Frost climbed her outstretched fingers in delicate white lace, and their daughter's breath caught audibly as the first contact settled over her, not violent this time, not a door kicked open, but something closer to an old friend answering a knock it had been waiting all night to hear.
The battlefield around them had gone strangely hushed, soldiers and physicians alike drawing back without being ordered to, some collective instinct recognizing that whatever was happening at the crater's edge belonged to a conversation too large for anyone else to safely stand inside. Ardhana held his own ground twenty paces back, jaw set, one hand raised to keep his remaining guards from rushing forward, though Rama could see the effort it cost him not to close that distance himself.
