicked her hair over her shoulder. "I am allowed."
"Oh my God." Dianna stared at her, helpless. "You're so much worse than I thought."
Roxie knelt to unroll the mat, her motions suddenly precise, her weight balanced like a dancer warming up. "Just so you know," she said with mock serenity, "I'm about to absolutely ruin your day."
Dianna blinked.
"Lord," Roxie murmured under her breath, eyes flicking up in theatrical prayer, "forgive me for what I'm about to do to this woman's ego."
And then she smiled—a slow, wicked, unstoppable thing—and Dianna felt a genuine flicker of fear.
"What did I unleash?" she asked, half to herself.
Roxie looked up at her. "Your reckoning."
But first—no.
She paused, looked down at herself—her own hoodie, stretched soft with years of wear, slouching halfway to her knees. Sweatpants bagging around her hips, threatening to slide right off if she so much as thought about spinning. One sock halfway to rebellion.
"Nope," she said aloud, voice bright with purpose. "Wardrobe."
And then she was gone.
A blur of limbs. A flash of dark hair. The door slammed behind her with the satisfaction of a drumbeat. The first note.
Dianna stood blinking in the kitchen, still cradling the console like a prize, one cable wrapped around her wrist. "Did I just summon a lightning bolt?"
Inside, Roxie was already mid-storm.
Clothes flew. The hoodie hit the corner chair in a perfect arc. She nearly tripped getting out of the sweatpants, laughing breathlessly as she caught herself on the dresser. The black tee was easy—a soft one, broken-in, snug where it mattered. The skirt was a bit trickier. Flared, slightly too short, with enough swing to make every step a statement.
She hadn't danced in years.
Not since the summer she shot up like a sunflower on fast-forward. Thirteen and suddenly six-foot-one, limbs too long for mirrors, hips wide as doorframes, strength bubbling under her skin like something she wasn't allowed to carry. She'd gone from light on her feet to afraid of them. From confident to please don't look at me.
She stopped moving like music lived in her.
But now? Now she had something to prove.
This infuriating little woman—this punk-rock gremlin with the nerve to look at her like she was starlight in motion—was about to see that rhythm lived in the soul, not the bones.
Roxie tugged her hair back into a loose ponytail, let the curls fall wild and uneven. No shoes. She needed to feel the floor.
She caught a flash of herself in the mirror—tall, full, proud. This was her shape, her rhythm, her gospel.
"Let's dance," she whispered, grin blooming like sunrise.
Then she exploded back into the room like thunder wearing a skirt.
---
Dianna stood alone in the living room, console still raised like a trophy in one hand, the other steady at her side. For a second, everything was still—the soft hush of the ocean through the windows, the echo of Roxie's giddy retreat still bouncing off the walls.
Then she moved.
She lowered the console with deliberate care and crossed to the wall like she'd done it a hundred times before. A press of her fingers against a smooth panel, and the room responded with a mechanical purr. The plaster split open along a hidden seam and out slid the television—absurdly huge, perfectly framed, a screen so clear it made reality look blurry.
Bernice had been old money. Dianna had taste. The combination was deadly.
She docked the console into place and flicked it on. The startup chime rolled out, crisp and bright, and menu music followed—bass and synth and promise. The condo's lighting adjusted in response, sensors dimming the room to match the game's pulsing color palette. Shadows lengthened, highlights danced.
This was no longer a living room.
This was a battleground.
A stage.
Her reckoning, was it?
Dianna smirked faintly. She'd seen the look on Roxie's face—lit from within, ignited. As if something long-buried had cracked open and started to sing.
Good.
Because Dianna Annabeth Rodgers was a creature of rhythm. She moved through life in staccato wit and syncopated pulse. Sound was her fluency. Sway, her weapon.
Let the gentle giant try to show her up. Let her try.
Dianna could already feel it in her chest: the moment before the downbeat, the crackle of heat in the pause before the first move. She didn't know what was about to happen.
But she knew it would matter.
And she wasn't going to blink first.
The bedroom door clicked open and Dianna glanced up. And a gleeful dread settled in her stomach.
It was at this moment that Dianna Annabeth Rodgers—punk, troublemaker, flirt, who had once drunkenly talked her way out of a bar brawl with a full brass band—knew, with the kind of cosmic certainty usually reserved for impending disasters and religious epiphanies:
She had fucked up.
Because Roxanna Shapiro was strutting.
Not walking. Not skipping. Not bounding in that awkwardly tall, dorky way she sometimes had.
No. She was strutting. Barefoot. Down the hallway. Like it was a runway built just for her and every molecule of air had signed a waiver in anticipation of her arrival.
