Yes, I know. But she’s not a child. Turn and follow her. She’s waiting and you don’t want her to come running back to the lawn armed with a frying pan.

She wouldn’t. Kaylin inhaled slowly. The old woman would return, because to Mrs. Erickson, Kaylin probably was a child.

If you have to hit him, you know the drill: wait until he tries to hit you first. You should probably plan out where to let him connect to avoid actual injury. But that’s not what you were thinking.

It is.

She could feel Severn shake his head. It isn’t. If you kill him, you’ll lose the Hawk.

I wasn’t going to kill him. But she stopped arguing. Let Severn’s calm anchor her because she had almost none of her own left, and holding on to it had become increasingly difficult.

If you skin him alive, Severn said, Mrs. Erickson will be traumatized.

More than she already is? She didn’t tell him that she had no intention of skinning the man alive. She knew what Severn meant. And she knew the deep, visceral fury she could barely keep under lock had echoes of the one time—long before she was officially a Hawk—that she’d done exactly that.

She turned toward Mrs. Erickson.

Hope squawked.

She shook her head, exhaling. There were some fights you had to walk away from. This was one of them—for now. She turned toward the door, showing the neighbor her profile. She didn’t speak, and made no further attempt to provoke him.

For his part, he husbanded his demands as well, which she hadn’t expected. She wasn’t certain why. Maybe it was because he wasn’t entirely stupid and he’d seen, clearly, the certainty that lurked beneath Kaylin’s momentary, but murderous, rage. If her size made her an easy target in the eyes of people like the neighbor, her anger added weight and gravity, as did the Hawk.

Not even the neighbor could consider a physical altercation with an Imperial Hawk to be an entirely safe bet—not when the Hawk knew exactly where he lived.

Mrs. Erickson wasn’t holding a frying pan when Kaylin reached the door. She didn’t appear to be holding a weapon at all, but there was something both tremulous and martial in the older woman’s expression.

“It’s such a pity he turned out like that,” the old woman said, holding her door open to allow Kaylin entry. “His mother was such a sweet soul.”

Kaylin glanced at Hope, who was rigid on her shoulder. He lifted his wing, placing it almost gently across her face, as if her visceral fury was terrain to be carefully navigated.