Aster's hands are shaking.
It's not from strain. Adaia, a clever rogue who died before her time, was a strict task master when she yet lived. Aster has the lean muscle and supple strength to attest to it. The whirling cuts, the heavy slashes, all the movement of battle has a natural rhythm, a familiar cadence. Her practiced ease is offset by a rush of battle fever. The warm adrenaline flows through her and channels itself into the knife edge of her weapons.
It's not from shock. The first wash of blood had been sudden in its heat and its weight, but Aster is from the alienage where life is short and hard and even the youngest child has seen the blood of men and mer alike. Severed limbs and broken bodies are part and parcel with life in the slums. These dead men, though the corpses are hacked to pieces with her own blades, are no different than the emaciated victims of hunger or the crushed bodies of ill-fated laborers. Their eyes are just as blank, their blood just as red.
It's not from fear. Fear is a ravenous beast that burrows deep into your heart and mind if given the slightest opportunity. Aster is familiar with fear- the fear of a motherless girl, the fear of an elf in a human world, the fear of a woman captured in the gaze of a man. She will not let that vile emotion cripple her. She will not let that beast tame her.
It's not the sight of human bodies strewn about the castle floor, or the weight of her bloodstained dress pulling her down. It's not the pain in her aching head, or the smell of death, or the sight of Nelaros struck down in an instant that stops her short and steals her breath.
Instead, it's the look in Shianni's eyes when she asks desperately, "Did you kill them? Kill them all?"
It's the steel in her own voice, a voice she's never heard before, when it answers, "Yes. Like dogs, Shianni."
