DISCLAIMER: Not mine :)

I'll try to keep it shorter this time!

"Get up."

The Cat awoke with a yell choking her throat, sitting up so violently that the commander flew back with shock. He scowled at her, face like thunder. Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, she thought to herself, watching two maids bring in platters of food and set them on the dining table. They filtered out quickly, as if they didn't want to be witness to the argument about to take place.

"What kind of a fool wakes up an assassin like that?" she grumbled, scrubbing at her face with both hands. Honestly, if she had had a weapon, it would have been lodged in his throat right about now. She shot him a glare, to tell him just that.

"The competition starts in a half hour," he shot right back, glaring at her. "I thought you'd be up by now."

"You're the one who told me to get as much sleep as I can get," she grumbled, curling over her knees.

He scowled and whipped her covers off. The frigid morning air bit at her skin. "Get up," he snapped again. When she didn't move he stalked around the bed and grabbed her ankles, swinging her around to sit on the edge of the bed.

"Try that again when I am free," she snarled at him, snatching out of his grasp.

"Well you aren't free yet, so get your ass out of bed and start getting ready!" he snapped, throwing the sheets at her face. She caught them before they could hit her and threw them right back as she stood up and stalked past him. Her nightgown- or rather, the wisp of fabric she had been given to sleep in- slipped off her shoulder. If the commander noticed how much skin she was showing in front of him he didn't comment, save to follow her to the dining table.

He began to heap food onto her plate. "Did no one come to wake you?" he asked, piling eggs and crispy bacon onto her plate. She noticed that, once again, there were no knives on the table. She sighed and scooped up a mouthful of eggs with the fork.

"No," she said around the bite. She swallowed and shovelled in another forkful. When he began to pile on fried fish and black bread, she protested around her food. She swallowed and covered her plate with her hand.

He frowned at her. "You need to eat," he said. "You'll need the energy. And the maids told me that you barely touch your food as it is."

She scowled at him. "You try eating three full meals a day when you are used to watered down gruel and hard bread for a year!" she snapped. Something crossed his face, but when he didn't relent with trying to slide more food onto her plate, she sighed. "If I eat all of this I'll throw up my guts in minutes. Do you want me to do that in front of the other champions?"

He pursed his lips and said nothing, but took the seat opposite her. He watched her finish her eggs and eat one piece of bacon. She cringed as she did; it was undercooked. She had always eaten it crispy and black. But she wasn't about to complain, not when she had gone without such luxuries for so long, as a child and then in the mines.

"Are you nervous?" he asked.

She shrugged. "I suppose."

"Well, are you or aren't you?" he pressed. He pointed at a pile of clothes that the maids had brought in. "They're yours."

She walked over to them and inspected them. A simple blue shirt, brown breeches and long lace up boots with a sturdy sole. Good, sensible, simple clothes. She took them behind the screen to change. Her sister would have been scandalised to see her change in the same room as a man, especially one she didn't particularly like, serious and brooding as he was, but modesty had been forced out of her in the mines, where men, women and children were all piled into one open living space. She had been lucky if she found an empty corner.

"I don't know," she said. "My body is a wreck. I haven't held a sword in over a year, or any weapon. But before I was captured I could have taken most of them on in a blindfold with one hand behind my back." It was true, too. Her training had been brutal, but thorough. She would never forget the months she had spent blind, the bruises and cuts and welts she received everyday in training until she could defend herself without her sight, how she had been left chained up until she learned to free herself, how they had stolen her sleep to teach her to fight even when exhaustion made her bones leaden.

"I doubt there will be any matches today," he said as she slipped on her small clothes and bound her breasts with the length of cloth that had been set out for her. "Just introductions, time to spar with personal trainers. I don't know exactly." It was almost useless information really. Of course, no information was utterly useless, but had she delivered that as a report as an acolyte at the temple, she would have been punished with hours of extra chores, or a particularly rigorous training session that would have left her black and blue.

By the time she was dressed the commander was pacing by the door, scowling at it as if it was the door's fault they were late. When she emerged from behind the screen he grabbed her arm and dragged her out of the door and through the castle. One of these days, she was going to teach him exactly why dragging her around was not in his best interest.

