At night, when the lair quiets and Tiamat walks the deeper halls like a patient tide, Luna and I sit with our backs to a warm crystal pillar and share the kind of quiet that has a pulse. Once, she puts my head in her lap again—'optimal,' she says, with a chin tilt that dares me to tease—and I pretend to be asleep so she can brush hair from my eyes without getting embarrassed.
On the fourth day, Tiamat throws a straight line. I'm there before the line arrives, not because I'm faster, but because I finally accept that she isn't hiding a trick in the simple ones. My parry is clean; my counter is cleaner; Hollow Eclipse rides the edge as a short, brutal truth instead of a speech. She taps it aside, but the floor under her foot admits it misjudged friction. She adjusts. I grin. She pretends not to see.
