I do not move again, and this time it is not hesitation and it is not uncertainty, and it is a decision I hold onto hard enough that everything else has to bend around it.
I stay where I am and I let the noise of the packhouse settle and I let the instinct to react burn itself out, and the guards shift around me while they wait for direction that does not come.
Minutes pass, and then more, and nothing hits and nothing moves and nothing breaks, and the silence stretches longer than it should and sharper than anything that came before it. This is worse.
Because now I can feel the timing in it, and it is not random and it is not delayed and it is chosen. He is waiting. Not for movement. For stillness.
I breathe slowly and keep my stance loose and my eyes forward, and I refuse to break the
