After everything the previous day had managed to contain, an hour that quiet felt suspicious enough that I kept expecting something unpleasant to emerge from every cluster of trees we passed. Skydancer seemed perfectly content with the road. She moved beneath me with the smooth, energetic stride that had made riding almost offensively enjoyable yesterday, and knowing how much work had gone into getting the sidesaddle onto her changed the experience in a small but satisfying way. Every time I shifted my weight or felt the tack respond beneath me, I understood a little more about what was actually holding me there instead of treating a properly prepared horse as something that simply materialized whenever royalty required transportation.
Adrian rode Goliath beside me for most of the morning, although the road occasionally narrowed enough that one of us had to fall behind. Renee and Raven remained a short distance back with Rocky and the cart, and the steady rattle of wheels eventually became familiar enough that I stopped checking over my shoulder every few minutes to make sure my luggage had not staged a rebellion.
The countryside changed gradually as we moved farther from Kallithea. Cultivated fields spread between patches of woodland, low stone walls divided properties, and distant farmhouses appeared often enough that this still felt like inhabited Calder rather than wilderness pretending to be a road. Most people recognized that we were somebody important before they recognized exactly who. The horses, clothing, cart, and general amount of visible money handled the first part, while the second usually arrived after someone looked more carefully at my horns, face, or signet ring and suddenly remembered how bows worked.
The first farmer who nearly dropped a basket when he realized who I was made me uncomfortable enough that I smiled and told him he did not need to stop working. The second bowed anyway, while his wife stared at Adrian beside me with enough curiosity that I could practically hear tomorrow’s gossip being assembled from twenty yards away.
“You are enjoying this.”
Adrian glanced toward me. “Watching people recognize you?”
“Watching them immediately decide you are part of whatever story they are going to tell about me.”
“I cannot control the imaginations of your subjects.”
“You are sitting on an enormous horse beside their Crown Princess while dressed like somebody commissioned you specifically for romantic rumors.”
“That is an unusually specific accusation.”
“It is accurate.”
He considered that with a seriousness I did not trust while Goliath continued walking as though his rider was not discussing the strategic consequences of being too handsome in public. “Would it help if I looked less handsome?”
“You lack the discipline.”
His grin appeared immediately, and I regretted the sentence before he even opened his mouth.
“That sounded almost complimentary.”
“It was an observation.”
“I will treasure it.”
“You should treasure silence.”
“I have not found it particularly rewarding.”
“That explains a great deal.”
He laughed, and I faced forward before the exchange could become any worse. The annoying part was that I was enjoying it too. I had spent a substantial portion of breakfast insisting that nothing happening between us counted as flirting, and apparently my solution to that problem was to keep provoking him until one of us crossed some invisible line I could identify afterward as evidence. I preferred to classify the entire thing as antagonistic conversation and leave it there.
The road climbed gently for another stretch, and by the time the sun had cleared the treetops completely, my opinion of riding began losing some of yesterday’s enthusiasm. Skydancer remained wonderful, but the part of me sitting on her had started registering that a two-hour ride yesterday had apparently not qualified me for spending most of today in a saddle.
I shifted again and discovered no version of sitting that convinced my hips they had not been doing this for hours. The Sureseat Tonic tucked among my travel supplies suddenly became substantially less funny than it had seemed when the System awarded it.
Renee noticed my next adjustment and brought Raven a little closer. “You are fidgeting.”
“I am adjusting.”
“You have adjusted six times in the last ten minutes.”
“I am very precise.”
“You are sore.”
“I am a princess. We do not discuss these things on public roads.”
Adrian looked over with entirely too much interest, although concern replaced amusement quickly enough that I could not even accuse him of enjoying my suffering. “We can stop.”
“I am not stopping because my ass hurts.”
A strangled sound came from behind me, and I twisted enough to catch Renee unsuccessfully controlling her expression. “Did you laugh?”
“No, Your Highness.”
“You absolutely did.”
“I would never.”
Adrian was suddenly looking very intently at the trees, which made his participation obvious even without visible evidence.
“You too?”
Adrian continued studying the trees. “I am exercising restraint.”
“That is not better.”
I considered staying on Skydancer another hour purely out of spite before remembering that I possessed an actual magical consumable designed for precisely this problem. Pride was valuable, but apparently not valuable enough to spend the rest of the day being repeatedly assaulted by a saddle.