And sweet merciful Christ—that skirt. It was a fraction too short, riding high on powerful thighs and swishing just enough to hint at all that lived beneath. And the black tee clung in all the wrong/right places, oversized in the sleeves but somehow too tight across her chest, the kind of impossible fit that looked accidental until you realized nothing about this woman could ever be unintentional.
Her hair was down. Her cheeks were flushed.
And she was smiling—no, grinning—like someone who had rediscovered a long-lost superpower.
Dianna's brain short-circuited at least twice in rapid succession.
She took an involuntary step back, suddenly, viscerally aware of how small she was. How deeply out of her depth. How completely and utterly unprepared she was for the sight of all that raw, glorious Roxie coming straight at her with rhythm in her soul and something dangerous in her eyes.
"Oh no," Dianna whispered to herself. "Oh no, no, no, no, no—"
She swallowed.
Then smirked.
Game on.
----
Roxie swayed into the room barefoot, her skirt swishing around her legs like sunlight on water. The evenings comfortable chill clung to her skin, and for once she didn't feel self-conscious about her height or her shoulders or the ridiculous amount of hair spilling down her back.
She did a quick twirl in front of the couch, arms out for balance. "Okay," she said, grinning, "you ready to get destroyed, or are you still updating your will?"
Dianna didn't answer.
Roxie blinked. Dianna was staring—not the usual teasing, not her usual smirk, just frozen. Her mouth was slightly open. Her eyes were doing… something.
Roxie glanced down at herself. Her smile wilted at the edges. "Wait, is—does it look weird?" She tugged at the hem of her skirt. "I thought it was cute."
Dianna blinked slowly, like she'd forgotten how her eyes worked. "No. Not weird."
That didn't clarify much. Roxie folded her arms loosely across her chest, shifting her weight. "Then why are you looking at me like I grew wings?"
"You kind of did," Dianna muttered under her breath.
"Huh?"
"Nothing," she said, louder. "You just—you look good. That's all."
"Oh." Roxie flushed. She wasn't used to hearing that. At least not like that. Not like it meant something. "I mean, thanks. I just wear this around the house, it's not, like, a big deal."
"It's a huge deal," Dianna said, then immediately dragged a hand down her face. "Sorry. Brain-mouth filter's broken. Continue being casual and adorable, I'll just be here rebooting."
Roxie laughed, unsure if she was allowed to. "You're weird today."
"You showed up like a slice-of-life anime girl," Dianna said. "My system wasn't prepared."
"I don't even know what that means," Roxie muttered, stepping carefully onto the dance mat. "Is that an insult?"
"It's dangerously close to a compliment."
"Well… good." Roxie looked down at her feet, then back at the screen. She was smiling again, but smaller now. Unsure. "I don't really get why you're so flustered though."
Dianna pressed start on the game. "That's because you don't own a mirror."
Roxie snorted. "I do, actually. It just doesn't yell at me in anime metaphors."
They locked into position, the beat starting up as Roxie settled into her stance. Dianna still wasn't looking directly at her. Roxie couldn't quite tell if she was winning or losing something—but it made her stomach flutter, just a little.
She focused on the screen, hoping she wasn't blushing too obviously. Maybe Dianna was just weird today.
Maybe that was normal. Maybe she'd get used to it.
Maybe she wouldn't mind.
---
Dianna was not prepared.
She'd expected something dorky. Awkward. A few clumsy stomps on a dusty DDR pad before Roxie tripped over her own feet and turned into a 7' tell disaster area.
Instead—
There was moonlight pouring through the window like a spotlight, and Roxie standing center-stage, barefoot and glowing. Not glowing literally—though at this point Dianna wouldn't have ruled that out—but in that soft, terrifying way people do when they're completely, heartbreakingly themselves. Loose black shirt, little flouncy skirt, one long leg arched mid-step, arms floating like she was dancing on strings.
And all Dianna could do was sit there on the couch, jaw unhinged, like some idiot background NPC watching the main character max their Charisma stat.
The arrows blinked. The song kicked in. And Roxie moved.
Graceful. Fluid. Unthinking. Not in the way dancers practiced—but in the way people belonged. Like the music was something she could taste and walk through. She wasn't just keeping up—she was styling on it. Wavy turns, little flourishes of her wrists, tiny pivots of her hips. The skirt fluttered around her thighs like it had its own opinions about gravity.
Dianna swallowed.
Oh no.
Oh no no no.
She hadn't realized this was going to be a problem.
Roxie caught her looking—just briefly. Her gaze flicked over, curious, soft, entirely unaware of what she was doing to Dianna's remaining brain cells. No teasing. No smirk. Just the natural confusion of a tall girl trying to have fun and not entirely understanding why her roommate was staring like she'd been hit with a truck.
"Am I doing it right?" Roxie called over the music, half-breathless. "Is it weird? I feel weird."