She didn't know why she was surprised when they ended up in the lower yard. It was, after all, the only large enough space for them all to train that was also private, and away from prying eyes. It was surrounded on three sides by high, blank walls, topped with guards in shining armour. The other side was open to the sea, which allowed a salty breeze to drift in. The yard was already full with the other champions, many of them sparring or exercising. There was a raised platform in the middle, about three feet off the ground. But her eye was caught by the racks of weapons that lined one of the walls.

Weapons! Oh, what a welcome, beautiful sight they were, too. They shone in the morning sun, swords of all different kinds and sizes, from rapiers to great swords, bows and arrows with gleaming heads, knives and daggers and axes, maces, the three spears, even curved arakhs and morning-stars and iron tipped staffs. Her heart sang at the sight of them, and she stepped towards them.

A large hand halted her on her elbow. She turned to the commander. "If you try anything-" he started, but she interrupted.

"Yes, yes, I know, the guards will put a bolt in my spine," she cut in.

He glared at her. "I don't need to remind you that not only is your life at stake, but your freedom." His ice blue eyes bore into her own grey ones with such intensity that she pursed her lips.

"I know," she forced out through grit teeth. He gave her one final warning stare and released her, though he followed close behind as she made straight for the racks. She did not fail to notice how one hand remained on the hilt of his sword, the other free and ready to grab and restrain her should she not heed his warnings.

The Cat stopped in front of the rack, blood singing and heart beating wild enough in her chest that she half wondered if it would burst right through her ribs. Steel gleamed, like a beacon just for her and only her. How long had it been since she had touched a weapon? She had rotted in the dungeons below the Red Keep for weeks before her trial. Over a year, then. Over a year since she had tasted the freedom and power of holding a weapon in one's hand. She had gone so long defenceless and weak as a child, subject to the whims of those who controlled her. She knew what it was to be powerless better than anyone. And to hold a sword and let it dance in her hand as she took some of that power back for herself? It had been a taste of joy and freedom that woke her up, a taste that she had never been able to resist. She had long ago learnt the true power of the rage she held inside her like some great slumbering beast that slept with one eye open, always there, lingering in the not so far recesses of her mind, just within reach but always held at bay by the iron fast control that she willed into being with every thought, every movement. And when she unleashed that rage... the fallout could very well destroy her completely. And holding a weapon, learning how to make it sing for her- that had been her release from that ever building pressure in the back of her mind, a way to channel it without unleashing the tempest. A storm made steel.

The Cat reached out a hand almost reverently, waiting for someone to grab her and tell her that she must be stupid if she thought they would actually allow her to touch them. Her fingers ghosted past the maces, the morning stars, brushed the feathered arrows and flirted with the knives. Finally, they settled on the hilt of a longsword. A plain thing of unremarkable beauty, with a simple hilt and cheap, dull steel, but a weapon it was. The edges were as sharp as the edge she danced along as she held her breath, lifting it from the rack. It seemed to come alive in her hand, speaking to her in a language that only she could understand. A speech that no one else understood quite so well as she. The speech of death.

And when she turned to face the commander, watching her with wary eyes, the Cat smiled.

"Are you ready to dance, commander?"

Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, Gendry Waters, had seen many terrifying things in his life. He had seen killing fields and slaughters, massacres and brutalities. He had seen the look on a wounded soldier's face as he slipped into unwaking sleep. He had seen the corpses left behind by fire. He had seen innocent blood stain cloaks that should stand for something honourable and noble, but didn't. He had seen the look on a man's face as he ripped his enemy to shreds.

None of them compared to the smile that crossed the assassin's face before him.

She was not what he had expected to find, when he ventured to the mine shaft. He had expected someone older, someone crueller, someone mad with hate. Instead he had found a young woman barely out of girlhood, who had suffered atrocities that he couldn't even guess at, who held all of the rage of a tempest, all of the might of a void, in her sad grey eyes, yet always commanded such an aura of control about her. Of sheer, single minded determination of will. She was all of the rage of a storm held in a honed blade- a honed blade forged from hate and fury, forged for one thing and one thing only: death. She was a reckoning, sent by whatever dark god it was that she had once served.

It wasn't that her smile was evil. There was a certain malice in her eyes, yes, a delicious sort of hatred that stopped his heart, but her smile was so... content. Real. Peaceful. The only genuine smile he had seen of her that didn't echo pain and anguish or bitter and mocking contempt. It was a true smile, the sort of smile he had not expected to find in an assassin, an assassin famous among even the most feared of her rank, a shadow among shadows, a knife among knives. The Dark Heart, they had called her. At least, that was the most common. Blood child, he had also heard. Daughter of Corpses. Lady of Carrion. The Stranger's Bride. Death's Consort.