“Fine. Five minutes.”
Renee nodded toward a widening in the road ahead where several old trees shaded a grassy verge. We drew off beneath them, and I accepted Adrian’s assistance dismounting because I had already exhausted my morning quota for treating ordinary sidesaddle etiquette like an attack on my independence. The moment my boots touched the ground, my legs informed me that walking after several hours mounted was also an activity requiring negotiation.
I held Skydancer’s reins and stretched as discreetly as possible while Renee checked Rocky’s harness and Adrian led Goliath toward a patch of grass. Once neither of them was looking directly at me, I retrieved the narrow blue vial from my bag and focused on it.
SURESEAT TONIC
Duration: 6 hours
Temporary Effect: +2 Riding Mastery
Reduces discomfort and fatigue associated with prolonged mounted travel.
“This had better taste better than medicine.”
Whatever alchemist had invented it apparently regarded flavor as an optional feature. The liquid combined bitter herbs, something aggressively mintlike, and an aftertaste that suggested somebody had dissolved leather into alcohol. I swallowed anyway and immediately regretted possessing taste buds.
“That expression does not inspire confidence,” Adrian said.
I lowered the empty bottle and found him watching from beside Goliath. “It tastes like someone boiled a saddle.”
“Useful?”
“Ask me in five minutes.”
The effect arrived considerably faster. Warmth spread gradually through my hips, lower back, and thighs, not numbing anything so much as easing the accumulated strain until getting back onto a horse stopped sounding like punishment and became merely inconvenient again. A small status icon appeared at the edge of my vision and began counting down.
SURESEAT
Riding Mastery: +2
Mounted Fatigue Accumulation Reduced
Remaining Duration: 5:59:41
“I forgive the taste.”
Renee finished tightening one of Rocky’s harness straps and looked over. “One of your rewards?”
“Yes.”
“For carrying too much luggage?”
“Strategic preparedness continues to vindicate me.”
“Of course it does.”
We were back on the road less than ten minutes later, and the difference was dramatic enough that I immediately decided the second dose was being saved for whatever future day became even worse. Skydancer’s movement felt easier to follow, my balance required less conscious correction, and the low ache that had been building gradually faded into something manageable.
The temporary increase in Riding was noticeable without feeling as though someone had installed foreign knowledge in my head. I already knew how to ride. The tonic simply sharpened what I could do, making small corrections cleaner and reducing the effort required to maintain them. That interested me enough that I spent part of the next hour experimenting with tiny changes in posture and rein pressure while Skydancer responded with increasingly pointed flicks of one ear.
“I know, I know. You are not a laboratory.”
Adrian turned toward me. “Do I want context?”
“No.”
“That usually means yes.”
“I am learning.”
“Should I be worried?”
“Probably.”
He nodded gravely. “Thank you for the warning.”
The road began descending after another long rise, curving through denser woodland where fields became less frequent. Tall trees pressed closer to either side, their canopies breaking the sunlight into moving patches across the road while undergrowth thickened beyond the drainage ditches. Nothing about the change felt threatening at first. We had passed two mounted messengers, several wagons, and a family with baskets piled into a small cart earlier that morning, so trees becoming thicker did not automatically mean danger.
The first thing that bothered me was how quiet the road ahead had become. Skydancer’s hooves, Goliath’s heavier steps, and the distant rattle of Rocky’s cart remained loud enough, but the ordinary woodland noise had faded until the absence itself became noticeable. Adrian sensed something around the same time. His posture changed subtly, the easy looseness leaving his shoulders while Goliath’s ears shifted forward and stayed there.
“What?”
“Not sure yet.”
That answer did more for my nerves than silence would have. Adrian did not seem like someone inclined to invent threats for entertainment. I straightened in the saddle and looked ahead more carefully, while behind us Renee brought Raven closer without needing to be told why.
“Something wrong?” she asked.
“Maybe,” Adrian said. “Keep Rocky back if we stop.”
My heartbeat reacted to the words before I had any evidence that danger actually existed. Yesterday had contained enough emotional catastrophe for several lifetimes, but none of it had involved someone deliberately trying to hurt me with a weapon. Skydancer shortened her stride beneath me as well, her ears rotating toward the trees on our left and then forward again while her tail gave one sharp flick.
“Easy, beautiful.”
