FREYA
I push the sour feeling rising in my chest away and tear my gaze away from them before Eli can sense me. If I stare too long, he’ll become aware of my presence but I do not leave the shop as I would have days ago.
I refuse to let them dictate how I live.
I do not turn around. I do not retreat.
I square my shoulders. I lift my chin a small precise fraction the way my mother taught me to lift my chin in rooms I did not want to be in and walk toward the warrior section at the back which sits in a long alcove at the back of the shop, half-shadowed under a low wooden beam, and it smells of new leather and gun oil and the faint cold metal of buckles fresh out of the foundry.
I see an array of vests and run my hand down one of them, heavy plating across the shoulders, restrictive at t
