The blossoms that touch my cheek are not black after all. Up close they are Grey—petals the color of refusal. They do not float. They choose. They cross the air as if distance is a suggestion and land with a soft sting that makes the lair sing like glass.
Then they come in a wave.
Grey plum blossoms burst outward from Arthur in a slow spiral that is not slow at all. The room fills with a light mist that smells faintly of rain on stone. Petals drift, then turn sharp in the same breath, tilting edge-on as they pass. Where they cut, light frays a hair.
I know this pattern. It has walked across battlefields I remember. Mount Hua's Violet Mist Divine Art—Grade 6. A gentle art when done by the book, a storm when held by a hand that means it. But the color is wrong.
He has poured Grey into it.
'You little thief,' I think, and I am pleased. 'Good choice.'