The road curved another fifty yards ahead, and an obstruction gradually came into view through the trees. A fallen trunk lay across most of the roadway, thick enough that neither horses nor cart could simply step over it, while the upper branches disappeared into brush on the opposite side.
Adrian slowed Goliath. I brought Skydancer down beside him, and Renee stopped Raven several yards behind us with Rocky and the cart farther back.
“That seems inconvenient,” I said.
“It does.”
Adrian did not look at the tree. His attention remained on the woods, which was enough to make my hand drift toward the rapier at my side. I studied the trunk more carefully and noticed that the leaves remained green, several branches looked freshly broken, and the exposed section near the base disappeared behind the slope on the right side of the road.
“Storm damage?”
“It has not stormed.”
“Trees fall.”
“They do.”
“Your tone suggests this one had assistance.”
His gaze moved along the tree line. “My tone suggests I would rather know before we get closer.”
A man stepped from behind the fallen trunk before either of us moved. Patched leather, dark scarf, short sword, nothing theatrical about him and nothing reassuring either. Two more shapes emerged from the trees on our left, another man appeared on the right with a bow already in hand, and a fifth followed the first from behind the trunk.
Five armed men blocking the road was enough to strip away every pleasant abstraction about danger being part of an adventure.
The first man looked over our horses, clothing, equipment, and cart before smiling at whatever total he calculated. “Well now. That is better than a merchant cart.”
Adrian shifted Goliath half a step forward, and the warhorse responded immediately. The movement placed more of his enormous body between the men and Renee without blocking Skydancer’s path.
“Clear the road.”
The bandit laughed. “That is not how this works.”
The archer’s attention moved over us before settling on Skydancer. Greed replaced caution on his face so quickly that I disliked him before he spoke.
“Silver one’s worth a fortune.”
Skydancer’s ears flattened as something cold settled into my stomach.
“No.”
The man nearest the tree looked toward me as though the sound had surprised him. His smile widened when he took in my size, my clothing, and probably every assumption attached to being the smallest person present.
“Wasn’t asking, sweetheart.”
Fear remained in my stomach, but anger arrived beside it quickly enough to steady my hand around the rapier hilt. “You should have been.”
Adrian glanced toward me without taking his attention fully off the road. “Rae.”
“I heard him.”
“I know. Stay where I can reach you until we know how many there are.”
I looked at the polearm in his hand, then at him. “That sounded dangerously close to an order.”
“It was a professional recommendation.”
“You are very bossy when armed.”
“You noticed.”
“Hard not to. The weapon is enormous.”
His eyes flicked toward me, and I realized what I had said approximately half a second too late.
“That was not flirting.”
One corner of his mouth moved. “I hadn’t accused you.”
“Good.”
The bandit leader stared between us. “Are you two finished?”
I turned back toward him. “Apparently not.”
Adrian made a sound suspiciously close to a laugh, but the leader’s expression had already hardened.
“Weapons down. Purse, jewelry, horses, and the cart stay here. You three walk away, and nobody gets hurt.”
Behind me, Renee moved Raven nearer Rocky while maintaining enough distance to maneuver. Her face had lost every trace of the morning’s amusement. The archer shifted his bow toward me, and Skydancer changed beneath me before I could react, her body tightening as one forehoof scraped hard against the road and her ears pinned completely flat. The gentle mare I had been scratching beneath the jaw less than an hour earlier suddenly looked very prepared to introduce someone to the consequences of threatening her rider.
The archer laughed. “Pretty thing’s got spirit.”
“Do not touch my horse.”
He stepped forward anyway.
Goliath reacted almost simultaneously. Adrian shifted his weight, and the huge bay pivoted sideways with startling speed as Adrian’s polearm swept out across the road. The movement was broad without being wild, steel tracing a controlled arc that forced two men to stop advancing or walk directly into its reach.
SWEEPING DENIAL
The entire shape of the road changed. One moment there were five men beginning to spread around us. The next Adrian had claimed the center with Goliath beneath him and enough polearm reach that anyone trying to cross toward Renee, Rocky, or me had to go through him first.
“Last chance,” Adrian said. “Clear the road.”
The leader drew his sword fully. “Take them.”
Everything happened at once. The archer raised his bow while two men rushed forward, Goliath surged beneath Adrian, Skydancer launched herself before I consciously told her to move, and my rapier cleared its sheath so smoothly that I only realized I had drawn it once the blade was already in my hand.
