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Hesediel is trying to stand when I get to her. I pull her to her feet. She pushes me away. Her speech is slurred, but I can understand her.

“Get away. This is not your fight.”

I manifest my Gladius and stand beside her.

She pushes me again.

“No,” she says. “No.”

Overhead, Hadraniel laughs at us.

“A lovers’ quarrel, is it?” she shouts, turning slow circles.

“Stark, please,” says Hesediel. “Let this go. Let me go.”

“I don’t leave friends behind.”

“If I’m your friend respect my wishes. Go.”

I hesitate for a moment, but I get it. I let my Gladius go out. Hesediel can’t even stand up straight anymore, but she manages to say, “Thank you.”

I want to give her my gun. My knife. My na’at. Something. But I know she won’t take any of them. So, I press the only thing she might take into her hand.

And walk away, leaving her there in the open ground.

Bill comes running over.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“It’s what she wants.”

“You’re going to stand there and let her die?”

“It’s her fight. She doesn’t want me.”

Bill looks up into the sky, sputters, “Shit and damnation.”

I take his arm and pull him away.

“We’re not going anywhere. If things go wrong, I’m perfectly happy to stab Hadraniel in the fucking back.”

When we’re clear, Hesediel manifests her Gladius again.

Hadraniel makes a couple of more turns in the sky. Then drops. I can barely see her.

When she hits Hesediel, she knocks her twenty feet, through the side of a van. Hesediel stumbles back into the open, but her Gladius is out. She takes a few steps. Collapses onto her back.

Hadraniel lands and lets her Gladius go out too. She takes a knife, like the one Hesediel used at Bill’s bar, from a sheath at her side. She doesn’t rush. She savors the moment. Yeah, she’s gloating, but she also wants to see if Hesediel is playing possum. It goes on like that, with Hadraniel circling Hesediel, for several more minutes. They talk, but I can’t hear them.

Finally, Hadraniel steps over Hesediel. Drops her full weight onto the other’s damaged armor. I can hear Hesediel moan all the way across the yard.

Hadraniel holds her knife so the fire dances off the blade.

“Are you watching, Abomination? I want you to see this.”

“Fuck you, Almira Gulch. You and me. We’re next.”

“Glorious. I so hoped you’d say that.”