Zaeryn gave her a dry look. "Worse than getting hit by Mireille?"
"No." A real smile this time. "But that's a genuinely unfair standard to hold anything else to."
She placed her palm flat against his side, and her eyes lifted to his instead of staying on the wound the way they had the first time. The resistance was impossible to miss, pressure building from somewhere inside him outward, as though his own Vitae had risen to meet hers and was weighing whether she carried enough behind her to earn passage through. For a long second nothing happened, her light straining against whatever was holding the line in him, and she held his gaze through all of it, not out of nerves, but like she wanted to be watching him when it finally gave.
Then it sharpened, gathering into something denser, and the resistance broke.
