But it was her eyes that hit Reaper the hardest. They weren’t the eyes of a child. They were dark, steady, and old. They were the eyes of someone who had already learned the hardest lesson the world has to teach: that it doesn’t give; it only takes. They were eyes that had seen things, endured things, that stripped away innocence and left only survival.
She stopped three feet from the table.
She was so small that Tank would have had to lean down just to hear her whisper. She stood there, trembling, a lamb walking into a den of wolves.
Reaper leaned back slowly, the leather of his vest creaking, a sound that usually made grown men flinch. He crossed his massive arms over his chest. He didn’t smile. He didn’t frown. He just watched, his face a mask of stone.
“You lost, little girl?” Wrench asked, his voice possessing a sharp edge, trying to spook her, to send her scurrying back to wherever she came from.
She didn’t look at Wrench. She didn’t look at Tank, or Blackjack, or Smoke.
Her gaze was fixed on Reaper. Specifically, on his right arm.
She swallowed hard. Her throat worked, bobbing as she fought down the fear that threatened to choke her. She took a breath that shuddered in her chest, a ragged inhalation that sounded painful.
Then, she raised her hand. Her arm was thin, the wrist delicate as a bird’s bone. With a shaking finger, she pointed.
She pointed directly at the tattoo on Reaper’s forearm. The raven. The black bird with the spread wings.