The archer loosed first. I saw the bowstring snap forward and the arrow leave it, then Skydancer twisted beneath me with violent speed. The shot passed through the space where my shoulder had been a heartbeat earlier, while my balance corrected around her movement before panic could throw me out of the saddle.
“Good girl.”
A bandit rushed my left side with his sword raised. I saw the strike coming but could not have explained what I did in response. My weight shifted, the rapier came up, and the rhythm of his attack suddenly felt almost like a badly timed dance partner.
DANCER’S GUARD
His blade glanced away from the line he wanted, close enough that I heard steel pass without feeling it touch me. Skydancer carried me sideways as I turned with the motion, and another familiar pulse of class magic sharpened the movement.
CADENCED STEP
Distance opened exactly where I needed it. My rapier snapped across his forearm, cutting leather and skin before I had time to think about how much damage the strike would actually do.
Blood appeared immediately, bright and real, and the sight hit me harder than I expected. I had trained Shotokan for years, understood how bodies broke, and knew what weapons could do in theory. None of that was the same as watching a blade in my hand open someone’s arm. I had barely registered the difference before another attacker tried to circle toward Skydancer’s opposite flank.
Adrian’s polearm struck into the space between us before the man got close enough to swing.
INTERPOSING REACH
The shaft caught the bandit across the chest and drove him sideways rather than impaling him. Adrian barely looked at me while doing it.
“I thought you had him.”
“I did.”
“Then consider that unnecessary practice.”
Despite the fight closing around us, I recognized my own line from the hallway and barked a startled laugh. “You asshole.”
“There she is.”
I should not have found that charming under any circumstances, particularly while armed men were trying to rob us. The brief smile that escaped anyway was evidence of absolutely nothing I intended to acknowledge.
The first man came at me again, clutching his bleeding forearm with one hand while anger overwhelmed whatever good sense the injury should have given him. His next swing was harder and sloppier. I slipped away from it, Skydancer moving almost with the rhythm of my body as the right words appeared with vicious clarity.
“You know, I genuinely cannot decide whether the saddest part is that you thought robbing travelers was a career or that you are this bad at it.”
Magic tightened around the words as they left my mouth.
CUTTING REMARK
The bandit recoiled as though I had struck him across the face. There was no physical wound and nothing had touched him, but his eyes squeezed shut while his free hand jerked toward his temple. Pain crossed his expression with brutal clarity, followed by a moment of disorientation as though the insult had become something sharp enough to get inside his skull and rake across thought itself.
I had known what Cutting Remark was supposed to do. Knowing that and watching a man physically stagger from a sentence were very different experiences. His eyes opened again, suddenly much less certain about the small woman in front of him.
I smiled sweetly. “That one hurt, didn’t it?”
The man’s face twisted between pain and fury, and for one terrible second I thought humiliating him had only made him more dangerous. He lunged anyway, but the attack came late and badly aligned, his concentration still fraying under whatever Cutting Remark had done inside his head. I caught his blade on mine, redirected it away from Skydancer, and felt another pulse of practiced magic gather through my wrist before movement flashed behind him and pulled part of my attention away.
The second bandit Adrian had knocked aside recovered and tried to dart around Goliath toward Renee. Adrian saw him immediately, his polearm snapping across the road to present an impossible problem: get past six feet of weapon, an enormous warhorse, and a man who had apparently decided the center of this road belonged to him.
GUARDIAN’S CHALLENGE
The effect was subtler than Cutting Remark but no less obvious. The bandit’s attention jerked back toward Adrian as though ignoring him had suddenly become physically difficult, his stride faltering while whatever plan had involved slipping around the fight collapsed under the immediate certainty that Adrian was now the threat he had to deal with. Adrian smiled at him, but there was nothing friendly in it.
“Going somewhere?”
The bandit made the extraordinarily poor decision to rush him. Adrian’s polearm moved once, the blade never touching flesh as he caught the man’s sword near the guard, twisted it violently off line, and drove the butt of the weapon into his chest hard enough to fold him over it. Goliath stepped forward at precisely the same moment, forcing the man backward until he fell into the dirt and rolled desperately away from the warhorse’s hooves.
I watched for half a heartbeat longer than I should have, and Adrian caught me doing it while turning the polearm back toward the remaining threats.
