---
It made Ikea's dress move in a way that the dress had been designed to move in light, not in rain. A dead branch, long and brittle, shivered free from a pine and began to fall toward the space where her uncovered head stood.
Kai did not think. His body has spent a year training to skip the step where thought gets in the way of survival. He snapped their joined hands toward him and the motion brought her off her feet and into his chest. She raised her other hand to catch her balance and it struck his shoulder, then slid along the hard muscle and found purchase at the seam where flesh met the memory of plates. The branch struck the ground a half step from where her heels had been with a crack that surprised a bird into silence.
