He’d been threatened with beheading before, and a part of Cael wanted, desperately, to curl up with his arms over his head to block out his overactive imagination. A smaller part of him wanted to find his boss and bloody the elf’s nose for even putting him in this predicament. But Cael just stayed still, hands quavering. He didn’t even bother to hide it, breathe labored but steady, the bars digging into his back.

Just get it over with.

The deathblow he imagined never fell. The woman spoke, words tainted with a guilty sheen. He tried to listen, but still watched for a reverse of his own trap; still watched for an opening, the polearm’s shaft curled lightly in his hand.

The distraction was provided by the hyena’s open disdain. The woman’s sentence faltered. Cael’s muscles shifted, protesting, the naginata flashed out once again –

And that odd sword blocked the strike independent of the woman’s attention in a reverberating clash of metal on metal, quicker than his eye could follow. Reality telescoped to one pinprick of realization: she was going to kill him.

And, after that attack, he just about deserved it.

Moments passed, inexorably slow, his heartbeat loud behind his eyes, shoulders tense as he waited again for the deathblow. But instead of severing his throat, she thanked him. His mouth dropped open for a second before he schooled his expression into something more dignified, something less at a complete loss for words. Vines lashed from beneath the ground, around his legs, his free arm, yanking him back harder against the bars. Pinning him utterly still, no matter how hard he tried to pull away, holding him tight...

But not cruelly so. Whatever he’d inadvertently helped her through had apparently brought mercy on its heels. He nodded, eyes fixed on her stare, and managed another weak smile. She nodded, turning on her heel, her shoulders squared as if a burden had been lifted from her soul.

“I wish you those kinder circumstances, Rosalyn,” he called at her back before he turned his attention to the vines and his own sleeve holding him in place, his mind already trying to work through how he was supposed to explain this one.