She didn't answer him. The silence stretched a half second longer, spear trembling an inch from her palm, neither of them moving, and then the air around her hand simply detonated.
Vane felt it before he saw it, a wave of cold psychic pressure blasting outward from her palm hard enough to throw him bodily backward across the hall floor. He hit the stone shoulder-first, rolled with the impact out of old instinct, and came back up onto one knee with the Silver Fang already gathering fresh mana along its length.
"All right," he said, mostly to himself, breathing hard. "All right. Real, then."
She came at him.
