~ The Clearing — Recognition
The woman's dark eyes were wet. Dirt caked the left side of her face where the prince's boot had ground it into the soil, and her chains rattled with a fine, continuous tremor that had nothing to do with the cold. Her robes — torn at the shoulder, stained with blood that might have been hers or might have been from the man who'd died beside her during the hunt — hung loose on her frame.
A frame that was, despite everything, striking. Full-figured in the way women from sword lineages often were: wide hips built for bearing, a thick waist that softened into heavy breasts, the kind of body that a cultivator's spiritual energy rounded rather than slimmed. Her hair, dark and tangled, fell across her neck in matted ropes.
She was looking up at him. At Tianlong. At the red-robed figure who had appeared from a bleeding tear in the sky and made a Great Vehicle Formation prince flinch like a scolded dog.