Dianna's voice tried to work. "You're—" You're a goddess and I am unmade— "—winning."
Roxie beamed. Actually beamed. Then tripped a step and yelped.
Dianna barked a laugh. "That's what you get for showboating!"
"I wasn't! I was just happy!" Roxie pouted, stumbling back into the rhythm like a baby deer that figured out how to moonwalk.
Right. Okay. Focus. Fight back.
Dianna launched off the couch and slammed her foot onto the second pad, cracking her knuckles. "Alright, stretch. Your reign of terror ends now."
"Oh no," Roxie murmured. "She's serious."
"Deadly."
They squared off, and the screen threw up the next track. Faster. Crazier. A full-on anime boss fight of directional inputs.
The beat dropped—and they moved.
And danced.
And cheated.
Dianna hip-checked her at the chorus. Roxie whipped her ponytail with frankly malicious intent. They shrieked and laughed and spun in each other's way, both breathless, both burning, neither willing to lose an inch. Pillows flew. A lamp nearly died. At one point Dianna full-on body-rolled at Roxie just to psych her out.
It almost worked.
But Roxie adapted. She danced like gravity didn't apply. And Dianna—Dianna danced like she was trying to catch her.
And somehow, by the end, the score didn't matter at all.
They collapsed into the couch, tangled in limbs and laughter, drenched in sweat and grinning like idiots. Dianna glanced sideways at Roxie's profile—rosy cheeks, damp bangs, that smile—and knew she was doomed.
She was completely, catastrophically doomed.
----
Roxie wasn't actually out of breath.
She had been, briefly—but not from the dancing. The music, the flashing lights, the back-and-forth nonsense with Dianna, sure—but what had really knocked the air out of her was the way Dianna had looked at her.
Like she was witnessing a solar flare through a keyhole. Like she was both dazzled and furious about it.
Roxie had seen that kind of look before—just never aimed at her. And certainly never by someone who looked like that in a tank top.
So she'd played it up. Gasping, flopping, all gangly limbs and wheezing laughter. It gave her a second to think. Or at least pretend she was thinking. Instead of spiraling.
Because something had shifted. And she wasn't sure what to do with it.
Dianna leaned against her shoulder, hair damp and breath hot against her arm. "God, you're terrifying," she muttered, smiling and boneless.
Roxie smiled too.
Then stood up.
Not awkwardly. Not nervously. Not with the usual flailing attempt to minimize her size.
She stood like she meant it.
The screen was already queuing the next track—an uptempo cascade of chaos—and Roxie didn't even blink. She walked to the pad with something new behind her eyes.
"Y'know," she said, stretching out her arms, "there's something I've been meaning to tell you."
Dianna blinked up at her. "Oh?"
Roxie rolled her wrists, flexed her ankles. Let the skirt bounce.
"I'm not left-handed either."
The music dropped.
And Roxanna Paraveesh Shapiro—faithful, awkward, disaster-hearted Roxie—danced.
Not to win. Not to tease.
She danced like it was hers. Like every beat was a language she remembered in her bones. Her hips caught the rhythm with ease, her feet a blur of grace and precision. Every movement sharp, deliberate, but full of light. She spun once—twice—caught the landing with a little bounce, and tossed a glance over her shoulder that might have been innocent once, but now?
Now it was dangerous.
Dianna's jaw unhinged again. Roxie didn't see it—felt it.
The power wasn't in the scoreboard. It was in the control.
And for once, she had it.
Not as Titania. Not as anyone else.
Just Roxie.
Just a girl dancing like someone had finally told her she was allowed to take up space.
---
Dianna's brain rebooted halfway through the quote.
"I'm not left-handed either."
It didn't land at first. Just a flicker of pop-culture déjà vu.
And then Roxie stood up.
Stood up.
And all at once, Dianna's stomach dropped into her socks.
Oh.
Oh no.
It was a trap.
She'd been played.
She watched, helpless, as Roxie stepped back onto the pad like a goddess returning to her temple. Not shy. Not flustered. Not falling over herself to be smaller, quieter, less. No—Roxie took up space. She commanded it.
And then she danced.
Not with the tentative, overeager stumbles of a tall girl who hadn't grown into her limbs.
She danced like her body belonged to the music.
Like it was a language she'd forgotten she could speak fluently.
Like she'd stopped asking for permission.
Dianna sat there, slack-jawed and stunned, as the display lit up under Roxie's feet—perfect streaks, flawless timing, a cascade of rhythm turned into motion. Her skirt flared with each turn, her hair swayed like ink in water, and her smile—
Oh God, that smile.
It wasn't cocky. It wasn't cruel.
It was joyful.
Pure and wide and true, like she didn't even know how gorgeous she looked in that moment. Like she didn't know she was blinding.
And Dianna?
She was ruined.
