Rose doesn't enter rooms. Rooms notice Rose. Tonight she wore black with a line of red at the throat—clean, sharp, not asking permission. Her hair was loose enough to be a choice, not a mistake. Paradox curled around her like a cat that was pretending not to be one.
"Zenith Blade," she said when she reached me, dry as always, and held out her hand. "Dance with the woman who had to watch the broadcast on a train with bad signal."
"I owe you better signal," I said.
"You owe me a dance where you don't get distracted by incoming eldritch nonsense," she said. "Practice now."
We moved. Rose cut across the expected patterns just to see if I would notice. I did. She smiled, small and pleased. She liked it when life noticed her tells and chose to love them anyway.
"You changed what 'Calamity' means," she said, like we were discussing the weather. "Expect headlines. Expect committees. Expect at least three old men to write angry essays about humility."