And here she was smiling at him, sun gleaming in her dark hair, glinting in sad grey eyes ringed with deepest blue. Beautiful eyes, he realised with a start. He had never seen their like. Had never seen something so beautiful, so full of rage and despair and fury, and a thirst for vengeance that often had him reaching for his sword.

Little over three weeks, he had known her, and every day he found himself presented with a different creature. A different face, like the god she served. Had served. I'm not one of them anymore, she had told him in the Sept. I never was, not really. He didn't know if that was a good or bad. She had walked into a temple of death worshippers, assassin's of the most feared kind, with no mercy, nothing human inside of them, nothing human at all, and she had been able to live among them without ever truly becoming one. She had roots here, she had told him the evening before. Were they what had tethered her to her humanity? What had kept her from stepping off the deep end of despair from which there was no coming back?

Or had she already been there?

Gendry didn't know what she had endured in her life. But he had seen the shadow that crossed her eyes. Had heard the way her voice changed when she remembered something. Those mines... the life expectancy of a slave in those mines was a month. And she had survived them for a year, and still walked away with her head high and an unbroken will. Eighteen years old, and she had suffered a thousand live's worth of torment and yet when she spoke of hell to him, she was not talking of the mines. When she had told him that a person who had already lived through hell could not fear the gods, what had she been thinking of? What could possibly be worse than the mines? He had spent all of one day there and he had been glad to leave, had witnessed such depths to human misery that he hadn't even known were possible.

So when she turned to him, holding that sword and smiling, fear washed through him, because there was nothing human in her gaze. He swallowed it down and told himself again that she was contained, controlled, powerless to harm anyone. But as the sun glinted in those terror inducing eyes of hers, as she asked him if he was ready to dance, he thought that no tempest could ever truly be defeated. Just contained. That no void could ever be held. Just weathered.

"Are you ready to dance, Commander?" The words were a purr as energy thrummed through her bones, as if a new sort of life had been awoken in her veins as she held the weapon.

He watched her warily, and something seemed to flicker through his eyes, but he pushed it down and shook it off. "Don't you want to warm up first?" he asked, motioning to her sword.

"A warm up is what I am proposing," she said with a small smirk.

Irritation lit his eyes, replaced by determination as he unsheathed his sword, steel sighing against leather. "Let's just see how well you hold up to those words, assassin," he said boldly. He hefted his sword in his hand, and the Cat knew instinctively that he was eager to try himself against her. No, he was not simply adjusting to the weight of that sword- it was an old familiar friend to him, as much a part of his body as his hands, his eyes. The movement was not preparation for the fight at all, but rather a tell that he was on edge. She tucked it away with all of the other information about him that she had filed away.

"Go on then," she said, twirling the sword in her hand to learn it's weight, it's feel. "I'll even give you a free shot."

He growled at her and lunged. An entirely too predictable first approach, really, and the Cat didn't even bother to block it. She twisted effortlessly to avoid it, and the sword cut through the air where she had been. Something awoke inside of her, something that had been long sleeping, now roused by the familiar thrill of this dance of steel and death. The commander narrowed his eyes at her and made a back cut, sweeping sideways at her. Had she been anyone else the move might very well have cut her in half. But the Cat was the Cat, and she ducked, bending over backwards as if her bones were fluid, allowing it to soar over her head. She straightened a moment later, braid whipping behind her, grinning.

"I said a free shot, Lord Commander," she said. "Not a cheap shot."

He narrowed his eyes at her and renewed his attack, with far more energy than before, thrusting and hacking and swinging at her with such a veracity that a lesser opponent would have been a dead man (or at least, a defeated man, in just a sparring match), but the Cat was no ordinary opponent. She evaded and turned away his attacks without so much as an afterthought, twisting this way and that, spinning and ducking. At one point he aimed low, hoping to catch her out and knock her feet from under her, but the Cat leapt up into the air, drawing her knees almost up to her chest as the blade swept uselessly beneath her. With the commander's size and strength, had the blow caught her she had no doubt that it would have sent her sprawling, and picking grit out of her skin for weeks. He's good, she thought, turning away his blade after a particularly sharp parry that could not be elsewise avoided. He's very good. It was always better to evade the blows of stronger opponents, she had learned. Better to avoid them and see past them than meet them, for they would wear her bones down too quickly. This was a tactic that made sparring with larger men easier, in a way, than the more agile ones. However, for a man of such colossal size- he truly was a mountain in his own right- the commander was fast and strong, and didn't pull any punches.