“You are staring.”
“I am evaluating.”
“You fight well.”
His eyebrows lifted, and I immediately regretted possessing a mouth.
“Professionally.”
“You complimented me in the middle of a fight.”
“I can revoke it.”
“Too late.”
The bandit in front of me chose that moment to attack again, saving me from having to answer. I slipped the first cut, turned the second with my rapier, and let Skydancer move beneath me instead of trying to hold her rigidly in place. She seemed to understand the rhythm almost as well as I did, carrying us just beyond each dangerous angle while my balance adjusted naturally around her motion.
The man snarled and stepped closer, apparently deciding that getting inside the reach of my rapier would solve his problems. It did not. My leg came free of the sidesaddle just enough for a short, brutally efficient kick to catch him high in the chest, and years of Shotokan gave me enough context to recognize good mechanics even though I had never practiced anything remotely like delivering that strike from horseback. His breath exploded out of him as he staggered backward, and the opening appeared before I had finished being surprised by what I had done.
The rapier hummed in my hand as warm resonance gathered along the blade.
RESONANT STRIKE
I met his desperate parry with a sharp beat against the flat of his sword, and the impact rang through both weapons. His blade tore out of his grip and spun several feet away, leaving him staring after it while I recovered first and brought my rapier point to the center of his chest.
“Yield.”
He looked down at the blade, then back at me. Blood still ran from his wounded forearm, and the side of his face had gone pale beneath the dirt.
“Fuck you.”
I sighed. “That was your chance to make a better decision.”
He knocked my blade aside with his bare hand and lunged for Skydancer’s bridle. She flattened her ears and shifted so violently that I had only enough warning to brace before one rear leg snapped outward, her hoof catching him high in the thigh with a sickening impact that did not sound remotely like the sort of noise a human body should make. He collapsed screaming into the road, and I stared down at him before looking toward Skydancer as she tossed her head with unmistakable agitation.
“You are terrifying.”
Her tail lashed once while she shifted beneath me, still searching for threats.
“I love you too.”
To my right, the archer had recovered from Skydancer’s earlier rush and retreated toward the trees. He nocked another arrow while trying to maintain enough distance to keep Adrian’s polearm irrelevant, and this time there was no question about where he intended to shoot. Skydancer gathered herself beneath me the instant she noticed him, every muscle preparing to launch us straight into the brush.
“Stay.”
The command came sharper than anything I had said to her before, and she checked herself almost instantly, muscles quivering with contained motion. Her obedience bought me the second I needed as heat gathered in my free hand, dense and strangely familiar despite my having never cast anything like it before yesterday.
SOULFLAME SPARK
Pearlescent fire snapped from my fingers. The archer jerked sideways, but not quickly enough, and the spark struck his bow hand before bursting across it in a flash of pale flame. He screamed and dropped the weapon, clutching his wrist while the fire vanished almost as quickly as it had appeared.
His skin was red rather than charred, and I registered the distinction immediately. I had wanted him disarmed and hurt enough to stop shooting at me, not burned alive, and seeing that the magic had answered with something closer to what I intended loosened a knot in my chest I had not realized was there.
The archer stared at me as though the small woman he had intended to rob had transformed into something else entirely. Goliath thundered two steps in his direction, and Adrian leveled the polearm before the man could decide whether retrieving his bow remained a good idea.
The archer raised both hands and sank to his knees.
“Excellent choice,” I said.
Adrian shot me a look. “Was that praise?”
“For him.”
“I was concerned.”
“You remain unpraised.”
“Cruel.”
“You will survive.”
“Your confidence sustains me.”
There was absolutely no reason my stomach should have done anything in response to that sentence while an armed robbery was still happening, so I ignored the reaction with all the determination available to me and turned back toward the road.
The leader came for me while Adrian’s attention remained on the archer. He had apparently decided I was still the better target despite all available evidence, and the look on his face suggested embarrassment had become at least as important as profit. His sword came low toward my leg, forcing me to pull clear and catch his blade with mine as the impact jarred through my wrist.
He was stronger than the first man. Not extraordinarily strong, but strong enough that meeting him directly was stupid, and nothing about my class required me to do that. I gave ground, let Skydancer angle away, and watched him over the line of my rapier while he followed.
“You really chose the smallest woman here because you thought that made me the safe option?”
