“Hit me,” she said.

He paused for a fraction of a second. Then he swung at her face with one fist and she flashed her arm upward to block him. The explosion of arm on arm woke her from her stupor. She would fight him, and she would beat him. He hadn’t beaten her yet, and he wouldn’t beat her tonight. No matter the darkness, and no matter the whirlwind in her mind, for now that they fought, the whirlwind had vanished. Katsa’s mind was clear.

She hit hard and fast, with hand, elbow, knee, foot. He hit hard, too, but it was as if every blow focused some energy inside her. Every tree they slammed into, every root they tripped over, centered her. She fell into the comfort of fighting with Po, and the fight was ferocious.

When she wrestled him to the ground and he pushed her face away, she called out. “Wait. Blood. I taste blood.”

He stopped struggling. “Where? Not your mouth?”

“I think it’s your hand,” she said.

He sat up and she crouched beside him. She took his hand and squinted into his palm. “Is it bleeding? Can you tell?”

“It’s nothing. It was the edge of your boot.”

“We shouldn’t be fighting in boots.”

“We can’t fight barefoot in the forest, Katsa. Truly, it’s nothing.”

“Nonetheless—”

“There’s blood on your mouth,” he said, in a funny, distracted sort of voice that made plain how little he cared about his injured hand. He raised a finger and almost touched her lip; and then dropped his finger, as if he realized suddenly that he was doing something he shouldn’t. He cleared his throat and looked away from her.

And she felt it then, how near he was. She felt his hand and his wrist, warm under her fingers. He was here, right here, breathing before her; she was touching him; and she felt the risk, as if it were water splashing cold on her skin. She knew that this was the moment to choose. She knew her choice.

He turned his eyes back to her, and in them she saw that he understood. She climbed into his arms. They clung to each other, and she was crying, as much from relief to be holding him as from the fear of what she did. He rocked her in his lap and hugged her, and whispered her name over and over, until finally her tears stopped.

She wiped her face on his shirt. She wrapped her arms around his neck. She felt warm in his arms, and calm, and safe and brave. And then she was laughing, laughing at how nice it felt, how good his body felt against hers. He grinned at her, a wicked, gleaming grin that made her warm everywhere. And then his lips touched her throat and nuzzled her neck. She gasped. His mouth found hers. She turned to fire.

Some time later, as she lay with him in the moss, clinging to him, hypnotized by something his lips did to her throat, she remembered his bleeding hand. “Later,” he growled, and then she remembered the blood on her mouth, but that only brought his mouth to hers again, tasting, seeking, and his hands fumbling at her clothing, and her hands fumbling at his. And the warmth of his skin, as their bodies explored each other. And after all, they knew each other’s bodies as well as any lovers; but this touch was so different, straining toward instead of against.