"Are you going to actually fight me, or will you keep running all day?" he grunted, making a feint to her left. She caught the trick easily, and passed the blow away harmlessly.

"Why?" she asked. "Growing tired already, commander?" As they sparred, the Cat, through the calm that she descended into when fighting, when her surroundings became secondary yet no less sharply in focus, had not failed to notice the other champions stop to watch.

He snarled at her, though there was no malice behind it, and lunged. This time he was faster, and the Cat knew she could not bring her sword up in time to turn it away, so she threw herself backwards, soaring through the air as time seemed to stand still to watch, as she sprang backwards onto her hands, blade gripped tightly, and twisted, somersaulting in an elegant arc to land on her feet, sword already raised and primed to meet any blow.

The commander faltered, eyes widening as she faced him. The smile was wiped from her face, and replaced with a steely determination as she said in low, cold voice, "and now, we dance."

And just as she raised her sword to duel him in earnest, a loud voice boomed across the yard, and all of the spectators turned to see. As Gendry nodded at her and sheathed his sword, she felt her ire rise near bursting. So close, she thought. She had been so close to a fight, a real fight after so very long. It wasn't fair. All she wanted to do was lose herself in the sword, in the fight, just a few blessed moments of relief to ease the pressure in her skull, a pressure that made her very bones feel weak, that could be released in only one way. She wanted nothing so much as to let out her frustrations and her fury in a storm of steel, to expend all of the fear and rage she had endured in the mines, when she was betrayed.

But there would be a time for that, she told herself, letting the sword drop with a sigh. Holding it loosely in her hand, she turned to see who the voice belonged to.

The man stood atop the raised platform. A white cloak fluttered from his shoulders, though she saw that he wore no armour, no shining plate or gilded mail. For a man as famed as he, Barristan the Bold certainly looked an all together ordinary man. Pleasing to look upon, despite his age, but nothing that would draw the eye for more than a few moments. He looked older than she remembered, as if he aged twice the amount of years that had passed since she last saw him. She wondered for a beat why he had been chosen to oversee the competition, but as his voice again boomed out across the yard, she was left into no doubt as to why. That was the voice of a leader of men, the sort of commander that people stopped and listened to, the sort of man who was obeyed.

"Your attention, champions!" he said loudly, not quite a shout, but certainly loud enough for all to hear plainly. "I am Ser Barristan Selmy of the Kingsguard. I will be overseeing your training throughout this competition. I will not waste words explaining what it is for; you all know well enough, or you would not be here. Anyone who had doubts walking into this yard today," he said, pointing at the gates, "should leave now, because you will not make it without the stomach for it. But after this moment, any man who withdraws, does so without honour. So here is your last chance; leave, and no man here will judge you and condemn you as a coward. Leave now with your honour intact."

The Cat rolled her eyes. Who talked like that? Honestly, all of this talk of honour and chivalry as if not every man here had already abandoned such charges long ago. It was rather hypocritical really, when this whole competition was designed with the purpose of signalling out the champion with the least of those qualities, so that he may be charged to do the dirty work that the king could not formally ask of his own guard.

She wasn't surprised when after a few moments two of the champions hung up their weapons and walked out without a word. She had seen them shifting on their feet at the meeting yesterday, and when she and the commander had entered the yards they had been stood at the edges, watching sullenly. She wondered what their sponsors would say. Where the champions-no-longer would go back to. Perhaps they had families, homes. Perhaps they were criminals who preferred to spend a few years in the cells rather than risk losing their lives. Maybe they would flee in exile and live as sellswords, or go to the Wall to serve out their sentence in black cloaks fringed with frost. Either way, she wasn't about to complain. Not when they had just made her job easier. While they would not be fighting to the death, the Cat had no illusions that there would not be accidents.

"Anyone else?" Selmy barked. No one moved. "Good. I imagine you are all itching to know your competition. You," he said, jabbing a gloved finger at the nearest champion. "Name, occupation and where you hail from- and be honest about it; I know none of you are bakers and candlestick makers."

