Chen Yun did not sit down.
She stood exactly where she was—hand on his shoulder, travel robes damp and clinging, the demon sword at her back going very quiet in the way it went quiet when it was paying attention—and she looked at him with the dark, precise eyes that had been doing the work of a mask for eleven months and were not doing that work anymore.
"I said sit," he said.
"I heard you," she said. "I'm not sitting."
He looked at her.
She looked back.
The specific standoff of two cultivators who had been circling each other since the Trial plateau and had arrived, finally, at the place where circling was no longer the available option.
"You're nervous," he said.
"I am not—"
"You're nervous," he said again. "That's fine."
Her jaw moved. "I am not nervous. I am making a considered decision with full awareness of the available—"
He kissed her.