His jaw tightened. “I chose the spoiled little noble riding the most expensive horse.”
“That is technically more insulting.”
He swung, and I slipped around the strike while Skydancer moved with me.
“Also inaccurate.”
The familiar pressure gathered behind my words, and this time I understood what I was reaching for before the magic formed.
“Because if I were spoiled, someone else would be humiliating you for me.”
CUTTING REMARK
The effect struck him visibly. His face went blank for an instant before pain tightened every feature, one hand twitching toward his temple as though he could somehow reach inside his own skull and pull the sensation out. His sword arm dipped and his next step landed awkwardly, leaving exactly the opening I needed.
I lunged before he recovered. My rapier struck his blade near the guard, and resonance rolled through the steel with a sharp metallic note.
RESONANT STRIKE
His sword ripped free and spun into the road. He stared after it in disbelief long enough for me to recover my point and settle it against the center of his chest.
“Try the answer again.”
His breathing came hard through clenched teeth as he looked from the blade to me and then toward Adrian. Adrian had three men effectively contained within the space around Goliath. One lay in the dirt trying very hard not to move, another had lost his sword and seemed intensely aware of the polearm hovering within reach, and the archer remained on his knees with both hands raised.
The leader swallowed. “I yield.”
“Better.”
A branch snapped behind us, and I twisted in the saddle as a sixth man burst from the brush near Rocky. Renee shouted and hauled Raven sideways while the bandit grabbed for the back of the cart, apparently deciding escape with whatever he could steal was preferable to staying for the rest of the fight. Rocky responded with an outraged bray and lurched forward, jerking the cart hard enough that the man missed his grip and stumbled.
Renee did not have a sword, but she did have a riding crop and apparently no hesitation whatsoever about using it. The crack across the side of his face was loud enough that even I winced, and he spun toward her just as Raven crowded forward. Renee kept herself between him and Rocky while the mare forced him backward until one badly placed heel found the edge of the ditch and sent him down with considerably more indignity than injury.
Renee pointed the crop at him as though it were a dueling blade. “Move again and I will let the mule decide what happens next.”
Rocky brayed behind her with magnificent timing, and laughter escaped me before I could stop it. The sound came out too breathless and too high, adrenaline turning it half hysterical, but Renee was upright, Rocky was fine, and nobody in my party appeared to be bleeding.
The last bandit still on his feet took one look at the road and made a decision vastly better than any his companions had managed. He turned and bolted into the trees, disappearing through the undergrowth before anyone committed to pursuit.
Adrian watched the gap in the brush for only a moment before looking back toward the prisoners. “Let him go.”
“Agreed.”
The moment the decision was made, I became aware that my hand was shaking around the rapier. The trembling had probably been there already, hidden beneath the urgency of people actively trying to hurt me, but now that nobody was swinging steel in my direction I could see the slight vibration traveling through the blade.
Skydancer shifted beneath me and turned her head as far back as she could manage. I leaned forward and pressed my free hand against her neck, feeling the heat beneath her coat and the rapid beat of her pulse while my own heart continued trying to escape through my ribs.
“You are insane,” I murmured. “Completely, magnificently insane.”
She blew out a hard breath and leaned faintly toward my hand. Whatever she understood from the words, the affection behind them required no System translation.
Adrian dismounted near the man Goliath had knocked down and kicked the discarded sword farther away before checking him for another weapon. The change in him after the fight was almost as striking as the one during it. The teasing prince from breakfast had become a battlefield protector the moment danger appeared, and now that the danger had passed he shifted again into something quieter and methodical, securing threats before anyone had time to mistake surrender for safety.
I watched him bind one prisoner’s wrists before glancing over the road he had effectively controlled for most of the fight. “You do this often?”
“Get robbed?”
“Turn a road into your personal kingdom.”
His mouth curved while he tightened the knot. “You noticed.”
“That was not praise.”
“That is becoming difficult to believe.”
I slid the rapier back into its sheath with more care than necessary. “You are enjoying this far too much.”
“Watching you insist none of that was praise? Absolutely.”
“I regret asking.”
“You did not ask.”
I narrowed my eyes at him while he smiled back with entirely too much satisfaction. I was absolutely not flirting with my prince in the aftermath of my first life-threatening battle, and the fact that I had to keep insisting on that interpretation was becoming deeply unhelpful.