Page 64 of Dark Night of the Soul

It stretched. Thinned. Broke apart into pieces I couldn’t track. Minutes that felt like hours. Hours that collapsed into nothing. I watched the street until the light shifted and the shadows lengthened, until the city outside slid from afternoon into evening.

She didn’t sleep.

She didn’t pace. Didn’t speak. Didn’t cry.

She stayed where she was, like movement itself might trigger something she couldn’t control.

I gave her space. More than the room allowed. Kept my distance under the pretense of vigilance, though my attention never left her. Every breath. Every shift of weight. Every small, contained movement cataloged and measured.

This wasn’t shock.

It was restraint.

The kind that cuts deeper the longer you hold it.

At some point she sat again, folding in on herself as if bracing for impact that never came.

She sat on the worn sofa, her legs crisscrossed in front of her. Hands on her knees. Back ramrod straight. Her face was pale. She avoided me. And in a small place like this, that was damn near impossible.

I’d been going over it in my mind. The way she snapped. The way she pushed me against the wall as if she had all the strength in the world. And the only reason she did was because I didn’t expect it. The knife at my throat. Her arm pressed against me.

A warrior move.

Not something she would instinctively know to do.

Something she was trained to do.

Or something that was planted in her mind.

Either way, it turned her from the woman I knew to a woman I didn’t.

I took a step toward her to check her pulse. Her face was so pale, the bandages on her cheek stood out like a neon brand.

I reached for her wrist. Slow. Deliberate. Two fingers landing on the fluttering pulse at her wrist.

For a moment, she was fine. Then her head tipped up. Her eyes changed. No longer the violet. Her pupils had dilated again. I realized too late what she was going to do.

She leapt to her feet. Her wrist rolled inward, trapping my fingers against her pulse point. She stepped into me, weight dropping, elbow cutting across my center.

The blade flashed between us—too close—not aimed. A reflex.

A line of heat bit into my arm as she redirected my grip. Not a strike. Not intentional. Collateral.

I didn’t react. Didn’t tighten. Didn’t counter.

A Watcher disarm—clean, efficient. No one learns that by chance. Not that fast.

But they hadn’t taught her. They’d planted it in her. Dark and deadly.

I let myself go with the motion. Didn’t break the hold. Because if I did, she’d complete it.

Her grip faltered.

She froze.

Breath hitching. Fingers loosening as awareness bled back into her eyes. The blade slipped from her hand and hit the floor between us with a dull thud.

Then she pitched forward, crying out, grabbing her head. Dropping to her knees.