The flesh along her cut was already knitting back together, pink tissue crawling across the gap like time-lapse footage. The alpha healed faster than anything I had ever fought, and my death mark was eating the eye socket, but the rest of its face had apparently read a different memo.
I did the math in the time it takes to blink. Reaper's Edge at Copper could cut, but it couldn't reach the core before the meat sealed it off. The discounted Divine Overflow sat in my chest like a suicide vest on clearance, forty percent off, and every girl on that shelf would murder me in my sleep if I touched it. Misato had told me twice not to burn essence to be a hero.
I decided that burning one cup to stay alive didn't count as heroics, and I felt very good about that legal reasoning.