The man, tall and bulky with close cropped brown hair, stepped forward. "Percival," he said. The Cat concealed a snigger. "Soldier in the king's army. I hail from Rosby." Selmy nodded at him and jerked his finger at the next man.

This man was not so tall or muscled as Percival, but there was a cunning in his eyes that the Cat did not like. "Alator. A... debt collector from Kings Landing." She wasn't surprised. A man had to have a certain amount of cruelty to collect debts from people struggling with poverty. She imagined that a violent streak had been what got him noticed. Perhaps even plucked from the dungeons.

One by one, the twenty-one other competitors introduced themselves. There were six more seasoned soldiers—all of them thrown out of the army for questionable behaviour, which must have been truly questionable, given that the king's army was notorious for ruthlessness. Then there were the three thieves—including the dark-haired and pale Cenred, the fellow northman she had spied at the meeting, from Karhold, whom she'd actually heard of in passing. The three mercenaries looked ready to boil someone alive, and then there were the two shackled murderers. They reminded her of Rorge and Biter in a way, though perhaps not quite so terrifying- though maybe that was because she had been a child, then. Now, though- she was the real monster. The one for them to watch out for. The thought made her smile.

The first, a reed thin man with thinning blond hair and watery blue eyes, had spent a month in the black cells after he had been stopped by the gold cloaks with a suspicious stained sack, that had revealed chopped up body parts from several different victims. The second had been caught after attacking a young woman who managed to escape after hitting him with a rock. After further investigation, it had been revealed that he was the culprit of a number of bloody murders, known as the Scalper for the way he skinned his victims of their scalp. A series of bloody wigs had been found in a box beneath his bed at a location he rented for his... experiments. Frankly, it was a wonder that neither had been executed for their crimes, and the Cat couldn't help but offer up a prayer to the Many faced God that they be among the fatalities of this competition. Indeed, she may even be the causer of the so called accidents herself.

The next two were nondescript, one a thief and one an arsonist. After them came five assassins. She forgot- or rather, discounted- the first three almost as soon as she heard their names. None of them appeared particularly cunning or quick, all were of average height and build, and none of them carried themselves with an heir of self confidence that spoke of any particular skill set or talent. The next two, however, held a kernel of interest; one a sellsword from the Second Sons and one a sorrowful man from Qarth.

Then came Gregor Clegane, though he hardly needed any introduction at all. "Ser Gregor," he growled, glaring across the yard at each champion. "Lord of Clegane Hall. Commander in the king's army and appointed member of the queen's guard." It was just like Cersei, to choose the most violent man she could- if the hulking mass of muscle, sinew and straining vein could be called a man.

After the last five- two more thieves, a Dornish man and an Iron Born- the Cat was the last to go. When Selmy jerked his chin at her, she cleared her throat and spoke. "Cat Ashfold, from Bear Island. Criminal." She didn't specify what crime, though from the look in Selmy's eyes, the prince had already informed him of her violent "backstory". She noticed a number of the other champions share sniggers or sideways glances. She wondered if they would still laugh if they knew who she really was. What she could do.

"Alright," he nodded. "You all have five minutes to put away your weapons and prepare. Then we're heading out to the Kingswood for a mandatory run." He smiled grimly. "We will be taking a skiff across the bay. Do not think for a moment that you will not be heavily guarded. My soldiers have been commanded to shoot first and ask questions later." He directed his glare at the two murderers. It was nice not to be the subject of that glare, though she could feel Gendry's stare on her and knew that he would have his own words of warning to offer her in private. She wondered if he would clap shackles around her wrists on the skiff. Ser Barristan gave one more piece of advice, with steely grimness. "Anyone who cannot keep up will be left behind and will no longer take place in this competition. I advise you prepare yourselves."