Absolutely, irreversibly, devastatingly ruined.
Because yeah, sure, she'd wanted Roxie before. Wanted her like a hunger, like a low throb behind her ribs. The size difference, the softness, the voice—God, it was all a very specific kind of fantasy.
But this wasn't that.
This wasn't about the fantasy.
This was about Roxie. The real Roxie. Standing tall and dancing her heart out in the living room on a Friday night, like the world hadn't done its best to break her.
And all Dianna could think, in a moment of alarming, chest-splitting clarity, was:
I want to make her feel like that forever.
Panic. Joy. Desire. Wonder. It all hit her in one slow-building detonation, and she didn't know if she wanted to kiss Roxie or cry or just sit there and bask in it.
Because this wasn't a crush anymore.
This was something else.
Something terrifying.
Something she wasn't sure she deserved.
But God help her, she wanted it anyway.
Two days.
Maybe all of four hours, really.
That's how long it had taken for Dianna Annabeth Rodgers — bold, brash, survivalist Dianna — to fall completely, idiotically, heart-poundingly in love with a girl who still flinched when people looked at her too long.
It wasn't fair.
It wasn't safe.
But it was already done.
Roxie was twirling now, laughing at something on the screen, lost in the rhythm, and Dianna swore she could feel her heart leaking out of her ribs. This wasn't supposed to happen. She had rules. A system. A sense of timing. You don't just... fall like this.
And yet.
She had.
Hard.
Every twitch of Roxie's hip, every flash of bare foot slamming into a glowing arrow pad like it owed her rent, every burst of laughter—it all stacked on top of what had come before: the awkward gentleness, the nervous warmth, the kindness so instinctive it didn't even know how to announce itself.
And Roxie had no idea.
Not just that she was beautiful—though that, obviously, was criminal enough—but that someone like Dianna could be undone by her. Just watching her be free. Watching her be happy.
That was it.
That was the killer.
Because it wasn't about the curves, the voice, the power fantasy anymore. Not really. Not like it had been on that shuttle bus when Dianna first caught a glimpse of her and thought Oh, I'm in trouble.
This was different.
This was joy.
This was grace.
This was falling for someone good.
And the wildest, most gut-wrenchingly precious part?
Roxie didn't see it.
Not the spell she cast. Not the way she lit up a room. Not the way Dianna's chest clenched when she smiled, not because she was hot, but because she was bright.
Because she glowed.
And Dianna?
She didn't mind.
Not really.
Because it wasn't about being seen back. Not yet. It was about watching Roxie bloom—awkwardly, nervously, defiantly—into herself.
It was about protecting that. Not like a knight, or a partner, or some possessive crush with delusions of romance.
Just... like someone who gave a damn.
Like someone who had been alone too long, and knew what it meant to not be.
She'd play her games. She'd flirt and tease and keep dancing until Roxie caught up—if she ever caught up.
And if she didn't?
That was fine too.
Because for now, this was enough.
Roxie was happy.
And Dianna was mollywhopped.
Roxie spun again, this time with arms thrown back, hair trailing behind like a comet's tail. The screen blinked and beeped, demanding precision, but she was past the point of perfection now — she was alive, electric with joy, flushed and radiant and real.
And Dianna, still cross-legged on the couch, her heart a war drum in her ribs, felt something crack open inside her.
It hit like thunder. No, not thunder. Revelation.
She couldn't just want this girl anymore.
She had to protect her.
Not from villains or Capes or corrupt cops or the city's thousand quiet cruelties — though, God knew, she'd fight all of that too — but from the slow, invisible erosion that tried to eat girls like Roxie alive. The kind that told them they were too much, or not enough, or only good when silent and small. The kind that starved joy out of a person until even laughter became an apology.
She looked up at the ceiling, past it, really — past drywall and wooden beams, into whatever came after. The place Bernice might be watching from.
Her voice was quiet. Honest.
"I'll protect her," she whispered. "I swear it."
It wasn't dramatic. There was no lightning strike, no swell of strings. Just a girl sitting in the dark, watching another girl dance like no one had ever let her before, and making a promise that would shape the rest of her life.
"I don't know who she is yet. I don't know what she's scared of or what she's running from or what the hell the world's got in store for her. But I know this…"
Her throat caught.
"This joy? This light? The world's better with it in it. If she can hold onto it—if she can own it—it'll change everything. And I'll guard that with everything I've got. No matter what."
Roxie tripped on a down arrow, cursed softly, then laughed, unbothered.
Dianna smiled. Just barely.
Bernice hadn't believed in ghosts, not really. And Dianna didn't even believe in God, but if that old crank was watching...
She hoped she was proud.
Because her wild little stray had just made her first vow.
And she didn't even know it yet—
—but The Knight-Captain had been born.