"She can't!" Eira hissed, voice pitching into something dangerously close to a shriek. Her wings tried to spasm—failed.
The void-ice holding them simply tightened, singing with strain. Tiny fists balled at her sides, knuckles frosting over.
"A Lesser God would strain to see me! A Greater God would have to focus! This—this rambling, silver-haired disaster—this girl who can't finish a sentence without three side quests and a footnote—she doesn't even have a divine signature! Not a flicker! Not a whisper of power! She's baseline! Human! Mundane! She's—"
Maya's gaze tracked her.
Tracked the frantic, aborted flutter of wings that couldn't quite move.
Tracked the black diamond dust still hanging, motionless, in defiance of gravity.
Tracked Eira's panicked pacing through the air, back and forth like a trapped moth beating against glass.
Eira spun—mid-air, frantic—jabbed one crystalline finger straight at the girl in the water.