Her lungs burned and she felt like someone had taken a stone grinder to the muscles of her legs, but she kept running. She kept to the middle of the pack of champions, not allowing herself to fall behind, though her lungs screamed, nor to push forward ahead. Selmy, Gendry and the other trainers- along with four score armed guards- followed them around the game park on the edge of the Kingswood on horseback. The two murderers, the Scalper and the Puzzler, as the Cat had taken to calling him in her head for his proclivity for chopping people up into pieces, had been given long manacles. It was unsurprising that they ran to the back of the pack, other than the one thief who had dropped back too far and was expelled from the competition. The Cat supposed it was a privilege that Gendry hadn't clapped her in shackles and locked her up, too. After all, she might not have the distinct lack of humanity of the Scalper and the Puzzler, but she didn't doubt that her list of victims far exceeded their joint efforts. At the front of the pack ran Cenred, which did not surprise her. Ser Gregor was near the back- which also did not surprise her. There was no way that a man of that sheer mass could move quickly. Had it not been for the small army of guards with loaded crossbows, she would probably have forgone her plan to stick to the middle and run ahead just to put more distance between them. She did not like having him- or indeed anyone- at her back.

The sound of crunching leaves and laboured breathing filled the warm autumn air, and the Cat kept her gaze on the damp and gleaming dark hair of the thief in front of her. One step after another, one breath in, one breath out. Breathe—she had to remember to keep breathing. She regulated how much air she took in at a time- in through her nose, out through her mouth. It did little to ease the raging stitch in her side.

Ahead, the champions followed Cenred north, back towards the river. Like a flock of sheep. One step after another, over and over and over. Let them all size each other up as the real competition. She would keep to the middle, inconspicuous, unnoticed, a total non-threat. The last thing she needed was a target on her back. Let them all focus on the leaders, like the Mountain and Cenred. She would watch the carnage and then attack from the shadows. They would never even see her coming. She missed a breath, and her knees shook something fierce. She was not fit for this. Not after a year in chains. The run would be over soon, she told herself. Soon. With each step she pictured the day she won her freedom. It was all that kept her going as her muscles shrieked and strained as if they had gone through a shredder. She could feel Gendry's eyes on her all the way. Her cheeks burned for him to see her in such a sorry state.

The trees parted, revealing the field that lay between the game park and the stables. The end of the path. Her head spun, and she would have cursed at the stitch that lanced through her side had she had any breath to do so. She had to stay in the middle. Stay in the middle.

Cenred cleared the trees and entered the stretch of grass that bordered the Blackwater Rush. She could smell the putrid city with each rasping breath. It stung her nostrils and made her eyes water. As Cenred pumped a fist in the air his trainer cheered for him, and reached a hand out to pat his back as he cleared the finish. The Cat's only response was to keep moving. She ignored the impulse to pump her legs faster, faster, to sprint for the finish, despite the burning in her legs and lungs, the pounding in her head, the way her saliva had turned thick and dried on her tongue. Only a few yards left. The light of the open field grew brighter and brighter, warming her sweat. Stars flashed before her eyes, swarming her vision. Stay in the middle, she repeated to herself silently. The middle. Years of war and training and brutality had taught her the dangers of giving up, giving in.

And then, she was through the last of the trees, and the open field stretched before her in an explosion of blue sky and dried grass. The men in front of her slowed to a stop. It was all she could do to keep from sinking to her knees, but she made her legs slow, slow, slow, made her feet walk, made herself take breath after breath as the stars continued bursting before her eyes.

Her head was thumping so badly that she barely heard Barristan Selmy tell them to get water and wait for the others. She forced herself to walk it off, hands resting atop her head to open her lungs up. Sweat dripped down her spine, soaked her shirt. When the last of the champions staggered through the trees, she turned around.

Through the spots in her vision, she saw Gendry stop his horse. Her feet moved past him, each step a force of sheer will, back into the woods. "Where are you going?" he asked her, brows furrowed.

"I dropped my handkerchief back there," she lied. "I didn't want to stop and risk being overtaken. Just give a moment to find it." Without waiting for his approval, she entered the trees to the sneers and snickers of the champions who had overheard. From the approaching crashing noises, she knew the champion who had fallen behind was on his way out. She stepped into the cover of the bushes, stumbling as the world became dark and light and tilted. She had barely sunk to her knees when she vomited.

She heaved and heaved until she had nothing left inside. The straggling Champion passed by, and she prayed that he didn't tell anyone what he had seen. On trembling limbs, she grappled onto a nearby tree and hauled herself upright again. She found the Lord Commander before her atop his horse, and his large figure cast a shadow over the path as he watched her with pursed lips.

She wiped her mouth on the back of her wrist and said nothing to him as she exited the woods.

Oh dear, poor Cat :(

*jaunty podcast voice* be sure to tune in next time for chapter nine!

Over and Out xoxo