Four hundred years of composure have a sound when they break.
It is not a scream and it is not a roar. It is a bowstring.
Nymeria's body moved before her mind finished being humiliated. One heartbeat she was pinned to the human's chest with his siege weapon parked between her cheeks and his whisper cooling on her ear, and in the next heartbeat she was across the hut, whirling, bow up, an arrow of white light already drawn to her ear, and her killing intent flooded the little grown room like cold water over a fire.
"You," she breathed. "Filthy. Human."
The arrow flew.
It split the air where Viktor's head had been. He had not dodged so much as tilted, a lazy lean, the way a man leans away from a fly at dinner, and the bolt buried itself in the wall with a crack that split the wood.
