Ebony stepped back before she'd decided to.
Her body moved on its own, retreating from the figure on the path, and the pressure rolled over her exactly as it had that night long ago — that suffocating, soul-deep weight that wasn't life and wasn't death and wasn't even the empty zero between them. Her stomach lurched. Her knees wanted to fold.
And yet — it wasn't the same. It pressed on her like before, but it didn't crush her like before. "(It's lighter. Or I'm heavier. A year of this world between then and now, and the thing that nearly broke me on that porch is only… very bad, instead of the end of the world. When did that happen?)"
The necromancer-king studied them, hands folded, his cloudy white eyes drifting.
"Now what," he said, in that calm, courteous, almost noble voice, "would a pair of foreigners be doing in my country?"
"Just passing through, Majesty." Hrazfel stepped forward smoothly, all his earlier savagery folded away into the manner of a man who knew this court.
