The grip on Rama's wrist held with a strength that no chained, starved prisoner should have been able to summon, and for one long moment nobody in the tent moved at all, the guards' spears half raised and frozen there, Ratri's hands still hovering over Suwondo's chest where she had been checking his pulse a heartbeat earlier.
"Let go of him," Sekar said, already moving, one arm thrown out to keep their daughter behind her even as she stepped closer to her husband.
"I am not hurting him," the voice said, using Suwondo's ruined throat but shaping the words with none of Suwondo's own broken cadence, each syllable arriving smooth and unhurried, almost curious about the sound of itself. "I am only holding on long enough to finish what I started. Your soldier will not remember this. He is barely present enough to lend me his mouth."
